Tech

This Little-Known Controversy About Driverless Vehicles will be the Next Big Concern for Passengers

2016-10-20 , 10:23 am

Last Updated on 2022-10-21 , 1:14 pm

Driverless vehicles are fast becoming a reality. Trials are moved onto public roads and agreements are struck to carry them out in various parts of Singapore.

Right now, we are concerned about how safe it will be for these vehicles to be traveling on the roads.

Will technology be enough to predict and prevent accidents? Will the sensors and GPS work as it’s supposed to regardless of the weather?

Remove the Human from the Equation and You’ll Reduce Accidents by More Than Half

In a 1985 study, it was found that 57% of road accidents occur because of the driver, be it drunk driving, using their smartphone, or just plain fatigue.

Theoretically speaking, if you were to remove the drivers from the equation, the number of accidents on the road will reduce drastically.

But what happens when the technology is perfected and easily available in the market?

But therein lies the problem: removing Humans from the equation

Leave decision-making to a computer and it will decide based on statistics and numbers, not emotions or morals.

What if, one day, the car faces an unavoidable situation? In Singapore, we have plenty of careless (or couldn’t-care-less) pedestrians, cyclists, or e-scooterists who will dash across the road in front of oncoming vehicles.

What if the car could not stop in time and it had to make a decision, to either swerve to the side and crash into a tree or just go straight?

Which would you rather choose? The safety of yourself and your family or some careless stranger who decided that traffic rules are not worth following?

I bet most will say to save the stranger. Because that’s the politically correct answer and it made sense.

Now imagine, you have your wife in the car with you, she’s pregnant and far into the pregnancy long enough that any minor accident might result in complications to your child.

Now, what?

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An interesting Study in the US

The US is far ahead when it comes to autonomous vehicles. They’ve been field-testing the vehicles and are almost ready for the public to purchase them.

They’ve hit upon this dilemma as well: how to program the vehicle? So they decided to go out onto the streets and survey the people.

This was what they found: 76% of respondents said that the cars should be self-sacrificing but when asked if they will buy such a car, they responded negatively.

Which I understand completely. Why buy a car which will not put your safety first before others?

Not so much free time after all

One viable way of dealing with this dilemma is to introduce the human factor back into the equation. It was suggested that humans should be able to regain control of the car in an instant and make moral decisions themselves.

But that kind of scenario defeats the purpose, doesn’t it? The reason why you got a driverless car is to have more time to do your own things, not pay attention to the road. If you’ve got to pay attention to the road, you might as well drive yourself.

And that’s not counting the fact that if people are allowed to regain control of their car at any time, what’s to stop them from deactivating the autopilot and speeding themselves on the roads when they think it’s safe?

After all, that’s how accidents happened. When they thought nothing could happen to them.

What do you think?

Featured Image: Kichigin/ Shutterstock.com

This Little-Known Controversy About Driverless Vehicles will be the Next Big Concern for Passengers

Remove the Human from the Equation and You’ll Reduce Accidents by More Than Half

But therein lies the problem: removing Humans from the equation

An interesting Study in the US

Not so much free time after all

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