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Sterri, from Apple

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Apple's answer to the Google driverless car.... Or is it? The Smart Department sketch comedy group examines the question on everybody's mind, when can I drive my car with my phone? Starring Mark Odlum & Ryan Harrison Directed By John Dabrowski

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Driverless cars 'could reduce congestion'

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An Oxfordshire firm says driverless cars could drive faster and closer together to reduce congestion.

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Drug driver was 15 times limit when he killed himself and teenage passengers

And without realising, you may have even driven or walked past one this morning.

Because for the last five days, carmaker Nissan has been quietly testing its new driverless cars on public roads in the capital.

Using modified Leaf models, the company says its week-long trial is the first time anywhere in Europe that the cars have been let loose on a dual carriageway.

The electric cars were tested on a complex route in east London, taking on stop signs, dual carriageways, pedestrian crossings and parking challenges, following permission from Transport for London and the police.

Since Monday, the company say there have been no collisions and only a small amount of incidents in which an engineer in the driver's seat had to intervene to prevent a crash.

Trials were also carried out in Milton Keynes, Bristol and Greenwich, but not on public roads.

Stuart Jackson, from Nissan Europe, said: 'We believe that zero-emission vehicles are the ultimate solution for delivering a smarter, more sustainable future.

Bus driver pulls over to make sure suicidal woman doesn't jump from bridge

'We also believe that autonomous drive technologies will revolutionise the future of mobility, providing more safety, convenience and driving pleasure for everyone.'

Nissan aims to have a fleet of self-driving cars ready to be used as taxis for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.

It plans to compete against rivals such a Tesla which are working on their own fleet of driverless cars.

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Driverless cars have been going round London all week and nobody noticed

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Drug driver was 15 times limit when he killed himself and teenage passengers And without realising, you may have even driven or walked past one this morning. Because for the last five days, carmaker Nissan has been quietly testing its new driverless cars on public roads in the capital.

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Bc video

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Can you imagine travelling in a car without a driver? It may sound like science fiction but driverless cars will be with us sooner than you think!

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This page lists the most recent predictions about when driverless cars will be available on the market:

Fully autonomous vehicles will be on the road before 2022, says NVIDIA CEO
The CEO of the chipmaker NVIDIA, Jensen Huang, said that "It will take no more than four years to have fully autonomous cars on the road." This refers to actual cars driving on the road (not just car models being ready technically) and assumes that the key legal issues will also have been resolved.
(Source: Reuters, 2017-10-26 )

Audi to introduce a self-driving car by 2020
Scott Keogh, Head of Audi America announced at the CES 2017 that an Audio that really would drive itself would be available by 2020.(Source: IEEE Spectrum, 2017-01-05)

NuTonomy to provide self-driving taxi services in Singapore by 2018, expand to 10 cities around the world by 2020
The company has just started trials of its self-driving taxis in Singapore's 1 North District. It plans to deploy self-driving taxis commercially in Singapore by 2018 and aims to be operational with fleets of self-driving taxis in 10 cities of the world by 2020.
(Source: Yahoo News, 2016-08-29, Digital Trends, 2016-05-24)

Ford's head of product development: autonomous vehicle on the market by 2020
Raj Nair, Ford's head of product development, expects that autonomous vehicles of SAE level 4 (which means that the car needs no driver but may not be capable of driving everywhere) will hit the market by 2020.(Source: autonews, 2016-02-27)

Baidu's Chief Scientist expects large number of self-driving cars on the road by 2019
In an interview session, Andrew Ng, the chief scientist of the Chinese search engine Baidu expects that a large number self-driving self-driving cars will be on the road within three years, and that mass-production will be in full swing by 2021.
(Source: Quora, 2016-01-29)

Elon Musk now expects first fully autonomous Tesla by 2018, approved by 2021
In an interview by Danish newspaper Borsen, Tesla's founder Elon Musk accelerates his timeline for the introduction of fully autonomous Teslas by 2 years (!) compared to his estimate less than a year ago (October 2014). He now expects fully autonomous Teslas to be ready by 2018 but notes that regulatory approval may take 1 to 3 more years thereafter.
(Source: Borsen Interview on youtube, timeline: 8:06-8:29, recorded on 2015-9-23)

Truly autonomous cars to populate roads by 2028-2032 estimates insurance think tank executive
At a meeting of the Society of Automotive Engineers, Robert Hartwig, President of the Insurance Information Institute estimated that it will take between 15 and 20 years until truly autonomous vehicles populate US roads.(Source: The Detroit News, 2013-02-14)

