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Self-Driving Cars
Self-Driving Cars

Learn English meaning of 'self-driving cars'

Date: Jan 27 2016

Themes: Tech, Travel

Grammar: First Conditional

Intro

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Is it possible to have a world with safe transportation for all people? Is this possible even if some people don’t know how to drive? How do you feel about seeing a car drive past you on the road with no driver behind the wheel? Self-driving cars will soon be on roads all over the world. Automated cars use GPS and computer technology to drive. They look friendly and drive cautiously on the road.

People see the development of self-driving cars as a milestone in technology, but the fact that there is no human controlling the car often scares them. They are worried about the reaction time of these automated vehicles. They don’t know if the self-driving cars can drive safely in changing weather conditions and around dangerous drivers.

Jessica and Gary discuss their thoughts on self-driving cars. Find out what they think in today’s English lesson.

Dialog

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2. Study - Read the dialog again to see how the vocab words are used.

Jessica

Jessica

Gary

Gary

Jessica:  I was reading an article about self-driving cars.

Gary:  I am so excited about those.

Jessica:  I am too, but I’m worried they might be a little dangerous.

Gary:   It’s true. I have to agree with you. I am a little worried about that. They’re fully automated. How will they handle rain, or snow, or conditions that they haven’t been programmed for.

Jessica:  And what about the reaction time with other drivers. If somebody is racing in and out of traffic, I don’t know?

Gary:  Yeah, that could be really dangerous.

Jessica:  It really could be.

Gary:  I have seen some video of some self-driving cars though. And their reaction time is actually better than the driver.

Jessica:  Wow, see that’s impressive. That’s quite a milestone with technology. I sometimes get road rage, and I feel like, if I happen to be driving around a self-driving vehicle, it might provoke that road rage a little bit.

Gary:  It’s really interesting. I feel like the self-driving cars are teaching each other, and it compounds all of the data, so they keep reaching these better milestones every day to just become safer on the road. So, maybe your road rage can be covered by these self-driving cars.

Jessica:  Alright, I’ll look into this.

 

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Quizzes

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Lesson MP3

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Discussion

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Jessica read an article about self-driving cars, and she tells Gary about it. She is worried that they may be dangerous on the road because there is no human controlling them. She is afraid that their reaction time will be poor when weather conditions change. She also thinks automated cars will provoke her road rage.

Gary is excited about self-driving cars. He agrees that they could be dangerous but explains to Jessica that, after watching a video about them, he found out that their reaction time is better than the reaction time of human drivers. He tells Jessica that these cars reach better milestones every day to become safer on the road.

How do you feel about self-driving cars? Would you feel safe driving next to one?

 

Comments

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Karimi1382

Iran, Islamic Republic Of

I see Google self driving car video… It’s so Good and I,m so interesting about this car… I want test this and I hope as soon as possible , this car come to my city…

05:50 AM Jan 28 2016 |

1 person likes this

Seiyf_khawas

Turkey

if ı have enough money for hiring a private driver one day , ı will have Self-Driving car :))) 


really ı never thought about self driving cars , maybe it can be good ,but its early to talk about it..


ı learned in life that human factor is very important on everywhere .

08:58 PM Jan 27 2016 |

aj2000

aj2000

Indonesia

Reminds me of Knight Riders!

05:29 PM Jan 27 2016 |

Wuthering

United States

Acctually , self driving cars are more safer than humans’ driving , but the worst enemy of self driving cars is hackers . What if hackers take over controling self driving cars , I could not imagine how bad it is . It could be disaster for the world . 

04:55 PM Jan 27 2016 |

hilalyksl

hilalyksl

Turkey

That’s so excıtıng! Tecknology is getting improve every day and dreams is being real! Maybe, it will seems dangerous human drivers after ten years, police officers will give them penalty. WHY NOT?!!  NO IMPOSSIBLE

04:52 PM Jan 27 2016 |

s11211s

s11211s

Iran, Islamic Republic Of

Self-driving is based on computer program and networking car’s computers to each other and other resources.
you think getting infected these car’s computers with viruses and … , how dangerous could be!

01:09 PM Jan 27 2016 |

MotherEarth

Canada

Basically , the future’s thecnology can make it .
Let’s be clear that in these days we can see a lot of car crashes all around world .
Indeed , the cars have intelligent operators as Humans , even the self -driving cars will going to make by humans . Here is little bit strange for us to understand the self – driving cars .
It’s acceptable to see this new technology in our futures in order to make safer transporting .
While , the system of automatic self -driving could be make mistake in certain condition no matter what !
I have to mention it that we can stop technology because a lot of reasons that it’s hard to say them .

04:04 AM Jan 27 2016 |

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