Back in June of 2016, I was preparing to start work, as any normal day when I heard it. Someone driving a Tesla Model S was killed when the autopilot in their car failed to “see” a tractor-trailer in front of it. I didn’t even know we had achieved self-driving yet! It turns out that we had not, and even today, in 2023, we have not yet achieved it. Sure, companies advertise self-driving, but does it actually work?

I mention this because, all too often, companies push a technology that only sort-of works and for some reason, people buy into it. For self-driving to be viable, it has to fully react as a good driver would. In many instances, it reacts poorly in situations where even a new driver would avoid a crash. Google has been testing their self-driving cars for over a dozen years now, but can you buy one? The answer is no. Waymo, Google’s sister company, seems to be playing it safe – something other companies should take note of.

Are consumers aware of the pitfalls of paying for, and using, these self-driving features? The likely answer is no, for the most part, they do not. All they know is that they were promised a self-driving car and they expect it to work. They don’t care that the semi-trailer “looked” like clouds to the car. They don’t care if the car’s computer took too long to process the situation and so it just crashed. Therefore, the responsibility of protecting the public is for these companies to look past profits and ensure that their technology works in 99.99999% of situations.

Here at OPG, we strive to ensure that our technology works. All too often, while working on the development team here, something I built will be sent back by our Quality Assurance (QA) team. This is because QA departments know the harm that non-functioning software can cause and they spend their time trying to break the system. They don’t look for situations where it will work; rather, they purposefully do things to make it not work. Had this been done properly with self-driving, companies would have realized that it was not yet viable and that earth-shattering technology takes a significant amount of time and testing to develop – especially when life or death decisions are made by a non-human.

Just like with self-driving, you and I don’t care why something does not work. We, here at OPG, know that and we also know that defects can cause you wasted man-hours, missed opportunities, and loss of money. We are constantly testing our software and monitoring its use, in order to ensure that it is working properly and not causing your users frustration. Every one of our team members cares about the success of your system and the success of your business.

If you are frustrated with your current system or have something that you would like to automate or make easier to manage, please reach out to us. Our team will be more than happy to sit down with you, discuss your needs, and get you a reliable system that saves your users time, energy, and money.