THE IMPACTS OF SELF-DRIVING

CARS ON SOCIETY: A REVIEW

Course Details:

Course Title: Fundamentals of Computer System

Course ID: CIS 101

Section: 06

Submitted by:

Raihan Rahman

ID: 1830006

Submitted to:

Radiah Rose Haque

Lecturer

Independent University, Bangladesh

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Table of Contents
Abstract ........................................................................................................................................................ 1
Section 1:
Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 2
1. Decision Making Process in Self-Driving Cars ......................................................................................... 2
2. ETHICAL ASPECTS OF THE TECHNICAL CHALLENGES IN SELF-DRIVING CARS .....................................3
2.1 Societal Barriers .................................................................................................................................. 3
2.2 Safety .................................................................................................................................................. 3
Section 2:
2.3 Summary of the analysis ........................................................................................................................ 0
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................... 1
References .................................................................................................................................................... 2

Abstract
What will be the impacts self-driving cars on our society?

When we think of a car is travelling on the road, one thing we all used to know is a driver at the steering
wheel. The driver is in control and very crucial. If we remove the driver from a running car, we would face
a disastrous situation. Or would we? For a long time, self-driving technology has been developed and
experimented by universities, institutions, and companies. However, the idea of a car without a driver
raises the feelings of skepticism and doubt especially on the ethical issues. Yet, as self-driving technology
continues to evolve, one day we may no longer drive cars.

This analytical document reviews the background, history, working process and ethical aspects of self-
driving cars in the first section. In the second section, a summary of social challenges and
recommendations grouped by requirement from the analysis is given.
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Introduction
In 1977, a Japanese mechanical engineering laboratory carried out a project research of making a self-
driving car. The car followed white street markers and was capable of reaching speeds of up to 20 mph
on a dedicated test course (Forrest and Konca, 2007). In the 1980’s, the revolution in the development
of self-driving cars came in with the dedication of Ernst Dickmanns and his team at Bundeswehr
Universität München. Their prototype was capable of acquiring 60 mph at the roads without traffic.

Since then, Mercedes Benz, General Motors, Nissan, Toyota, Audi, Volvo, Vislab, Google and many big
companies and research organizations have made working prototype of self-driving cars.

With the ever increasing population and cities, more traffic is generated which has many detrimental
consequences. A less efficient transportation system costs people their safety, time and money. Thus,
the necessity for a more efficient, balanced and secure transportation system is immense.

According to Holstein, Dodig-Crnkovic and Pelliccione (2018), prototypes of self-driving cars are already
running in roads and are planned to be sold in 2020. News and Media already made self-driving cars a
popular topic of the decade and the topic is recently amplified through latest accidents with self-driving
cars.

Recently, plenty of debate and ethical thought about self-driving cars have focused on tragic dilemmas,
like hypotheticals in which a car has to decide whether to run over a group of schoolchildren or fall off a
cliff, killing its own driver. Thus, it is important to discuss the social issues and ethical challenges a self-
driving car will face every day.

1. Decision Making Process in Self-Driving Cars

Self-driving cars will basically execute every tasks which a human does every day and will substitute a
human. Figure 1 shows both alternatives and allows a comparison.
 Figure 1: Comparison of human and computers sense, think and act process which we extended by adding a feedback loop (Holstein, Dodig-
Crnkovic and Pelliccione 2018)

In the feedback loop, there is a vital difference. Usually, Humans continuously learn from their errors or misconduct. However, automation
software might be limited to slow improvements. Methods like machine learning, which learns and reacts immediately, can overcome this
limitation (Holstein, Dodig-Crnkovic and Pelliccione, 2018).

According to Holstein, Dodig-Crnkovic and Pelliccione (2018) the self-driving car’s software might not notice or misinterpret unusual road signs
which are new, while they could be understood by a person through context/interpretation. Besides, an attack or threat near or even against the
car might not be properly interpreted by a self-driving car compared to a human. Nevertheless, this complex process might be difficult to
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imagine and in order to give an idea of what self-driving cars “see” we refer to the imagining showed in Figure 2. It shows a rendered point
cloud, based on the data gathered by a laser radar (LIDAR) mounted on the top of the car.

Figure 2: Point cloud image of a vehicle approaching an intersection illustrates the complexity (Holstein, Dodig-Crnkovic and Pelliccione 2018)
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2. ETHICAL ASPECTS OF THE TECHNICAL CHALLENGES IN SELF-DRIVING CARS

2.1 Societal Barriers
Societal barriers arise mostly from the reformation of the labor market. Self-driving cars will lead to a decrease of the number of jobs in transport
and logistics (Hörl, Ciari and Axhausen, 2016).

According to Hörl, Ciari and Axhausen (2016), the important fact is that mainly jobs with low wages and limited expertise are eradicated, while
few are created, which need advanced technological knowledge. Nowadays, it might be a risky step to politically support the development of Self-
driving-car centered infrastructure in the traffic system. It is estimated that in order to transform individual benefits of single users into population-
wide societal benefits, regulatory actions must be taken. Nonetheless, it is also debated that “aggressive regulatory action is premature and can
perhaps do more harm than good”.

