Journal 6

In the article, Chris Urmson, the head of engineering for Google’s Self-Driving Car Project, said that self-driving vehicles are significant important for our future society. According to Urmson’s words, self-driving vehicles can help reducing the car accidents since over ninety percent of the accidents are due to human error. At the same time, such vehicles can help those who are not able to drive to get around. In addition, self-driving vehicles can help reduce congestion by working as a group.

However, there are still many challenges for self-driving vehicles. Obviously, self-driving vehicles are not able to deal with complicated accidents. Maybe it is possible for a self-driving vehicle to hit the brakes when it detects something cross the road in a rush. But if a self-driving vehicle meet with an accident, will it stop can let the wondered to take a ride? By the way, self-driving vehicle is just a car connected to a computer which has a really complex program to deal with different situations. Machines are always machines, they don’t have any emotions. In other words, self-driving vehicles have no fear, and they don’t know when should stop. All the thing a self-driving vehicle can do is follow the thing they could do is following the guide of the map and the computer, even though there is a cliff ahead of them. Actually there are still so many challenges for a self-driving vehicle. Considering the word limits of the journal, I will stop here.

As for me, I won’t recommend my family members and my friends to drive a self-driving vehicle. Maybe we can’t use the word drive, I prefer using the word take, take a self-driving vehicle. Such technology is still too dangerous for normal people to use. However, apply such technology to buses. For the reason that most buses have settled lines which means that there won’t be much accidents on the bus lines. If all the self-driving buses runs well, then the technology can be promoted to the public gradually.

Journal 6

Christ Urmson is head of engineering for Google’s self-driving car project. He wrote an article about ”Progress in Self-Driving Vehicles.” The self-driving vehicles project aims at diminishing accidents, helping people who cannot drive to get around, and lessening congestion. In my opinion, the initiation of technology is try to improve the living standard of all people; however, there are some problems might occur; such as, power shut down that probably would cause traffic congestion; solar wind emits irregular radiated wave, and it might affect the Global Positioning System. This unmanned car can lead inexperienced driver to an unknown place.

          The idea of helping people who cannot go round by themselves like young children and senior people is good. Take Taiwan for example. Parents are troubled because they have to drop and pick their children either to their nanny place, schools and cram schools. Rough estimation, it takes one and half hours for one child. In average, there are two children in every family that means parents are going to spend three hours on pick-and-drop children every day. With the invention of self-driving vehicles, it solves the problems for parents.

          About smooth the traffic jam, it’s really a great idea especially for people who communicates by cars because they don’t want to be late to their destination because of planning behavior software which helps to predict the behavior of other road users. Since self-driving vehicles claim that all it require from the driver is to tell the car where to go. This is awesome for people who have poor sense of direction. 

          Base on the previous reasons, I support the self-drive vehicles. Still, the two questions remain unanswered: what is power shut down completely? What if the GPS was affected by irregular radiated wave? 

Journal6

When it comes to the issue about self-driving vehicles in the future, Urmson has several opinions or ways to it. At first, he gave a statistic that more than 30,000 people are killed each year on the road, and over 90 percent of these accidents are due to human error, from here, we can find that self-driving vehicles in the future maybe important and necessary for ours life. Urmson's view of point is self-driving vehicles offer the promise of addressing all of these challenges, dramatically reduce accident,enable people who cannot drive to get around.The powerful evidence is a deep history, history let us know dramatically vehicle is significant for future life, or else it famous in 1950.Technology need improve,so self-driving vehicles is history choice.

As a old preverb said,"everything's hard in the beginning",like this preverb describe. self-driving vehicles has lots of benefits of people which need waiting for long time for folk receive and adopt. A new thing should be check in hard experiment and long time. On the other hand,automatic things and self-driving vehicles cann't be adopted by stubborn people, they like old vehicle in them individual way.So time is key to solved problem. 

As far as am concerned, I like self-driving vehicles because that is a symbolic thing in vehicle. It will relpaced the old one. Second,self-driving vehicles is convenient for us, and make promise with our safe. I hope in the coming years advanced driverassistance systems and self-driving vehicles will become common-place,delivering on the promise of makeing roads safer and more conveninet for all.

Journal #6

Journal #6

For arguing self-driving are important for the future, Urmson used several evidence. First, he came up with some truth and statistic. Traffic accidents are the leading cause of death for individuals aged 4 to 34 in the United States. Among those accidents, most of them are caused by human error. The other example is that people need more personal mobility. And he got the conclusion that self-driving vehicles offer the promise of addressing all of these challenges: they should dramatically reduce accidents, enable people who cannot drive to get around. And, when deployed as part of an efficient shared vehicle fleet, reduce congestion. Second, another important reason is that, this new technology helps improve other technology. The self-driving featured several notable technical innovations. And it get more companies involved.

