Problematic issues of driverless cars

Most of my engineering students love reading and talking about cars, so the technology of autonomous vehicles is very interesting for them. In my recent posts I've focused on this topic, and plan to use material related to this in my upcoming winter semester.

An article from the BBC News website questions why these vehicles will "take much longer to reach mass adoption than tech utopians like Google would have us believe" (What's putting the brakes on driverless cars?).

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-33676388

Since my students are also "tech utopians," they tend to understand and agree with Google's arguments for why autonomous vehicles are a good thing, which are mostly based on statistics showing that autonomous cars are safer than those with drivers. (See the blog post about this written by Chris Urmson, director of Google's self-driving car program at https://medium.com/backchannel/the-view-from-the-front-seat-of-the-google-self-driving-car-46fc9f3e6088.)


However, for students to understand opposing issues (or how non-techies think), it would be useful for them to consider problematic issues. They could first brainstorm these, possibly taking into account objections they've already heard or read about.

They could then compare their ideas with those presented in the BBC article.

The article identifies 6 "main challenges":

1. Ethical dilemmas - There are doubts over whether the technology will ever become sophisticated enough to handle difficult ethical decisions.
2. Who's to blame - If there is a crash or a fatality, who will be liable? The car owner, the car manufacturer, the maker of the specific piece of equipment that failed, the software company?
3. The technology isn't good enough yet - There are a number of conditions in which the safety equipment of these cars is not yet sufficient.
4. Standards, standards - Since driverless cars may need to communicate with each other, will the industry be able to agree on a technological standard for these systems?
5. Security risks - Connectivity presents security risks related to hacking.
6. Do we even want them - Many people love driving, and being in control is related to that.

In addition to the article, there are reader comments - 345 of them!Students could scan the comments to see which issues most people focus on, both pro and con.

This material could be used to prepare for persuasive speaking or writing tasks in which students try to focus on convincing skeptics to accept a future of driverless cars. Which persuasive appeals would they use for which concerns? People who love to drive cars, for example, would probably not be convinced by technology statistics.

This would help students to consider a variety of audiences, and how their persuasive techniques would have to be suited to each type of audience.