During this years' CES, Carlos Ghosn, CEO of Nissan said that driverless cars will be ready for showtime by the end of this decade.
(Source: Forbes.com, 2013-1-14)

Automotive supplier Continental has just announced that automated driving is at the core of its long-term strategy. It has formed a new business unit for "Advanced driver assistance systems" and plans to make fully autonomous driving available by 2025.
Source: Continental, 2012-12-18

Intel CTO predicts that autonomous car will arrive by 2022

Justin Rattner, CTO of Intel predicts that driverless cars will be available within 10 years. Intel is hoping to equip autonomous smart cars with its Atom and Core processors.
(Source: Computerworld, 2012-10-22)

Sergey Brin plans to have Google driverless car in the market by 2018

Google's founder Sergey Brin has made it clear that the company plans to have its driverless cars on the market no later than 2018. At the signing ceremony for California's autonomous vehicles law, he outlined Googles path towards commercialization of its driverless cars. Within 2013 Google plans to expand the number and users of their driverless cars to Google employees. Thereafter it will not take longer than 5 years to get the cars into the market.
(Source: Driverless car market watch, 2012-10-02)

IEEE predicts up to 75% of vehicles will be autonomous in 2040

Expert members of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) have determined that driverless vehicles will be the most viable form of intelligent transportation. They estimate that up to 75% of all vehicles will be autonomous by 2040.
(Source: IEEE, 2012-09-05)

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This page lists the most recent predictions about when driverless cars will be available on the market: Fully autonomous vehicles will be on the road before 2022, says NVIDIA CEO The CEO of the chipmaker NVIDIA, Jensen Huang, said that "It will take no more than four years to have fully autonomous cars on the road."

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Major companies

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Uber has suffered several high-profile resignations and terminations in recent months. In May, Uber fired Anthony Levandowski, a star engineer and the central figure in a high-profile legal battle over self-driving cars.

His termination was tied to a federal lawsuit in which Waymo-the self-driving car company that spun out of Google-is accusing Uber and Levandowski of stealing its design secrets. An Uber spokesperson told The Atlantic that Uber had been pressing Levandowski to help with its internal investigation of the matter for months, but that he did not meet a deadline set for him. Levandowski could not be reached for comment. He has exercised his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, which played a role in a federal judge's decision to deny arbitration in the Waymo case.

Uber's request for arbitration would have allowed the ride-sharing giant to defend itself behind closed doors. Instead, Uber will have to go to trial to answer Waymo's accusations in what is sure to be an ugly showdown.

Related Story

Uber Did What!?
The case is poised to be among the biggest legal fights over intellectual property so far this century. The technology at stake is at the center of the emerging and potentially highly lucrative self-driving car industry, and the key players are two of the world's top tech companies. (Google rebranded its self-driving car project as Waymo in 2016.)

Not only will there be a trial, but Judge William Alsup also referred the case to the U.S. Attorney for investigation of possible theft of trade secrets, a move that suggests the Uber engineer at the center of the case could face criminal charges.

Waymo is accusing the former Google engineer Levandowski of secretly stealing a trove of files from the company before he quit to start his own self-driving truck startup. Uber acquired that company, Otto, for $680 million shortly after it launched last year.

Self-driving cars are arguably the great technological promise of the 21st century. They are in that rare class of technology that might actually change the world. And not just in the way everyone in Silicon Valley talks about changing the world-but really, fundamentally change it. So much so that their dramatic life-saving potential is almost secondary to the other economic, cultural, and aesthetic transformations they would cause.

Those who aren't able to drive themselves today-people who are blind, for example-would be granted a new level of transportation freedom. Mass adoption of self-driving cars would create and destroy entire industries, alter the way people work and move through cities, and change the way those cities are designed and connected.

To build the technology that prompts all this change is to be in an enormous position of power.

That's why the race to bring self-driving cars to the masses is so intense. It's also what makes this particular competition echo other transformative moments in technological history-going all the way back to the Railroad Wars, at least. (Incidentally, there was a different kind of driverless car back then.) "The Wright brothers jump into my brain immediately," John Leonard, an engineering professor at M.I.T., told me in 2015. "But maybe it's kind of like a decentralized space race. Like Sputnik, but between the traditional car companies and their suppliers versus tech companies and their startups."

