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Autonomous vehicles are safer than human-driven cars
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Autonomous vehicles are safer than human-driven cars
Vehicles provide easy means of transport. With the advancement in technology, a lot has happened in the motor manufacturing industry with people casting eyes on the nature and models of cars being created for that matter. For instance, some have opted to purchase those vehicles whose fuel consumption proves pocket-friendly whereas others are more concerned with car speed among other considerations. However, safety overrides everything as far as transport is concerned. As such, there has been a contested debate over whether self-driving vehicles offer more safety than those driven by humans. This paper, therefore, argues that self-driving automobiles offer more safety than human-driven (HD) lots because they do not make errors like humans and that they do not get tired.
Research has it that human mistakes are the center of the majority of car accidents caused around the globe. The reason behind such a postulation is that individuals are vulnerable to making such errors as texting while driving as well as getting drunk, distractions which do not hold in self-driving cars. A recent study by Hevelke and Nida-Rümelin (2015) reveals that autonomous vehicles adhere to certain set guidelines which enable them to evade mistakes peculiar to humans. Ideally, such guidelines are predictable, hence outshining people who might deliberately decide to violate certain rules for their selfish gains. Therefore, self-driven cars offer more safety than individual driven ones.
Whereas humans get tired to an extent of causing road accidents, autonomous vehicles are devoid of such a misfortune. Cunningham and Regan (2015) state that, “humans are prone to tiredness and boredom.” Ideally, while driving, the fatigue resulting from such circumstances as covering longer distances and even the status of human health might play a great role in facilitating car accidents. On the other hand, autonomous cars function through programmed and computerized processes through which coverage of distances to infinite lengths can be possible. In other words, their operations do not in any way rely on attitudes. Self-driving automobiles are therefore better than HD ones in terms of safety concerns.
On the other hand, naysayers declare autonomous cars to be safer than HD ones is unrealistic. To begin, the endorsers of human-operated vehicles suggest that humans, particularly while in an emergency make better decisions which are absent in autonomous vehicles. For example, while overtaking, a human driver might see it necessary to hit a tree or a building instead of running over pedestrians crossing the road. Sadly, self-driving cars have limited sensitivity to demanding circumstances. That is, they may end up killing a lot of people to the advantage of the car itself, an instance that makes their utilization questionable. To that end, human-operated vehicles are safer than autonomous types.
However much the opponents of autonomous cars seem to be logical in proving their case, I strongly feel they have no point at all. The fact that humans can absorb certain risks at the cost of other people is impractical (Färber, 2016). Essentially, it would deem irrelevant for a driver to hit a tree and risk his life and the lives of other people on board for the sake of pedestrians. An accident is an accident regardless of its magnitude. Debating from such a stance, therefore, confirms earlier arguments that autonomous machines and enhanced road safety are synonymous, unlike the human-powered ones.
In summary, the safety provided by autonomous cars supersedes that of machines under human control. For instance, the position that such cars do not make errors as those committed by individuals says it all. People have the tendency of making wrong decisions such as chatting while driving hence endangering the wellbeing of their respective cars and their lives in entirety. Again, tiredness does not define self-driving cars as opposed to humans who might encounter accidents as a result of such sort of a wearing out process. Motor vehicle manufacturing industry should invest intensively on Autonomous automobiles if bettering human safety is anything to go by.
References
Cunningham, M., & Regan, M. A. (2015, October). Autonomous vehicles: human factors issues and future research. In Proceedings of the 2015 Australasian Road safety conference (pp. 14-16).
Färber, B. (2016). Communication and communication problems between autonomous vehicles and human drivers. In Autonomous driving (pp. 125-144). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
Hevelke, A., & Nida-Rümelin, J. (2015). Responsibility for crashes of autonomous vehicles: an ethical analysis. Science and engineering ethics, 21(3), 619-630.
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