Journal 6 Peng Zhou

Chris Urmson, who is the head of engineering for Google’s Self-Driving Car Project, argues in his article Progress in Self-Driving Vehicles that “ Automated driving has experienced a research renaissance in the past decade as investigations have been motivated by organized competitions to increase safety and mobility.” And the main reason why self-driving vehicles are important raised by Urmson in his article is that “they should dramatically reduce accidents, enable people who cannot drive to get around, and, when deployed as part of efficient shared vehicle fleet, reduce congestion.

Personally speaking, I agree with the view that self-driving vehicles are very useful and safety. But I think there is still a lot of problems should be solved before the self-driving vehicles can be produced.

One of the most important problems is about the ethics. For example, if the car in front of you stops suddenly for some reason, and your vehicle don’t have enough time and distance to stop. You only have two choices, crushing to the car in front of you or take a sudden turn. But what if there is a pedestrian or other vehicle just on the way that you prepare to turn. So, it is hard for the computer to make the choice. It is hard to say which one is correct, and I think the choice should base on the specific situation. The choices that related to the ethic have to be made by human beings.

Another important disadvantage of the computer is that we can’t trust it all the time. Because computers make choice based on the program, but it is hard to say that the program is perfect. Even the Microsoft Company still update some leaks for Windows. So we can’t make sure that the program takes everything into consideration, especially for some special situation. And it also leads in another safety problem. Criminal can easily change the software of their target’s car to make an accident.

There are a lot of problems of the self-driving vehicles need to be solved. But I still believe that it should be a good choice if the technology can solve all of the problems.