Reading 12 Response

The motivation for building self driving cars is to ease the task of transportation as well as to attempting to create an overall safer environment on the road. The thought is that with the number of sensors and cameras on these cars they will have a better visibility and feel of the road than any human possibly could and this would then allow it to make the best decisions and react quickly to dangerous sitations. The problem with this though is that these cars can be almost too safe. By that i mean self-driving cars would be coming to a stop at yellow lights instead of speeding up to get through or coming to a full stop at a yield when there is no need; which is a problem because self-driving cars don’t drive like humans so some things they do like coming to a stop at a yellow may cause a crash because the human behind and all humans around would be trying to get through the light on a yellow. The other problem with self driving cars is the social dilemma of autonomous vehicles which arises when a person is told to consider if they would want a car to avoid pedestrians when its at the cost of their life and most people say no but if they were not in the car they would want the car to miss the pedestrians. In general the problem is testing how truely utilitarian and altruistic we really are. In situations like these I think the car should act in favor of the pedestrians because I think as humans our reaction would always be to swerve and not hit pedestrians. These surveyers were given time to think about the end result of the situation but in the moment there is no time for thought and I believe the majority of the population of the world would swerve (or so i hope). The blame will always be on he driver. You accepted the dangers of owning a self driving car be ready to pay the consequences if one of the things people may warn you about go wrong. I would want a self driving car but I would not use it in the city. I think driving in the city is the most dangerous and the times when you will be more likely to come into the life-or-death social dilemma situation so I would feel more confident driving myself, but on the highway being able to set a destination that is 10hrs away and them sleep through the night while my car drives me would be sick.