Speaking of challenges, there are some things that we must consider. First, if the self-driving is dependable or believable. Even though, most of the accidents are caused by human errors, how well could the machine work? Sometimes it can work better than human, but the chance of making errors of machines is higher than human. Second, if vehicle featured is actually highly dependable, the technology could be so hard to reach. If this technology is finished, which means more and more people would lose their jobs too.

I like this cool idea. For myself, I would definitely have one if it’s available, or I could try to make one by myself. It’s an interesting technology. There are several advantages that are satisfied with what people need most for modern life. Like what Urmson says, if can help us make more room or opportunities for our modality. And also, it’s a good thing to make many people get interested in one field, and all the engineers will have one goal and work together. 

Journal 5

In Wechsler’s article “Getting Serious about Eradicating Binge Drinking,” he mentioned that athletic program in campus is one of the center of college binge drinking, which I can’t agree more. According to author’s data, “Students involved in athletics are one and a half times as likely to be binge drinkers as are other students”(wechsler 12). 

As we know, athletes usually have more demand of energy food after training compared with common people, but it isn’t the main reason for why athletes like binge drinking. Alcohol drink could also help them relaxing themselves. What’s more. It’s common that a beer advertisement comes with sports in it, which makes us have the sense that you can’t be an excellent athlete without alcohol. It’s not a good signal for eradicating binge drinking. What I’m thinking is the same as Wechsler’s, the officials should take some action to avoid this phenomenon. But instead of controlling the athletes’ behavior, it could be better that if they let people know clearly how much damage will be caused by the alcohol drinks. Especially In some big campus, a party after a competition is necessary. People often got deeply drunk in the party for celebration. Even it is after the competition, too much alcohol drinks can cause bad effects on athletes’ body, which may remain big issue in a long term. So they need to keep a clear mind about it all the time. If they can do it, it will be a good and powerful example for other students in the campus for avoiding binge drinking.

Journal 5

As we know, eradicating binge drinking gets serious. Especially, for university students, the people who got drunk caused alcohol-related problem growth fast. However, the binge drinking seems as smoking in not many years ago, which can solve right now. In Wechsler article Getting Serious about Eradicating Binge Drinking, he reported,” colleges also need to focus more attention a block or two away from the campus-on the ring of bars and liquor stores that encircles many institutions” (23). Nevertheless, I have a little bit disagreement to his opinion. I don’t think that this way has greatly effect for eradicating binge drinking. Firstly, all bars or liquor stores cannot be banned opening nearby the colleges, so if there is one bars open next college, this way will have no effective for the people who want to get drunk. Next, for the profits of bars or liquor stores, they will not make this matter happened. Because the college students are the important customers for bars or liquor stores. It doesn’t solve the fundamental problems of binge drinking.

I think the binge drinking is the instant problem to be solved immediately. It not only consider about the healthy growth from teenager to adult, but also about the social harmony. It will be caused a plenty of social hazards, such as drunk driving, violence and so on. Maybe you will have confusion that do you have effective method to deal with binge drinking of university student even though high school student who are addicted into drinking? I think we need to find method from the origin of the problem. Although America has law addressed the age of people who can buy alcohol is 22, there are some place go against the law to sell drinking to college students. Therefore, I think it can improve the penalty to a high level so that retailers or producers cannot against laws easily. Meanwhile, we can also establish a law to limited the quantity of alcohol in different ages. Because I think it will more useful and has more pertinence for all age groups.  

Journnal#5

Wechsler’s article entitled “Getting Serious about Eradicating Binge Drinking” states why it is important to stop this sort of behavior and how colleges can do so. Some of the suggestions he gave make sense, while the others are not likely to be able to work well. In the article he mentions that”colleges also need to focus more attention a block or two away from the campus” because the problem is “the availability of a large volume of alcohol at a low price” rather than “alcohol itself”. This is a good point. If a student drinks, but not to excess, what would happen if he could get bottles of alcohol anytime he wants? He would probably be a binge drinker as the easy access to alcohol allows him to drink more and more. This method cannot stop binge drinkers, for they can always figure out a way to get alcohol, but it can prevent moderate drinkers from being addicted, or even help them to abstain alcohol. Another effective way is to enforce a “three strike and you are out” policy to tell everyone on the campus that the school is taking binge drinking as a serious problem, and whoever breaks the rule should pay. According to the article, Wechsler also mentions,”Doing research into…can help to reduce the behavior”. This is not likely to work well, considering that more than half students are getting drunk on purpose instead of imitating their peers. There is no doubt that this kind of behavior needs to be stopped, otherwise those alcohol-related violation as well as death will never stop, or even get worse. Colleges should seriously cope with this problem, and the whole society should be fully supportive to them.