User:KevinMortensen

Introduction

Self-driving vehicles are vehicles that are able fully function on its own. The only thing needed by a human would be to input their destination. There are numerous companies such as Google, Tesla, Audi, and BMW that are currently testing their own version of an autonomous vehicle to be commercially sold. There are numerous potential benefits to a future of all self-driving vehicles but there also certain concerns regarding self-driving vehicles such as cost, security concerns, and ethical dilemmas.

Potential Benefits

The main benefit that is desired from autonomous vehicles is the decrease of vehicle accidents. Majority of vehicle accidents are a result of human error, with autonomous vehicle the hope is that these vehicle accidents will significantly decrease or be completely eliminated. Self-driving cars would be able to react much faster than a human and do to the amount of hardware on a self-driving car it would be able to see all of its surroundings. A LIDAR sensor alone is able to build a 360 degree physical projection around the car, and the car will also have numerous sensors and cameras. Another benefit that could be gained is a decrease in traffic or even a decrease in vehicles on public roads. This would not only decrease traffic but it would also help prevent vehicle accidents as there are less cars to hit.

Cost

A major issue people have is the cost of a vehicle. A good concept to be seen would be the idea of carpooling within a company. If a company buys a fleet of these automated vehicles for its employees this would then result in people not having to own a vehicle and just pay some small amount to their own company and carpool with their co-workers. Another big question is who will be at fault if someone were to get into an accident and be injured from an automated vehicle. A good idea would be creating a national fund, such as Medicare, where the manufacturers of these companies pay a tax to this fund and whenever someone is injured they are already insured.

Security Concerns

There are a lot of security concerns for these vehicles, the biggest issue is these cars getting hacked. If a hacker were able to gain control of one of these vehicles then they would be able to wreak havoc on public roads, and possibly spread the process which could lead to others hacking more and more vehicles. Another subtle security issue is privacy, if someone can track these vehicles then they would be able to know someones daily routine and know where they would be at certain points of the day. There are many risks involved in these vehicles as they are essentially computers.

Ethical Dilemmas

A common ethical dilemma seen is the scenario where a self-driving car is forced to choose between hitting a child or a trashcan. Since these cars are just robots the question being raised is how these cars will be able to decided the outcome of situations such as these. The biggest thing these companies have to do is program all the possible scenarios or create an algorithm that can identify and favor human life no matter what.

References

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