Author: Sarah Koa
Publisher: KrASIA
Publication Year: 2022
Summary: The following article discusses how the benefits of self-driving cars range from increased mobility to efficiency and convenience. These cars can also reduce crashes, lower carbon emissions, and increase road safety. No car today is completely automatic and with some of the issues automatic cars present currently, completely automatic cars probably will not be available/ready until at least 2030. Self-driving cars are vulnerable to cyber attacks as they are software driven products. There is also a lack of regulations to govern the self driving industry which leads to questions like “when cars can operate themselves, are accidents the responsibility of the manufacturer or the driver?” There are also ethical risks and challenges when it comes to creating automated cars. The first issues is testing these self-driving cars. Currently, they are being tested on public roads which can put drivers at risk. There is also the issue of the ability of the machine to make moral decisions. Crashes still happen with self driving cars even though they are supposed to reduce the number of road incidents. When crashes happen, moral decisions have to be made. “Based on the ‘Moral Machine’ online survey of 2.3 million people worldwide in 2018, respondents were presented with 13 scenarios in which a collision involving an autonomous vehicle killing a combination of passengers and pedestrians was unavoidable. The participants were asked who they would spare. A significant finding from the survey was that moral principles that guided drivers decisions varied from country to country. Another was how women and men viewed ethical and moral situations differently. Hence, without a consensus on a universal moral code, this would make it almost impossible to develop a car that universally satisfies the ethical frameworks adopted by populations around the world.” In order to continue moving forward with automatic vehicles, there needs to be some sort of regulation and agreement about these ethical considerations that the article provides.
