Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Autonomous Cars

About autonomous cars, if one of them is swerving out of control,  would it be more logical to program for it to crash into an SUV or a Mini Cooper? Of course you would think SUV because it would be safer but, some would argue that it turns it into a targeting mechanism for anybody that owns an SUV. In my opinion though I would have to say that it would be better to still crash into the SUV. The SUV would be safer because it is harder to knock it off balance and minimal damage would be caused for the SUV. If the car were to crash into the mini cooper though I feel as though they would both keep skidding and end up causing more problems. So in turn I believe that an SUV would be safer.
      On to another dilemma now. Same situation, but instead 2 motorcyclists, and one has a helmet but the other doesn't. In my opinion I don't think it matters. If you are sitting on a motorcyclist and you get hit while going at a high enough speed, your chances of survival are minimal. So in my opinion is does not matter because of the facts of how low the chances of survival are. 
     Another topic is if instead of the car targeting a certain vehicle, if it should just randomly choose one,like a random number generator. In my opinion this is the right way to go. This is because in a real car crash then a human would never be able to analyze and think out the situation enough to decide what car to crash into. I would have to agree with this and say that the car should randomly crash into one. It makes it seem as though its not targeting one of them so that people don't feel like they are being targeted when they see an autonomous car.
     Lastly, is the driver liable for any damage done to other cars. I would have to say yes for this. Firstly, i would assume that since its autonomous, it would need more frequent maintenance checkups so that would mean that the car would most likely be in an accident because of not have a maintenance checkup. The problem most likely could have been stopped if there would have been an evaluation of the vehicle. So I would most likely say that the owner would be very liable for any damage that is caused. If there are no frequent checkups that are required, then I would say that the owner is no longer liable though.