Could cars be taught to care? “Ford Argo AI,” 2019. Photo by Tony Webster. Creative Commons, Wikimedia.

“Autonomous vehicles (AVs) are never drunk or tired or inattentive,” states Julian De Freitas, of the Harvard Business School and Ethical Intelligence Lab. Over 90% of traffic accidents and deaths (1.35 million fatalities globally) are due to driver error. Smarter vehicles could save lives to an extent equal to the discovery of vaccines and antibiotics, but will consumers trust these cars? Can vehicles evaluate, think, and drive with “common sense?” Ethical dilemmas such as whether an AV should save pedestrians or passengers is one of the pressing issues facing car manufacturers giving brains and hearts to their products. Will highway systems, like the Germany’s Bundesautobahn System of 13, 183 km (8. 192 mi), or US Federal Highway System, develop dedicated lanes for AVs? Insurance and legal concerns will set new regulations. Does technology carry the liability, or human operators? Many people feel they identify with their cars: will cars become more like people? Want to take a drive?

Argo AAI. www.argo.ai

Associated Press. “Ford, Argo AI to Deploy Autonomous Vehicles on Lyft Network.” 21 July 2021. US News. https://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2021-07-21/ford-argo-ai-to-deply-autonomous-vehicles-on-lyft-network

Blanding, Michael. “Can Autonomous Vehicles Drive with Common Sense?” 17 August 2021. Working Knowledge, Harvard Business School. https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/can-autonomous-vehicles-drive-with-common-sense

De Freitas, Julian, et al., edited by Susan T. Fiske. “From driverless dilemmas to more practical commonsense tests for automated vehicles.” 16 March 2021.  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 118 (11) e2010202118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2010202118.

Maurer, M. et al., editors. Autonomous Driving. Berlin: Springer, 2016.

Nader, R. Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile. New York: Grossman, 1965.

Pogue, David. “Self-Driving Cars.” 17 May 2019. CBS Sunday Morning. VIDEO. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugNJJf2QW0E

Schmelzer, Ron. “What Happens When Self-Driving Cars Kill People?” 26 September 2019. Forbes. AUDIO and print article. https://www.forbes.com/sites/cognitiveworld/2019/09/26/what-happens-with-self-driving-cars-kill-people/

Building the World Blog by Kathleen Lusk Brooke and Zoe G. Quinn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unp