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The idea of having self-driving cars has always fascinated me. I remember growing up and seeing them in science fiction shows and movies and have always wondered if having them was actually possible. Now that some companies are testing them in real world scenarios, I think it is important to take a step back and address the ethics behind using this type of technology in our everyday lives. In some cases, it seems like humanity as a whole thinks, “if we can do it, let’s do it,” and doesn’t stop and think about potential consequences of adopting new technologies. I think that using fully autonomous cars is a good example of this phenomenon.  

Companies have good reasons for implementing this technology into their cars. For example, the Tesla article All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware states, “Self-driving vehicles will play a crucial role in improving transportation safety and accelerating the world’s transition to a sustainable future. Full autonomy will enable a Tesla to be substantially safer than a human driver, lower the financial cost of transportation for those who own a car and provide low-cost on-demand mobility for those who do not.” I am skeptical of the idea that a fully autonomous vehicle would be “substantially safer than a human driver.” I believe that there are situations that arise when driving that only a human would be able to prepare for and react accordingly too.

An article in The Seattle Times states, “Sensors embedded in autonomous cars allow them to “see” the world with far more precision than humans, but the cars struggle to translate visual cues on the road into predictions about what might happen next, Iagnemma said. They also struggle to handle new scenarios they haven’t encountered before.” The thought that the car would not be able to adapt to new scenarios is very troubling to me. For example, what if there are kids playing near the side of the road, does the car have the ability to tell that those are humans that could potentially run into the street? Or does it think that the objects are trees or mailboxes and that there is not potential danger. There is an unknown number of possible scenarios that a driver, human or autonomous, could face on any given drive, and I believe human nature and instincts is vital in reacting appropriately in all of those cases.  

The economic impact must also be taken into consideration when discussing the implementation of self-driving cars. If these vehicles become popular around the United States, truck drivers, delivery people, and taxi drivers could all be out of jobs. This could have a huge impact on our economy.

Personally, I do not believe that I would ever want to own or even ride in a fully autonomous vehicle. I do not think that I would trust a machine with my life, knowing the complexity of driving a car. There is something about having a human, myself or someone else, in control of the vehicle that I find comforting in transportation.