Driverless Car Ethics: On-ramps and Speed Bumps

Now, you may be thinking that all this driverless car tech is just around the corner and we're getting ready to step into a driverless utopia. Some agree with you. General Motors and Carnegie Mellon University researchers are working together to develop driverless cars and hope to bring one to the market by 2018. Advocates of driverless car technology point to improved safety (because driver error won't be a factor), decreased traffic and decreased pollution because of the reduced traffic.

Others aren't convinced. Let's be honest -- people like to drive their cars! Driving can be relaxing and freeing, and there are still a lot of bugs to work out of driverless car technology before people will be ready to trust it with their lives. There's also the flip side of driver error: human judgment. Driverless technology will always make the call that protects the car and the people in it. A driver might make a call that does more damage to their car, but saves others. For example, say you're on the road when a car in front of you skids out. There's no time to stop. On the left is a large truck. On the right is a group of children waiting to cross the street. Most drivers would choose to swerve into the truck to avoid hitting the pedestrians. Driverless car technology wouldn't necessarily recognize the children -- it would simply see the path of least resistance and steer the car towards it. It's an extreme example, but issues like this need to be resolved before we can hop in our car, tell it where to take us, and enjoy the ride.

To learn more about driverless cars and driverless systems, look over the links on the next page.