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Travis Kalanick Is Taking a Break From Uber

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Uber has suffered several high-profile resignations and terminations in recent months. In May, Uber fired Anthony Levandowski, a star engineer and the central figure in a high-profile legal battle over self-driving cars. His termination was tied to a federal lawsuit in which Waymo-the self-driving car company that spun out of Google-is accusing Uber and Levandowski of stealing its design secrets.

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Info

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rom forecourt to scrapyard, a new car in the UK lasts an average of 13.9 years, which is why if you got one today, it might very well be the last car you buy. Over the next decade, accelerating autonomous driving technology, including advances in artificial intelligence, sensors, cameras, radar and data analytics, are set to transform not only how we drive (or, indeed, are driven), but the notion of car ownership itself. "Autonomous driving has become the next major battlefield for the car industry," says Luca Mentuccia, automotive global MD at Accenture.

The six levels of automation, defined under international standards by the Society of Automotive Engineers, range from "no automation" to "full automation", explains Sven Raeymaekers, of tech investment banker GP Bullhound. "If you look at the most recent predictions, the majority of car manufacturers estimate the first highly to fully automated vehicles [AVs] will hit the market between 2020-2025," he says.

When they do, regulatory approval permitting, their most significant impact is likely to be in the area of urban mobility. "AVs will enable new service configurations where consumers are delivered door to door with virtually no stops in a comfortable vehicle with just one to three other passengers," says Stan Boland, CEO of FiveAI, which builds AI-driven software for AVs and is one of the companies testing autonomous vehicles on UK roads in 2017, alongside major manufacturers including Volvo and Ford.

Such services will be safer, reduce pollution and congestion, and will also bring about a paradigm shift in personal vehicle ownership rates, which are likely to decline steeply, he says. A recent survey of car manufacturing executives by KPMG similarly revealed that 59% of industry bosses believe that more than half of all car owners today will no longer want to own a car by 2025.

So how exactly will we be getting about by the end of the next decade? Will automation really "solve" crashes, and what other sorts of AVs are we likely to see on our roads? The Observer asked a panel of experts about the likely realities and practicalities of driving in the year 2030.

Will I be a driver or a passenger?

You'll have a choice, says Dr Nick Reed, academy director at transport consultancy TRL. "If you want to drive an MG and enjoy that, you'll be able to. Or if you want to prepare for a business meeting during your two-hour journey, you'll be able to do that too. Automation systems give us choices."

Nikolaus Lang, of the Boston Consulting Group's Centre for Digital in Automotive, argues it will depend on the vehicle you're in. "By 2030, you'll be a 'controlling passenger' in your private self-driving car and you'll be a 'complete passenger' in a robo-taxi."

Will it still make sense to own a car or will I rent one (on demand)?

Instead of today's car ownership model, we are far more likely to rely on "mobility as a service" by 2030, says Boland. "Imagine an Uber-like service you can summon at the touch of a button, but without a driver. Renting is not necessarily the right word - consumers will buy a service like using an Uber today, but with a wider range of vehicle configurations to suit different types of travel - family outings, long-distance sleeper travel, or shared commutes."

However, Lang points out that there's a clear difference between a young urban population, for whom owning cars makes little sense, and the millions of suburbanites with families, who will probably still opt to own.

Will there still be crashes?

A 2008 survey by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that human error is the critical reason for 93% of crashes, says Boland. "When you eliminate human error, our roads become dramatically safer: no more drink-driving, phone calls at the wheel, carelessness, inattention or plain bad driving. Clearly there needs to be adequate industry testing to ensure that AVs are safe for all other road users, but we can look forward to far safer roads as human drivers become a thing of the past."

Will all cars be electric?

"I don't think all of them will be electric by 2030," says Danny Shapiro, senior director at NVIDIA, whose AI computer platform powers the supercomputer in Tesla vehicles. "Virtually every startup is looking at electric, and you have ever greater electric and hybrid focus from German, Japanese and US [manufacturers]. But at the same time there's still a huge oil infrastructure. And, at least for the next four years, there's a very pro-oil administration in the US."

Yet Bosch is developing a lithium-ion solid state battery that they hope will double the range of electric vehicles at half the cost of today's batteries, which Steffen Hoffmann, the corporation's UK president, believes will increase take-up among those who live in the suburbs and beyond. "We have a projection that by 2025, globally 15% of vehicles are going to have an electric component, whether that's a pure electric vehicle, a plug-in hybrid or full hybrid," he says. "For western Europe, that percentage would obviously be higher."