2.2 Safety
Safety matters have the most severe effect on everyday life out of all the transportation difficulties. In the EU, there are over 40,000 fatalities
with about 1.3 million injuries every 12 months (Forrest and Konca, 2007). The range of fatalities in traffic accidents inside the EU among the
years of 1970 to 2001 can be visible in figure 3. Those 1.3 million accidents value around 2 hundred billion yearly that's equivalent to 2% of the
EU Gross domestic Product (Forrest and Konca, 2007).

Figure 3: Fatalities in traffic accidents in the EU (Forrest and Konca 2007)

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Traveling by way of car is presently the most lethal way of transportation, with more than a million deaths annually worldwide. Thus, most of the
research projects in the transportation sector focus on developing safety systems.

Application of self-driving cars can greatly decrease the number of crashes, since almost 90 % of the traffic accidents are caused by human error.
In helping drivers avoid accidents, intelligent safety systems that are being used have proven their success. According to Forrest and Konca
(2007) EUROSTAT data found that the total road fatalities in the EU has been decreased from 56,027-39,849 people yearly between the years of
1991-2001. This data shows a reduction of about 30%, which reveals the better safety performance of new cars if compared to its older
generations. The table in Figure 2 displays the statistical data on the number of persons killed in traffic accidents per million persons. The
declining trend of deceases can noticeably be perceived in the statistics in Figure 4.

Figure 4: Number of persons killed in road accidents per million inhabitants (Forrest and Konca 2007)
2.3 Summary of the analysis
Summary of social challenges and recommendations grouped by requirement is given below-

Requirements Challenges Recommendations

Social issues of troublesome • Managing job losses  Make strategic
technology (e.g., drivers, traditional solutions for people
mechanics, etc.) losing jobs
 Change of markets and
business models (e.g.,  Learn from historic
car insurances, car parallels to
manufacturers, etc.) industrialization and
automatization
General public interests • Ethical concerns in the • Identify and
decision making of self- communicate the
driving cars, e.g. amount of control a
possibility of human has in context of
interference with the the self-driving car
decision making
• Freedom of choice • The freedom of choice
stalled by the system determined by
(e.g. it may not allow to regulations
drive into a certain
area)
• Values and priorities: • Active involvement of
Ensure that general stakeholders in the
public values will be process of design and
embodied in the requirements
technology, with specification
interests of minorities
taken into account
Security • Determination and • Provide technical
declaration of minimal solutions that will
necessary security guarantee minimum
requirements, that security under all
work as a threshold for foreseeable
deployment of self- circumstances
driving cars • Forestall and prevent
worst case scenarios
• Security in systems and regarding security
connections breaches
• Nonstop learning
• Distribution of software process must be in
updates place to provide active
security
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• Storing and using • Reassure accessibility of

received and generated the data even in the
data in a secure way case of accidents so
that it could be
analyzed and lessons
learned.
Reliability • Reliability of required • Define different levels
networks and solution for reliability
for the case when the (diagnostics, vehicle
network is unavailable input sensors, external
• Reliability of sensors, services)
and need for • Determine reliability for
redundancy components and the
overall car

Conclusion
Computer programs will not do the stupid mistakes of sending text messages while driving, breaking speed
limit etc.My opinion is that, overall, self-driving cars will be good for society for example blind people,
disabled people, people unable to drive in any way will be more independent.

However, there is a downside of mass unemployment. Currently, the economies of the industrialized
world, and probably the entire world for that matter, are built on rising consumption. Self-driving cars
are going to put many if not most truck drivers, taxi drivers, bus drivers, couriers, train drivers, tour guides,
postmen, etc. out of business. A new model of wealth distribution will need to be planned to handle the
newly unemployed and broadly unemployable people. Self-driving cars are just the first step in mechanical
minds replacing humans in a really meaningful way. Whether this will usher in a new gilded age or some
kind of utopia will be up to us.
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References
Forrest and Konca (2007). Autonomous Cars and Society. [online] Available at:
https://web.wpi.edu/Pubs/E-project/Available/E-project-043007-
205701/unrestricted/IQPOVP06B1.pdf [Accessed 8 Aug. 2018].

Holstein, T., Dodig-Crnkovic, G. and Pelliccione, P. (2018). Ethical and Social Aspects of Self-Driving Cars.
[online] Arxiv.org. Available at: https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.04103 [Accessed 8 Aug. 2018].

Hörl, Ciari and Axhausen (2016). Recent perspectives on the impact of autonomous vehicles. [online]
Available at:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sebastian_Hoerl/publication/317286130_Recent_perspectiv
es_on_the_impact_of_autonomous_vehicles/links/59303cda45851553b67f03a7/Recent-
perspectives-on-the-impact-of-autonomous-vehicles.pdf?origin=publication_detail [Accessed 8
Aug. 2018].