The 21st century is the age of technology, and as time goes on our technology continues to advance rapidly. The concept of self-driving cars was introduced just a few years ago but is in the process of becoming a reality. Developers across the globe are working around the clock to perfect this new technology and make it available to the public. Once this technology becomes standard it will allow for major decreases in commute times, along with less traffic in general, far fewer accidents, and a major boost to our economy. Self-driving cars remain in the works with major issues still yet to be tackled, but the technology advances every day and is already available for use on public roads. Ethical issues remain to be debated, with companies now taking stances on certain matters, though the legal issues that could prevail from their decisions could shut down the technology completely. These companies have invested billions in the technology, and are willing to take major risks as they realize that this is the future of our society.

The largest company invested in the technology does not even manufacture cars. The company Alphabet (better known as Google) has invested billions over the past eight years in this revolutionary technology. The self-driving car department at Alphabet has become so big that it split off from its parent company on December 13, 2016 to form its own company called Waymo (Beckwith). Since its creation Waymo has surpassed every other company that has invested in self-driving cars. Waymo’s experimental vehicles have logged thousands more miles than other companies, while experiencing far less disengagements while testing its vehicles. A disengagement is any reason why the autonomous driving feature would be forced to stop. These disengagements are not always at the fault of the self-driving software, and often occur from other drivers, road conditions, or obstacles in the road. 

Furthermore, in the past year alone, Waymo has logged 635,868 miles on public roads in the state of California with only 124 disengagements or about 1 disengagement every 5,000 miles (State of California DMV). Every time that a disengagement occurs, the Waymo vehicle can assess the situation and accurately determine what error occurred so that it will not arise again. Most of the disengagements that transpire are due to road conditions or hazards that have not been accounted for. For example, if the vehicle is traveling down the road in a construction zone and the road lines are not marked, then the car disengages from its autonomous mode to allow the driver to take control so the event does not end in an accident. 

The company has also made major improvements to the affordability of the technology as John Krafcik describes in a speech that he made in Detroit, “sensors that Google purchased for $75,000 back in 2009 now only cost $7,500 for Waymo to build itself” (Ayre). These major price reductions help to cut costs for Waymo, allowing for the company to purchase much larger amounts of cars and sensors then previously available. Though these drops in prices do not only help save car companies money, they also greatly decrease the cost of vehicles for the consumer, which will significantly increase the average citizen’s willingness to purchase a self-driving vehicle.

Self-driving cars may seem like a new concept, but most of the technology behind them is not. Many features found in automated cars have been around for a few decades and are installed on a large portion of commercial vehicles already on the roads. Companies such as Mercedes have been providing customers with lane tracking assist options on their cars since the year 2000 (Revolvy). Global Positioning System (GPS) has been implemented in automobiles in one form or another for more than two decades. In reality, the idea of self-driving cars has been underway since the first innovations have been made to cars. Adding components such as automatic transmissions to vehicles and evolving from a crank to start the engine to a simple key, to a touch of a button. The advancement of this key technology has become instrumental in making self-driving cars a reality. In addition, over the years many more features have been introduced such as blind spot detection, automated braking, and Ford’s automated parallel parking system. 

These features provided over the years have worked as stepping stones towards autonomous driving, but car companies like Tesla have gone as far as installing the full self-driving technology in every one of their vehicles. Elon Musk the CEO and owner of Tesla said, “All cars that Tesla makes from here on out will have hardware needed to be fully autonomous, or driverless” (Kaufman). This is a major step forward in the automotive industry as the owners of Teslas will not need to invest in new cars in the coming years as theirs is already fully equipped and may only need a software update to be on par with other vehicles. Once other car companies adopt this idea to fully equip their vehicles, it will help to greatly advance the automotive industry. Tesla currently remains the only car company to fully equip its vehicles in support of fully autonomous operation, but its competitors are not far behind as their cars are being made available with numerous self-driving features; for example, lane tracking, blind spot detection, and automated braking. These companies are also sharing some of the new features and technologies that they are creating. They are beginning to realize that to have a world full of automated cars they must do it together so that the cars work flawlessly and are able to communicate together on the road.

