Should Your Autonomous Car Choose to Kill You Instead of Others?

Until 2015, probably we will have some cars that don’t need a driver at all. But how about this; you are driving with your family on a highway and all the sudden your high technology car realized some kids on the road and calculated the course you are on might kill these children so the car decided to steer you and your family out of the cliff. Driverless cars are programmed to avoid any accidents. Save you and others even Volvo S90 new sensors programmed to avoid the large animals.

That is why The California Department of Motor Vehicles is trying to draw limits for what autonomous vehicles can do. But Google that operate their driverless vehicle cars in California does not want DMV to insist what should be the limits are. Google proposes that car manufacturers should develop collision avoidance algorithms as they see fit. But it is too much responsibility for the companies, because of any accident cause by the computer in the car, can be open a door for big lawsuits. If they let DMV responsible for the limits of the chooses they are going to be responsible for an accident that resulted deadly.

Regulatory agencies need to set some boundaries. For example, if some try the kill himself to jump in front of your car, the car should avoid him and put you in danger to avoiding killing that person, a person who try to stop you because he wants to harm you what should car do. We can be many examples like this. One thing for sure the autonomous system will save many lives but the extreme situations’ bounded should set well.

What ever happens with this technology, we still think that the person who is in the driver seat should give her/ his attention to the road all time. Even the computer system will react faster than a human being, never get drunk and drive or look away from the road and can see everything around the car but still in some situations logical choose can only make a human being.