An alternative would be to hold the users of autonomous cars responsible for possible accidents. One version of doing so could be based on a duty of the user to pay attention to the road and traffic and to intervene when necessary to avoid accidents. The liability of the driver in the case of an accident would be based on his failure to pay attention and intervene. Autonomous vehicles would thereby lose much of their utility. It would not be possible to send the vehicle off to look for a parking place by itself or call for it when needed. One would not be able to send children to school with it, use it to get safely back home when drunk or take a nap while traveling. However, these matters are not of immediate ethical relevance.
As long as there
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Accidents are usually not easily foreseeable-especially if there is no driver that might be noticeably tired, angry or distracted. Therefore, it will probably be difficult to recognize dangerous situations which the autonomous vehicle might be ill equipped to manage, and even harder to intervene in time. Of course, much will depend on what kind of cases we are talking about. If the problem in which the driver must intervene tend to be foreseeable (for example, if there is some sort of timely warning sign given by the vehicle), this is not a problem. But once we are talking about fully autonomous cars which drive as safely as the average person, such a predictability of dangerous situations seems unlikely and unrealistic. Moreover, accidents could not only happen because persons fail to override the system when they should have, but also because people override it when there really was no danger of the system causing an accident (Douma & Palodichuk, 2012). As the level of sophistication of autonomous cars improves, the possibility of interventions by the driver might cause more accidents than it helps to avoid. But even assuming such intervention was possible, if the person in question were sufficiently focussed, one might still question if people would be able to keep up the necessary attention over longer periods of time. Fully autonomous vehicles will only be market-ready (we assumed) once they drive more safely than the average human driver does. Of course, a driver may be aware of and responsible for his level of alertness. Drivers might be required to pull over if they are not alert, driver alertness monitoring technology might help with that. To us, the viability of such an approach seems questionable; but in the end, we will have to wait for empirical data. As long as a duty to monitor the road and intervene in dangerous situations proves to decrease accidents compared to purely autonomous driving, such
Who’s to blame when the vehicle gets in a severe car accident? Advances in technology, like self-driving cars, will be bad because it causes people to be lazy, it takes away the responsibility of the driver, it takes away the responsibility of the driver, and it can malfunction causing accidents.
Driving a car safely requires complete attention of the driver in order to minimize risk of accidents. With the fast pace and busy lives of people today, sometimes risky choices are made, like texting or making calls while driving, even though it is unsafe and against the law. Calling a taxi to drive you to your destination is a safer alternative, but could be expensive over time. Imagine being able to safely and affordably drive to your desired destination while eating breakfast, reviewing business documents, and/or making phone calls en route. This vision is possible with self-driving cars, but what consideration must be taken into account to make this a reality?
One of the main factors of injuries in the United States is motor vehicle crashes, and inattentive driving contributes greatly to the occurrence of these accidents (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2016).
It might be hard to see where the self-driving car could have issues with safety but an interesting question arises when an accident is unavoidable. The question posed is “How should the car be programmed to act in the event of an unavoidable accident? Should it minimize the loss of life, even if it means sacrificing the occupants, or should it protect the occupants at all costs? Should it choose between these extremes at random?” (ArXiv). This is a very interesting question surrounding ethics. I’m not sure if there is a right answer to the question, which could stall the self-driving car industry. Before self-driving cars are mass produced a solution needs to be found to the question about unavoidable accidents. Although this question is a problem, there may not be a need to address the problem. It is said that “"driver error is believed to be the main reason behind over 90 percent of all crashes" with drunk driving, distracted drivers, failure to remain in one lane and falling to yield the right of way the main causes.” (Keating). Self-driving cars could eliminate those problems entirely and maybe with all cars on the road being self-driving cars, there would be no “unavoidable accidents”. Safety is the main issue the self-driving car is trying to solve in transportation and seems to do a good job at
Inventors hope to help people with autonomous cars because “autonomous cars can do things that human drivers can’t” (qtd. in “Making Robot Cars More Human). One of the advantages that driverless cars have is that “They can see through fog or other inclement weather, and sense a stalled car or other hazard ahead and take appropriate action” (qtd. in “Making Robot Cars More Human). Harsh weather conditions make it difficult and dangerous for people to drive, however, the car’s ability to drive through inclement weather “frees the user’s time, creates opportunities for individuals with less mobility, and increases overall road safety” (Bose 1326). With all the technology and software in the car, it can “improve road traffic system[s] and reduces road accidents” (Kumar). One of the purposes for creating the driverless car was to help “make lives easier for senior citizens, people with disabilities, people who are ill, or people who are under influence of alcohol” (Kumar). It can be frightening to know that that we share share our roads with drivers that could potentially endanger our lives as well as other people’s lives. How can people not feel a sense of worry when “cars kill roughly 32,000 people a year in the U.S.” (Fisher 60)? Drivers who text while driving or drink and drive greatly impact the safety of other people, and Google hopes to reduces the risk of accidents and save lives with the