For this reason, car companies have begun linking software together and promoting a single communication system for all companies to use. The United States government is leading this communion by beginning to make laws enforcing this subject. Legislators have already begun proposing bills and opening test facilities across the nation to ensure that the vehicles will function properly and use software that will allow the cars to communicate with each other. Communication is the focus of one of the bills proposed by the Federal Government, the “Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard” (FMVSS). This bill states that all self-driving vehicles or HAVs (Highly Autonomous Vehicles) as the government refers to them, must contain Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) radios. These radios are a close variation of the common Wi-Fi system that is used for phones and computers today. Sam Abuelsamid, a mechanical and automotive engineer, who also works as a writer for Forbes magazine said, “DSRC radios send and receive short messages 10 times per second over a range of about 1,000 to 1,500 feet depending on the conditions. The messages broadcast by vehicles include information like position, heading, speed, and braking status” (Abuelsamid). 

To put this in simpler terms, this means that autonomous cars could have full communication with one another on the road and could include more in-depth messages such as alerting other vehicles about accidents, traffic conditions, and hazards on the road. The DSRC radios can also receive internet connectivity and stay in touch, though less frequently than DSRC to DSRC, with vehicles all over the world. This technology would also significantly reduce the amount of traffic that is currently on the roads by communicating to allow vehicles to enter and exit the highway much more easily and allow for lane changes to occur much more smoothly. Cars under this legislation will be more spread out on the road reducing the risk for an accident. If an incident were to occur the vehicles communications could alert other cars and avoid the situation completely. 

This new technology revolutionizes the means of transportation for autonomous vehicles, but it will not be able to function properly while regular vehicles remain on the road. These regular, non-autonomous vehicles that fill the roads today are the largest factor that hold back the progress of autonomous cars. People like to think that most humans are good drivers, but autonomous cars are not able to communicate with non-autonomous cars. They are not able to predict what the person driving will do and therefore make human drivers one of the largest hazards on the road. The Chicago Tribune adds to this by saying “94 percent of crashes are attributed to human error, a fact that implies that removing the human from behind the wheel might eliminate most crashes” (Halsey). With the crash rate dropping almost 94 percent, roads would be much safer and the death toll every year would fall drastically. With less accidents and obstacles to worry about travel times would be reduced, saving the average consumer hundreds of dollars on gas every year and the extra time that people will have, will help to increase productivity and greatly boost the economy. 

Based on all of the evidence provided for autonomous vehicles, these vehicles seem very beneficial to our society. However, obstacles still linger that affect people on an ethical level. These ethical issues are some of the largest reasons as to why self-driving cars are not more advanced and popular than they are today. The first issue is that people do find it difficult to entrust hundreds of millions of lives in the hands of computers, which they believe can fail at any time. To counter this belief, a mutual connection is drawn to airplanes. Airplanes are commonly believed to be flown by pilots, though other than the few minutes during takeoff and landing, planes are essentially flown by computers. Shawn Dubravac and Gary Shapiro argue this exact ethical issue for the sake of self-driving cars. They discuss how computers ultimately have control of the plane by stating “flight envelope protections limit how badly a pilot can screw up mid-flight. For instance, a pilot can’t suddenly plunge the airplane into the ground. The ‘fly-by-wire’ system won’t allow it” (Dubravac and Shapiro 143). These computer systems control a plane the same way computers control automated cars; the technology functions in almost the exact same way. 

