Autonomous Vehicles By Helena Loan, U6 AHS Autonomous vehicles are modes of transport that run completely independently of human input, able to move around by sensing the environment and reacting appropriately. There are different stages of automation ranging from complete human control to an autonomous system having full control. There are many cars currently on the market, such as the Skoda X to the Mercedes C Class Saloon, that have autonomous features, ranging from lane guidance and automatic breaking to self-parking. However, none of these vehicles are truly autonomous, only partially automated. Now companies are developing algorithms to make the car fully autonomous, however they also need to work out how the vehicle will deal with the ethical choices it has to make. The ‘trolley problem’ is a thought experiment which represents this issue. It is the idea that were a trolley to roll down a track and be unstoppable, would it be more ethical to let fate take its course and allow five people to die or to intervene and sacrifice the life of one person. With human drivers this problem doesn’t occur but with autonomous vehicles they need to be programmed to drive and so the decision is actually planned out. This means that the companies manufacturing the cars are actually being given the responsibility of judging who should live or die. Autonomous cars are a clever idea because they take away the responsibility of driving from a human, which relieves us from “human error” accidents that occur, for example when the driver is tired or distracted. A report by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in 2008 showed that 85% of all crashes were due to human error, while the faster processing speed of a computer over a person could reduce reaction time and therefore reduce stopping distance, which could help to prevent serious injuries. Numerous sensors are needed to make sure that the car can properly assess the environment and avoid any collisions, and this explains why ‘many autonomous car developers use multiple sensors in their test cars—optical sensors, radars, LiDAR, and ultrasonic sensors’ (Tweedt, 2017). Many cars already have GPS (used in the Satnav to help drivers to get to their destination), ultrasonic sensors (which are used in self-
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