The disadvantages of driverless cars
By Johann Groß, Melinda Jakus, Denise Pizzimenti and Anko Baron
Autonomous cars, defined as cars with the capability to act independently, are gradually appearing on the streets. The world is eagerly anticipating the full implementation of technology as advanced as this, but have managed to disregard the overwhelming disadvantages that come with any new technological advance. The problems with technological errors and its liability, the resulting ethics questions and the ever-existing human element, should prevent us from using this automated machinery. The point of this report is to present the disadvantages of driverless cars with the focus of technology, ethics and the human element.
The chances that a vehicle might malfunction are much higher when the system used becomes more complex as the number of functions that could go wrong increases. Since the system autonomous cars run on is particularly complicated, there is a significant chance that the vehicles might develop deficiencies over time. Consequently, in case these lead to accidents, responsibility concerns might be raised, which could result
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According to advocates of autonomous cars, the overall statistics for car crashes, mainly fatal ones, will decrease with the implementation of driverless cars. While this is an obvious advantage, the feasibility of only having self-driving cars on the roads is not possible. In 2015, 947 million passenger cars filled the world’s streets2 (Statista, 2017) and all of them would need to be removed at once. Otherwise, there will always be the human element, the imperfections of humankind, coexisting with the driverless counterpart resulting in the same outcome of accidents and crashes. The joy of driving, even if mistakes are made, as well as the sheer number of cars makes replacing every single car at once unfathomable and