Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications

Speaking of the effect of autonomous vehicles on society, the ethical, legal, and social implications of the self-driving car becoming the basic mode of transportation lie within a few questionable ideas. On the chance that there is an accident, where or with whom does the liability lie? How will insurance be decided? Who is to blame if anyone? What if a self-driving car, free from human input strikes a cyclist and kills them? A sound idea would be to pass through a transitional period before switching to fully self-driving vehicles, where human input is still possible in case there is an error in the autonomous vehicle’s performance so that accidents can still be prevented. This idea is expanded upon further in a predictive research article about self- driving vehicles in the year 2025, written by Mark Ryan: “Outside of these designated areas, cars must function at level 3 capacity—limited automation. The car senses when conditions require the driver to retake control and provides enough transition time for the driver to do so.” (Ryan, 2020). This requirement of limited automation is necessary for legal standpoints as of now, because on the occasion that there is an accident or circumstances where someone needs to be held liable for some sort of damage, the human owner of the car can still be held responsible since they could take control the vehicle. It would be logical to require specialized training for owning an autonomous vehicle so that people are skilled enough to operate the vehicle in the off chance that something goes awry. Smoothing out these legal requirements, providing people training, and working out the systems of autonomous vehicles would then allow society to reap the numerous rewards of self-driving cars. There would be benefits to the environment, reducing carbon emissions and pollution. Ethical and societal benefits would include a better flow of traffic, lack of judgment to other’s driving abilities, and reduced road rage. So, with the technology currently available, it would be irresponsible to transition to fully autonomous vehicles immediately, despite the vast rewards self-driving cars provide. It would be better to continue with this option until the time comes when technology is efficient enough to maintain legal, ethical, and social responsibilities without human input.