Writing Challenge 2

The first thing that is most likely on your mind is safety. How safe are these machines? In the end, you are putting all your trust in an American company whose sole and utmost goal is to make a profit. So naturally you would be skeptical as to whether or not this car will take you from point A to B in one piece, or if it will suddenly veer off course and make you tomorrow’s national headline. According to a study published by GENERAL MOTORS, the leading vehicle manufacturer in the United States, if not the world, 94% of car crashes are caused by human error. This includes any reason like speeding, distracted driving, and just about any other stupid decision bad drivers make that you can think of which results in injuries or fatalities. If we take a look at the latest of annual statistics that are published by the vehicle company TESLA, we notice that for a total distance of around 3,000,000 miles driven by vehicles in Autopilot Mode, there has only been a single accident registered as opposed to the one crash per 479,000 miles reported by the National Highway Safety Traffic Administration for regular human operated cars.

The numbers look promising so far. We should also keep in mind that although Tesla is the biggest self driving vehicle manufacturer, it is not the only company to do so. There are some other companies that are attempting to do the same. One of the other big players is UBER who have unfortunately made national headlines in the U.S when one of their self driving vehicles struck and killed a pedestrian crossing a road. How and why did this happen? Officially, the federal safety investigators deemed that it was because the car did not know about the concept of jaywalking. Couldn’t the vehicle have done something else? Swerved into a ditch? Steer off course into oncoming traffic and potentially harm its conductor? This is where self driving vehicles get tricky. The thing about human drivers is that they have morals. Like the classic trolley dilemma. The human knows what choice to make and that depends on itself. But what about a computer? Will an autonomous vehicle kill a pedestrian or will it sacrifice its driver? This is where the morality of the self driving car comes into question. 

Words in caps are sources