Self-Driving Cars Case Study

The second Ethics Case discussed in class this semester was about the morals and ethical dilemmas of decision making by self-driving cars in the event of an emergency. Companies such as Tesla, Uber partnered with Volvo, and Google are just a few examples of the efforts being made to introduce a driverless car to roads of the U.S. by 2020.

There are great number of benefits to owning and operating driverless vehicles. A major goal of self-driving cars is to dramatically reduce human error involved when driving. Manufacturers hope to decrease the risks of driving; risks that cause accidents or harm others include driving while under the influence of drugs or alcohol, distractions inside the vehicle such as music, children or cell phones, and

Driverless cars will operate best and save the greatest amount of lives if every vehicle on the road is also a self-driving car. This is a challenging goal to achieve; it will take years of increasing awareness of the benefits and eliminating the flawed technology of self-driving cars to influence all U.S. citizens in the car buying market to purchase the vehicle. The price must also be affordable to all levels of incomes which will also be difficult to achieve due to the progressiveness of the technology used to produce the vehicles. A serious problem arising with self-driving cars is that all technology has the possibility of being hacked. The security of the self-driving cars must be held to the highest standards to prevent any unauthorized users from gaining access to the vehicles’ system. The driverless cars are vulnerable to being controlled by hackers which can lead to dangerous situations of kidnapping and intentional accidents; vehicle owners’ personal information, such as home addresses and other private locations, can also be compromised. A long term drawback of self-driving cars is a reduced need for public transportation systems, such as taxis. Since those who cannot operate vehicles would be able to own cars that operated themselves, they would not need to use public transportation. This would lead to an increase of unemployment in transportation job

If an object suddenly falls out of the back of the construction truck in the first example, then the driverless car must decide to stay in its lane and be hit by the object, swerve to one side and compromise the life of an individual practicing safety precautions, or swerve to the other side and deliberately penalize an individual lacking safety awareness. This scenario again raises the question of whose life is worth more over another, but it also challenges how a self-driving car should react based on the safety of those around it.

Another moral dilemma accompanying self-driving cars, as well as many other technological advancements, is whether or not to stall their progress in order to preserve human interests. For example, car enthusiasts would resent giving up driving their sports cars or antiques to decrease the number of accidents involving vehicles. Individuals who enjoy driving would also be hesitant to relinquish their ability to drive to a