The UK tech firm Oxbotica announced that by the summer of 2020, a fleet of autonomous driving taxi’s will be driving through London (The Guardian, 2019). This means that people can be picked up by a car and dropped at the destination point, without a physical driver being involved. The development of these autonomous cars, as you can imagine, has cost a lot of research, time and money. The security of these cars are of utmost importance. There are a few issues that arise with the security of the cars.
- Even though autonomous cars have a far lower accident rate than person-driver cars, it is still possible that they cause fatal accidents. The question that then arises is, who is responsible? The owner of the car, because they could have intervened as most autonomous cars will still have steering wheels? Or the manufacturers / developer of the vehicle? According to Scientific American (2016), it will be the manufacturers of the vehicle. With the trend of autonomous vehicle, there will be a shift in accident liability, from the driver to the manufacturer. While the liability lays at the manufacturers, they will only deploy cars of which they are 100% sure that there will be no errors, making the self-driving cars even more safe on the road.
- Ethical issues. The software of autonomous cars that are implemented with artificial intelligence are very complex. They are also very crucial and life changing. When a car is in a situation where it must kill 1 of 2 pedestrians by accident, it must assess and determine which pedestrian to kill. If there for instance is a high-official, in opposition of a young 10-year old girl, what should be programmed in the car? This remains a very difficult issue. A survey has been conducted over the whole world about moral code. It turns out that in different area’s of the world, different ‘types of people’ are preferred to save above other ‘different’ types of people. That suggests that it might be safer for young 10-year old girls to walk on the street in some countries, than in other countries. (Nature, 2018)
As you can imagine, a lot of issues can arise due to the deployment of autonomous cars. What kind of issues do you think will be the toughest to solve?
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07135-0
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/who-s-responsible-when-a-self-driving-car-crashes/
Hi Allard, especially the second point is very interesting and I would not want to be in the position of the person deciding. However, I am sceptical regarding your (or the Guardian’s) statement of seeing these cars in London in 2020 as it seems as quite a big project especially with London traffic.Additionally, 2020 is right around the corner and the readiness of the technology aside I feel like a slow introduction of this disrupting technology is needed for the people’s minds to accept. If you make it a big rollout, I would expect many people protesting against it. Nevertheless, I think starting with a taxi company is a good idea as I cannot imagine individuals starting to adopt them when they haven’t been thoroughly tested on the field.