The Honda NeuV concept vehicle at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Photograph: David Mcnew/AFP/Getty Images

Will there still be driving tests?

"Yes," says Reed. "But they might be very different, with different layers. Just as you have an automatic and a manual gearbox test today, there might be an automated driving test which may only entitle you to 'drive' a certain type of vehicle that has certain automation systems, rather than any vehicle. Drivers will need to understand how to operate those systems - so there may also be different skills required as part of the test."

Will there be less gridlock?

"With a heterogeneous mix of vehicle configurations and on-demand service delivery, autonomous vehicles will enable a higher density of passengers per road mile," says Boland. "Also, because AVs can travel safely closer together, and with less braking and accelerating than human drivers, traffic will flow more smoothly and congestion will decrease. On motorways more vehicles will be able to fit safely into the same length of road, effectively increasing capacity".

Shapiro adds that another key cause of congestion is accidents. "Even if [the accident] isn't blocking lanes, the traffic slows down to see what's going on. So self-driving cars will not only enable more efficient flow, but they'll remove the accident side of congestion [as there will be fewer of them]."

Will automated vehicles be vulnerable to hackers?

By definition, a driverless car has more control units, computing power, lines of code, and wireless connections with the outside world than a regular car today, which is why it's more vulnerable to hackers, explains Andy Birnie, systems engineering manager at NXP Semiconductors. "A hacker can potentially take control of the car, through exploitation of a weakness, and could cause the vehicle to refuse to start, or to crash, or it could exploit the privacy of the driver, and [their] data, including financial information."

However, a shift in the approach to security is under way, he says. "There is now more focus on the basics - applying good fundamental security to the critical areas including the interfaces that connect the vehicle to the external world; gateways, which separate safety critical systems from other car and infotainment systems; and networks that provide secure communication between control units - there can be over 150 in an autonomous vehicle." In addition, major advances to security include "over-the-air" software updates that can patch vulnerabilities seamlessly in real time, Birnie says.

Will I still need insurance (as a vehicle owner)?

"Yes," says Niall Edwards, partner at international law firm Kennedys. Fully autonomous vehicles are likely to be considered a different class of vehicle that requires additional compulsory insurance cover, he says.

"The most likely product will be a package underwritten by a motor insurer that the manufacturer offers at the point of purchase, use or hire." One possibility is that new vehicles fitted with advanced-driver technology will automatically come with a form of product liability and extended cover provided by the manufacturer.

The good news, says Allianz UK's Glen Clarke, is that because semi- and fully autonomous cars are expected to lead to a fall in accidents, we are likely to see a drop in premiums. "The price you pay will be much more influenced by the technical capabilities of the car as opposed to estimations of the riskiness of the driver."

How will the law adapt to autonomous vehicles?

Currently, UK law anticipates the existence of a "driver" who is in control of the vehicle at all times, says Rachel Moore, also a partner at Kennedys. Regulations on vehicle use will therefore need to be revised to allow the use of automotive technology without a driver and - crucially - to ensure that the technology is maintained correctly.

To start with, Moore continues, the Road Traffic Act (1988) is likely to be amended to include product liability for automated vehicles. "Other changes will be required, including to the Highway Code and international regulations on vehicle use. We may also see changes to the MOT to check roadworthiness."

Do AVs reduce the risks for pedestrians and cyclists?

We're only at the start of understanding how pedestrians and cyclists will interact with a vehicle that doesn't have a human driver at the controls, says Reed. "Whether a pedestrian will be able to detect whether a car is automated or not, and adapt their behaviour accordingly, we still don't know."

Lang argues that there's a risk, initially at least, that pedestrians and cyclists may try to "test" AVs to see how they react. "In Singapore, they are currently testing autonomous vehicles in public parks and they tell us that the large majority of incidents [near misses] are not due to the vehicles malfunctioning, but to people jumping in front of the cars to test whether they stop in time."

Mixed traffic carries risk, he continues, just as there may be risks associated with behavioural patterns we cannot foresee. "As with any new technology, there will be failures and even fatalities, but the overall benefits - in terms of [estimated] 90% fewer accidents, 40% less congestion, up to 80% less emissions, and 50% of parking space saved - are so substantial that the technological development will prevail."

What other autonomous vehicles might we see on our roads?

