What Are The Ethical And Social Implications Of Autonomous Cars?

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INTRODUCTION As new technologies arise, we observe new inventions that could facilitate the way we travel on today’s roads. One of those inventions that can facilitate and make safer the way we travel are autonomous cars, also known as, self-driving cars. With the advancement of technology, the way we travel can change in a near future. Autonomous cars are becoming more and more sophisticated every day. There are many companies that are testing self-driving cars daily, such as Waymo, Tesla, Google. The company that is key in trying to change the way we travel on today’s roads is Waymo, which is a self-driving technology company who is focused on providing a safer environment while cars are on the road. The development of autonomous cars …show more content…

One of the problems is, how do you tell an autonomous car what the best option in a critical situation is when it involves life or death. “Important ethical issue for autonomous vehicles; the algorithms being created for autonomous vehicles in situations of forced choice, such as whether to hit a parked car or a pedestrian on an ice-covered road” (Fleetwood, 2017, p. 533). This issue should concern many autonomous cars’ manufacturers who are developing autonomous cars. Autonomous cars companies need to find the best solutions to always minimize deaths and to always maintain that goal. Also, if an autonomous car algorithm fails and ends up crashing into another autonomous car, will the passenger will be blamed at all; since no one will drive this car, they will drive themselves, there will be no human errors, thus autonomous car’s insurance companies will have to come up with a solution to determine which car’s algorithm failed and which car is to blame for that specific crash; which insurance company will pay for the crash. The social and ethical problems will become a concern when autonomous cars are fully used, due to no one doing the driving, but the cars …show more content…

What's more, the system never gets drowsy or falls asleep, does not drive drunk, does not eat Big Macs or drink hot coffee, does not get distracted, does not talk on the phone or text, and does not get road rage. (p. 126). Autonomous cars are the future when it comes to driving safer and being more beneficial for many drivers when they want to do other activities while in the car, such as studying, playing a game on their phones and the like. Autonomous cars will be fully developed in the next decade or so, they are here to stay and will save thousands of lives yearly when they do become fully mainstream. With the help of many companies, such as Waymo, Google and Tesla, autonomous cars will be seeing as “regular” cars in a near future and will become our new way of

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