Persuasive Essay On Driverless Cars

Imagine this scene: your alarm clock begins buzzing at 7:00 am, signaling you to crawl out of bed, and slowly get ready for school. You take a zombie-like stride as you slowly shuffle out of your house, barely awake, and get into your car. There's no need to worry about staying awake while driving though; with a push of a button, the car starts itself and chauffeurs you to school, or wherever else you want to go. No, this isn't science fiction set in the distant future, but a scientific reality quickly creeping up on us, and soon to appear in our own driveways. "Google driverless cars could be commonplace on our roads by 2017," according to Google's co-founder, Sergey Brin. These autonomous cars, or cars that don't require a person to drive

This may sound like a dream come true, but the technology is still riddled with multiple hazards that may put passengers at risk. Although autonomous cars may positively benefit society, the technology still poses some major risks to passengers, including security issues, a less responsible lifestyle, and AI environmental responses. Security issues are a major problem in our technology driven world today, with stories of hackers infiltrating "secure" companies seeming to penetrate the news every other week. Just two months ago, Sony Pictures Entertainment was hacked by an unknown source, and many unreleased movies were leaked onto the internet following a threat to cancel the production of their latest movie, The Interview. So, if people can hack into a really secure company like Sony Pictures, then what will stop them from hacking into the autonomous car systems? Absolutely nothing. In fact, it may even be easier to infiltrate these vehicles since they'll wirelessly run on GPS coordinates. Any hacker with the right motive could

While having the opportunity to catch up on your homework, some office work, or just relaxing in general is great, we'll also loose the experience gained in driving. Driving any vehicle requires your full attention on the road, car, and surroundings at all times in order to avoid an accident, and instills in the driver the responsibility to ignore any other, less important impulses. No longer needing to practice this discipline when the car drives itself, many people won't even need to care what's right outside their own car window since the autonomous car can deal with it. Passengers will become dependent on such technology leading their lives, and ensuring their own safety when they need to be responsible of it themselves. Google already hopes people will take to this autonomous dependency for their own economic gain, "While Google has never said how it plans to commercialize automated vehicles, it’s clear that keeping people’s eyes on the Web instead of on the road could itself mean a substantial boost to the company’s revenues." In creating an autonomous vehicle, Google expects it to allow people more time for using their search engine and clicking on their ads, which will earn them about an extra $2 billion each year. People need to take responsibility for their own actions when driving rather than entrust an autonomous car to do it