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Disadvantages of self-driving cars
Ethical concerns with autonomous vehicles
Disadvantages of self-driving cars
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The Debate on Driverless Cars Ever since the industrial revolution, progress has been skyrocketing for the human race. For many years now, people have been wondering what the future will look like. When someone asks what you picture will be possible in the future, you may imagine hoverboards, shiny chrome clothing, and cars that do not need anyone to drive them. If this is the case, then it may come as a surprise to hear that this future is already here, in the world, today. Maybe not the shiny chrome clothing, but the self-driving cars are definitely a reality. For a few years now, Google and Tesla have been on the front lines in the fight towards driverless cars. Not only that, but they have made quite a bit of progress too. The cars have
Research shows that “More than 90 percent of all traffic accidents are the result of human error.” However, when this is compared with the automated cars, “The longest-running safety tests have been conducted by Google, whose autonomous vehicles have traveled more than 700,000 miles so far with only one accident (when a human driver rear-ended the car)” (Bailey, The moral case for self-driving cars). Even the few accidents that have so far happened during the trial runs of Google’s autonomous cars were still due to human error. If humans were taken out of the picture entirely, thousands of lives could be saved annually in the United States and Canada alone. With artificial intelligence running the show, there will not even be a need to worry about whether the drivers around you will suddenly make a risky move or not. Ushering in the age of driverless cars will also reduce many of the other negative aspects of
"The moral case for self-driving cars: welcoming our new robot chauffeurs." Reason, Aug.-Sept. 2014, p. 18+. Opposing Viewpoints in Context, link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A374332637/OVIC?u=pioneer&xid=dfee0b28. Accessed 6 Oct. 2017.
Greenemeier, Larry. “Driverless Cars Will Face Moral Dilemmas.” Scientific American, Scientific American, 23 June 2016, www.scientificamerican.com/article/driverless-cars-will-face-moral-dilemmas/.
O'Toole, Randal. "AI Smart Cars Will Transform Highway Safety and Congestion." Artificial Intelligence, edited by Noah Berlatsky, Greenhaven Press, 2011. Opposing Viewpoints. Opposing Viewpoints in Context, link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/EJ3010771226/OVIC?u=pioneer&xid=9a827154. Accessed 6 Oct. 2017. Originally published as "Dude, Where's My Driverless Car?" Gridlock: Why We're Stuck in Traffic and What To Do About It, Cato Institute, 2009, pp. 189-202.
Scott, Gini Graham. "Driverless Cars Could Eliminate Road Rage." Road Rage, edited by Amy Francis, Greenhaven Press, 2014. At Issue. Opposing Viewpoints in Context, link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/EJ3010911216/OVIC?u=pioneer&xid=dda28b2a. Accessed 6 Oct. 2017. Originally published as "The Driverless Car—and the End of Road Rage?" Huffington Post, 20 Feb.
Companies like Google, Tesla and Nissan, among others, have announced over the past few years that their companies are trying to develop self-driving or autonomous cars [Ref. 1 and 2]. Self-driving cars can provide many benefits to the average consumer. Studies have shown that because computers can react and process information many times faster than a human being, crashes on streets and roads can be decreased with quick and consistent evasion maneuvers by the autonomous car. They can also help maximize fuel economy by calculating the most direct and fastest routes. When the driving of an autonomous car demonstrates that the computer can safely and reliably transport the passengers to their destination, this frees up the passengers to do other things that they would not normally be able to do if they were driving the car manually. For this reason, self-driving cars can help maximize productivity of their passengers.
...ailable provide much more protection than harm to humans. Automotive makers should continue to offer safe features and advance the possibilities of a collision-free future as much as possible. Attention must also be turned to the potential harm new features could cause. Safety features should be a precaution, or safety net, to true accidents that happen. They should not continue to replace bad driving habits that are abundant in our country. By allowing computer technology to provide an instant fix to human error, the error itself is never corrected. When involving something as deadly as vehicle accidents, fixing the error is just as, if not more, critical as providing a safety net. The ninth commandment: thou shalt think about the social consequences of the program you are writing. How far will vehicle safety go until computers are driving the car for us?
Since the advent of autonomous technology, self-driving cars have been expected to be the best solution to optimizing daily commuting efficiency meanwhile significantly reducing or even preventing traffic accidents and fatality by rectifying and removing possible human errors on the road. As the deeper research goes on, however, the ethics of driverless cars become a major concern: self-driving cars must make their own decisions at any circumstances, which also means that such vehicles must be pre-programmed to respond ethically to certain emergencies. Concerning quite broad range of ethical issues, such algorithms should be rather convoluted. Without any perfect solutions so far, social expectation of ethical principles should be a logical
Driverless cars kill people. With the years flying by, driverless cars seem very close to coming into the world. New technology comes with new issues all the time. Sometimes these problems don’t matter, but people must see the issues with the driverless car. Driverless cars should not be utilized due to the massive ethical programming debate and technical problems that make the car’s safety questionable.
In source #3 paragraph 4 it says “surveyed people want to ride in cars that protect passengers at all costs-even if the pedestrians would now end up dying.” This is important because the self driving cars create a conflict between society, about who the car could save. Also those surveyed people are in conflict with themselves, trying to decide what outcome could be better. In source #3 paragraph 13 it states “people imagined actually buying a driverless car...people again said pedestrians-protecting cars were more moral...people admitted that they wanted their own car to be programmed to protect its passengers.” This shows when you actually think about the reality of having a driverless car, you wouldn’t want to die in an accident when you could have been saved. As a pedestrian you wouldn’t want to get hit by a car when you could have been saved. There are different perspectives you have to look at. In conclusion this shows that society still isn’t sure about a self-driving
You are sitting in the backseat of your driverless car without a care in the world, watching netflix and enjoying your favorite assortment of snacks and beverages. All of a sudden your car goes from the speed limit to full throttle in one jolt and take off down the freeway. The car is not designed to go this fast and the other cars do not have time to react. Is this really what you want in a truly driverless car, having no control over the situation and putting your life in the hands of autonomic machine? Driverless cars should not be introduced to the common public because of deadly errors in the cars system, problems with the laws and regulations, and the role humans play in these cars.