Human drivers have instincts that cannot be duplicated by technology, but by that same token human error is not a part of a self-driving car. In addition, we also need to take into consideration the transition period, when there are self-driving cars as well as human drivers on the road. Humans can notice the other drivers physically signal to go-ahead, when at a four way stop sign or; offer an opening for the merging lane. This is an example of what human interaction is capable of, that self-driving cars will need to calculate in order to
Automotive executives touting self-driving cars as a way to make commuting more productive or relaxing may want to consider another potential marketing pitch: safety (Hirschauge, 2016). The biggest reason why these cars will make a safer world is that accident rates will enormously drop. There is a lot of bad behavior a driver exhibit behind the wheel, and a computer is actually an ideal motorist. Since 81 percent of car crashes are the result of human error, computers would take a lot of danger out of the equation entirely. Also, some of the major causes of accidents are drivers who become ill at the time of driving. Some of the examples of this would be a seizure, heart attack, diabetic reactions, fainting, and high or low blood pressure. Autonomous cars will surely remedy these types of occurrences making us
There were several ways for me to look into this problem. One way was to design a car that would be self-aware and be able to prevent accidents. However, there were already “smart cars” at the time that
1. Trying to get the self-driving car to react to emergency situations in a safe way will not be an easy thing. However, a method that may help is to implement a manual override for the vehicle. This way the driver can take over, use their driver’s intuition, and figure out the best way to escape a sticky situation in the safest way possible. 2.
Autopilot, the self-driving feature in the new Tesla car, is a controversial subject because it puts the car’s computer in control of all driving responsibilities. To activate this autonomous mode, all the driver has to do is push a button and the computer has full control of the vehicle. The sole responsibility of the driver is to pay close attention to the way the car brakes, steers, and accelerates, while in autopilot mode. Amazingly, there has only been one known fatality involving a Tesla vehicle while driving in autopilot. In an article written by Jordan Golson and published by The Verge, this first fatality in a Tesla vehicle driving in autopilot is covered with great detail.
Many cars can sense if it is creeping over the centerline of a road or if the driver is backing up too far and may hit something. These systems are beneficial and provide extra safety precautions. They don’t, however, allow the driver to sit back and relax while the car drives itself. With these automotive systems and others, such as automatic braking, drivers are still forced to pay attention. These features, however, are not perfect.
Human error is the leading cause in motor vehicle crashes, human error can be from anything from merging without a signal to drinking and driving all of which have caused motor vehicle crashes with some to the extreme of death. Autonomous vehicles take away human error by taking away human
These self-driving cars aren’t the future; they’re here now, and they work. One example of these self-driving cars is Google’s driverless car designs; they’ve driven up and down the California coast for hundreds of thousands of miles, with the only accidents being caused by humans. Google’s self-driving cars don’t need to be perfect, either; they just need to be better than humans. In the United States alone, humans kill over forty-thousand people every year.
There are many types of driver behavior that will cause road accidents and most of the drivers would not realize that those actions are dangerous while driving (personal observation)
The main distraction of driving is cell phones. Most adults and teens will engage in texting and driving. Due to the major issue of texting and driving many campaigns have been launched, one being launched by AT&T “when it comes to texting and driving, it can wait.” This campaign has many drivers take the pledge to no longer use their phone when driving, there is an available app that will send out automatic messages to anybody that sends a while the individual is driving. When someone is driving at the rate of 55 miles per hour for only 4.6 seconds, it will equal the length of a football field, 100 yards. So, even stopping full vision from the road for a few seconds will still risk serious danger. Another cause of distracted driving is being exhausted or tired, doing so will cause a much slower reaction time. The slower reaction time causes many of the accidents that happen when people are tired. Another possibility is falling asleep behind the wheel even for a few seconds you could drift, or swerv into another lane and hit another car causing a major or fatal car accident. When taking driving classes, the students within the class will hear the saying “stay alert, stay alive.” The final major distraction of driving is eating and drinking. One of the problems of eating and drinking while driving is that it causes both a visual and manual distraction. When removing your eyes from the road many dangers will be