3 . At a conference on self-driving cars, Mike Harp, a government official, asked a seemingly simple question about what happens when his own car meets a driver-less vehicle. “If I honk(按喇叭), will it do any good?” Harp wanted to know. Unfortunately, manufacturers didn't have an answer. “We haven’t reached that point of deciding how and whether it would be appropriate for vehicles to react and in which way to honking,” said one of them. The brief exchange highlights a thorn in the side of automakers and policymakers alike: Self-driving cars will have to share the road with human drivers, likely for decades to come. Those vehicles must therefore respond and adapt to the peculiarities and mistakes of humans behind wheel.
Self-driving technology has already come a long way. Cars being tested on the road today use cameras and radar, for example, to detect the movements of nearby cyclists and pedestrians. There are already driver-assist technologies built into some cars that monitor the speed of vehicles around you, detect potential accidents before they occur, and automatically slow or stop the car to avoid a wreck. In a world where all cars drive themselves, the technology could operate at peak efficiency. Supporters of self-driving cars say that speed limits could be raised and fatal crashes largely avoided as no traffic laws are broken and poor drivers become a thing of the past.
But the change to driver-less vehicles is expected to be gradual, and will likely start with ride-sharing services, as the costs of personally owning a self-driving car remain extremely high. That means man and machine will have to play nice on roadways. “There are so many interesting situations,” such as honking a horn, Harp said. When “another car with a driver meets a self-driving car without a driver in there and they realize that, it will frighten some people. How that’s going to be dealt with will be part of the fun part of this process.
Any driver can tell you that driving involves a lot of social interaction, particularly the hand gestures and eye contact of fellow drivers. Much of that interaction between drivers will eventually be digital as cars increasingly collect data and share it with the vehicles around them. If a car speeds up, slows down or prepares for a stop, for example, that would be communicated immediately and electronically to the other vehicles on the road. Like self-driving technology however, it will be years before the vehicle-to-vehicle communication is common.
That challenge is being taken into account as driver-less vehicles are tested on public roads. But the honking issue is particularly tricky because it’s subject to interpretation. It’s going to be really hard for a driver-less vehicle, even if it hears the honk, to figure out what that honk means.
1. In paragraph 1, “a thorn” refers to ____________.
| A．the issue that human drivers have peculiarities and make mistakes |
| B．the prediction that self-driving cars will be common in the future |
| C．the fact that driver-less cars co-exist with cars driven by humans |
| D．the technology that ensures driver-less cars are safe on the road |
2. Which of the following can be inferred from the last two paragraph?
| A．Most people don’t advocate self-driving technology |
| B．Inter-vehicle communication is superior to inter-personal interaction |
| C．Social interaction will decrease among drivers behind the wheel |
| D．More data is needed to make self-driving technology a reality much sooner |
3. Which example is used to illustrate that self-driving technology is not something new?
| A．A car communicates its speed to the other vehicles |
| B．A driver-less ear is likely to frighten human drivers |
| C．Speed limits are raised in a world of self-driving cars |
| D．Car cameras and radar are used to detect moving people. |
4. Which of the following might be the best title of the passage?
| A．The simple question about self-driving cars we still can’t answer |
| B．A golden opportunity for driver-less cars we can’t afford to miss |
| C．Hidden secrets of self-driving cars we can’t reveal |
| D．Potential risks of driver-less cars we can’t ignore |