With the introduction of autonomous vehicles, various social dilemmas have arisen into the mainstream of debate. One of the biggest questions to come up is whether autonomous vehicles should be primarily utilitarian in nature, meaning that they reduce the total number of injuries and deaths on roadways as much as possible, or self-protective in nature, meaning that they protect the occupants of the vehicle no matter what, in every scenario. These two can't be mixed without causing unrest and debate on whether the correct decision was made by the vehicle; it has to be one or the other. However, when taking into account the primary purpose of developing autonomous vehicles, I believe that they should serve a utilitarian purpose, minimizing the
Are driverless cars really needed in today's society? Many people and big businesses think so. Going on a road trip? click a button, sit back relax and wait until you arrive at your destination. Many, however, are skeptical of these driverless cars, Both sides have very good reasons for their beliefs but most people believe this is going to give the government too much control.
The engineering that goes into a driverless car covers all areas of mechanics, computing software and so on which still tends to frighten some drivers of its monstrosity on the inside. In the article “Google Cars Becoming Safer: Let the Robots Drive” it states that, “The economic lift from ridding the roads of human-driven vehicles would be over $190 billion per year. That would primarily come from reducing property damage caused by low-speed collisions”(Salkever). The point is that when driverless cars hit the road the cost of low-speed collision and save consumers money will be reduced. In the article “ Google Driverless Cars Run Into Problem: Cars With Drivers” Slakever states that “One Google car, in a test in 2009, couldn’t get through a four-way stop because its sensors kept waiting for other (human) drivers to stop completely and let it go. The human drivers kept inching forward, looking for the advantage — paralyzing Google’s robot”(Bosker). Current drivers have never followed the rule of the road, which have made the road more prone to any accident. Drivers have found the upper hand on not following traffic laws that makes manufacturing driverless car more meticulous to decrease accidents and breaking traffic laws. The fact that driverless car sensors can detect the errors of other human driven car is extraordinary. Human driven cars are trying to stick to the status quo of the roads when in reality human driven cars are breaking valuable innovation that will make the roads safe for generations to
ue the manufacturers and designers of autonomous cars must be able to program software with a sense of morality, and consumers must subsequently agree to such predetermined decisions. Lisa Eadicicco explains, “With the basic technical hurdles out of the way, driverless car experts now face a different set of problems -- namely, ethical issues. Among the most pressing questions: What should a driverless car do if it faces a choice between putting its passengers at risk or harming someone outside the vehicle?” (Eadicicco). Driverless cars cannot merely function upon the basis of machinery and technology, as these vehicles must make decisions from an ethical perspective.
It is evident that these innovations decrease upon the number of car crashes, however, one can ponder upon the limitations of this benefit. In fact, Patrick Lin, an author of the book “Why Ethics Matters for Autonomous Cars,” explored an interesting scenario that revealed the ethical issues related to self-driving cars. He states that, “Imagine in some distant future, your autonomous car encounters this terrible choice: it must either swerve left and strike an eight-year old girl or swerve right and strike an 80-year old grandmother” (Lin, 2016). The car has three choices, hit the child, elderly woman, or hit both. One may say that it would be more justifiable to hit the elderly woman because she has lived a full life.
Autonomous vehicles are already cruising the real roads. However, before they can become widespread, car makers must solve an impossible ethical dilemma of algorithmic morality. In the academic article “Autonomous Vehicles Need Experimental Ethics: Are We Ready for Utilitarian Cars?” , Jean-Francois Bonnefon, Azim Sharif, and Iyad Rahwan (2015), argue that the carmakers must adopt methods of experimental ethics for defining the algorithms that will dictate those cars’ behavior in situations of unavoidable harm.
Driverless Cars: Not If, But When Autonomous cars have been a highly debated topic in the past decade. These vehicles have the potential to make people’s commutes not only more efficient, but much safer by eliminating human error. However, they will not be mainstreamed if the population does not adapt to this new technology. When computers have control over something as substantial as human lives, morality will always be an issue.
An example from Tesla illustrates that the technology is not yet ready for fully autonomous driving: a Tesla driver died when his car with partial self-driving features crashed into a turning truck that it did not recognize as an obstacle. It is important to note that the self-driving feature involved in the Tesla crash was explicitly not meant for fully autonomous driving. The driver had been warned several times to put his hands back on the wheel. However, the accident illustrates that more programming and engineering is required to make cars fully autonomous. Despite these challenges, the rate of progress on self-driving car technology suggests that the goal is within reach. People also complain that they are expensive, and having cars make decisions is bad. An ethical dilemma like this should give us pause. The more that we allow technology to interact with us in the world, the more we force technology to confront ethical dilemmas. In the case of self-driving cars, we are literally placing a potential killing machine (a 2-ton vehicle) in the control of a computer.
Hence, when considering those disputed situations, manufactures should make sure that preprogrammed solutions are guided by ethical principles. Self-driving cars will improve humans’ driving experience with the help of advanced technology that are used in designing them. Google self-driving cars are believed to be safer than traditional cars; since human drivers have limited driving experience, Google SDCs are tested in many uncommon situations before they come out (Dolgov, 2016). Consequently, old drivers benefit from such safety improvements on SDCs, which solve the problem that the older drivers cannot make reactions promptly to complex road conditions (Liedtke, 2016). Moreover, the use of SDCs encourages