In other words, Dubravac and Shapiro are saying, if you are willing to entrust your life to computers while flying at 500 miles per hour and 35,000 feet, then adopting self-driving cars should not be too worrisome. The second ethical issue that automated vehicles face, is in the event of a crash how should the car come to react? Experts themselves are divided on if the vehicle should save the occupants or others who are outside of the vehicle. The example that is drawn up in almost every debate is the scenario where an automated car driving down a road comes across a civilian in the street. Should the car swerve to save the civilian and crash into a tree effectively killing the passengers or remain on the road and hit the civilian? This situation provides no right answer, but the company Mercedes Benz hopes to put an end to this highly debated argument by being the first company to take a stand on this issue. Christopher von Hugo, the manager of driver assistance systems at Mercedes told a reporter, “that all of the company's future Level 4 and Level 5 self-driving cars would be programmed with the decision to save the people they carry over anything else” and went on to say "If you know you can save at least one person, at least save that one. Save the one in the car," (Dodgson). This helps for the average consumer to gain confidence in automated cars, since they know they will be put first over obstacles outside of the car. 

With multiple ethical issues to consider, the consumers are not the only ones to begin to shy away from automated cars. Car companies are still disputing over the repercussions of getting into a car accident. In the event of a crash however it may occur, who would pay for the damages? Should the owner of the vehicle be forced to pay if they were not even driving? Should it be covered by the insurance companies? Or should the car company be at fault and stuck with the bill? The reparations from the accidents could range from a few hundred dollars, all the way into the millions. Several car companies are hesitant in moving forward with their autonomous car production until this issue is settled. While other companies, such as Volvo have come out and made a strong stance stating that they would claim responsibility if one of their systems was to fail or operate improperly while driving. Anders Karrberg, the vice president of government affairs at Volvo, told a house subcommittee “Carmakers should take liability for any system in the car. So, we have declared that if there is a malfunction to the [autonomous driving] system when operating autonomously, we would take the product liability” (Halsey). This helps to clear the air. Although other car makers may not agree with this statement, they will almost certainly be forced to follow Volvo’s stance on this topic or be left behind. 

A perfect example of this is last year, the auto maker Tesla was forced to deal with this issue, when a civilian riding in one of their autonomous vehicles was involved in a fatal car accident with another driver. Tesla improperly dealt with the incident, attempting to cover up the whole situation by paying off the family of the victim. The story was released a few weeks after, making national headlines and shocking the automotive industry since Tesla attempted to be deal with the incident under the table. Consumer confidence in autonomous cars fell drastically. The company Tesla took a major hit economically and were left to answer numerous questions on the actions they took. Since the incident, Tesla has taken major steps to show its customers and the rest of the world that something like this will never happen again. In interviews and announcements from the company since then, enormous amounts of progress have been almost comparable to Waymo’s, when considering the development of technology. Tesla eventually accepted the blame for the accident that occurred though it was never fully proven. Scientists and engineers studied the accident to fully understand what went wrong with the software inside the car, though nothing was ever found. After continuous investigations, scientists concluded on January of this year, that the other vehicle was fully at fault and there was no possible way that the accident could have been prevented by the Tesla vehicle. The New York Times commented on this by writing “Eight months after a fatal crash involving a Tesla Motor car operating in a computer-assisted mode, federal auto-safety regulators said their investigation of the car found no defects in the system that caused the accident” (Boudette). The article continues on to state that the accident was one of the rarest possible occurrences on the road and that consumer confidence in autonomous vehicles should not decline in any way from this incident. 

With numerous companies working nonstop to produce the perfect self-driving car, major amounts of progress are made on a continual basis. Companies are joining forces and working with government agencies in order to accelerate the process to get self-driving cars to fill the roads as soon as possible. People remain to be convinced by the idea of autonomous vehicles, though the continual support and evidence provided by the automotive industry is quickly turning heads. Greater support for this new technology allows companies to gain the confidence needed in order to take a full stance on an issue, instead of allowing for it to be debated without a conclusion. After its adoption into the everyday lifestyle, self-driving cars will significantly reduce commute times, provide a much safer experience on the roads, and allow for a major step forward in the economy. However, ethical, legal, and technological concerns must still be overcome before then. The technology is not fully ready to take control of the roads today, though the day is soon approaching when it will be.