From vertical take-off and landing "flying car" prototypes to "sidewalk robots" and delivery drones, by 2030 our roads and pavements may have begun to resemble a scene from Blade Runner.

"Driverless trucks are already being tested around the world, with Daimler testing on public roads in the US and Germany in 2016," says Boland. Bosch meanwhile, envisages that a truck will become "a 40-tonne smart device on wheels" by 2025. "[The trucks] will receive all the data they need in real time from the Bosch IoT cloud, including information on the route, congestion, detours, and unloading facilities at the destination," says Hoffmann. "This will allow the driver to get on with other things [such as processing shipping documents], while the truck drives itself."

Car v tech giants: who will win?

Today's AV sector is a crowded space. It's estimated that at least 33 tech and auto corporations, ranging from Apple to Chinese bus manufacturer Yutong - via the likes of Audi, BMW, Google, Honda, Intel, Tesla, Uber and Volkswagen - are currently developing AV technology.

With the $2tn global car industry in the throes of transformation due to a perfect storm of digitisation, AI/automation and changes in consumer behaviour - such as the rise of on-demand taxi services in urban centres - it's not difficult to see why car manufacturers, tech companies and investors are scrambling for territory, fearful of being left out. "All this change creates both risk and opportunity for incumbents," says GP Bullhound's Sven Raeymaekers. So who does he see coming out on top?

"Some pundits claim that since the car industry has historically only focused on the internal combustion engine and shell design, it has no chance against the tsunami of software moving towards their shores. But so many industries have already suffered from this onslaught, and the automakers have no plans to see history repeat itself," he says. "Across the board, major players - Renault-Nissan, Ford, BMW, Daimler and GM, to name a few - are investing in and developing their own technologies, hiring talent or acquiring startups. From GM investing $500m in Lyft to the creation of Ford Smart Mobility, every single big manufacturer is looking to innovate and adapt."

Besides, any notion of a race between tech firms and traditional car makers is a false perception, argues Accenture's Luca Mentuccia. He predicts a surge of strategic cooperation instead. "We will see even more cross-industry partnerships for autonomous driving in the future in which car makers and a large range of tech firms from chipmakers to big data specialists, telcos and mobility platforms will work together."

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Twelve things you need to know about driverless cars

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rom forecourt to scrapyard, a new car in the UK lasts an average of 13.9 years, which is why if you got one today, it might very well be the last car you buy.

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A philosopher is perhaps the last person you'd expect to have a hand in designing your next car, but that's exactly what one expert on self-driving vehicles has in mind.

Chris Gerdes, a professor at Stanford University, leads a research lab that is experimenting with sophisticated hardware and software for automated driving. But together with Patrick Lin, a professor of philosophy at Cal Poly, he is also exploring the ethical dilemmas that may arise when vehicle self-driving is deployed in the real world.

Gerdes and Lin organized a workshop at Stanford earlier this year that brought together philosophers and engineers to discuss the issue. They implemented different ethical settings in the software that controls automated vehicles and then tested the code in simulations and even in real vehicles. Such settings might, for example, tell a car to prioritize avoiding humans over avoiding parked vehicles, or not to swerve for squirrels.

Illustration by Victor Kerlow

Fully self-driving vehicles are still at the research stage, but automated driving technology is rapidly creeping into vehicles. Over the next couple of years, a number of carmakers plan to release vehicles capable of steering, accelerating, and braking for themselves on highways for extended periods. Some cars already feature sensors that can detect pedestrians or cyclists, and warn drivers if it seems they might hit someone.

So far, self-driving cars have been involved in very few accidents. Google's automated cars have covered nearly a million miles of road with just a few rear-enders, and these vehicles typically deal with uncertain situations by simply stopping (see " Google's Self-Driving Car Chief Defends Safety Record ").

As the technology advances, however, and cars become capable of interpreting more complex scenes, automated driving systems may need to make split-second decisions that raise real ethical questions.

At a recent industry event, Gerdes gave an example of one such scenario: a child suddenly dashing into the road, forcing the self-driving car to choose between hitting the child or swerving into an oncoming van.

"As we see this with human eyes, one of these obstacles has a lot more value than the other," Gerdes said. "What is the car's responsibility?"

Gerdes pointed out that it might even be ethically preferable to put the passengers of the self-driving car at risk. "If that would avoid the child, if it would save the child's life, could we injure the occupant of the vehicle? These are very tough decisions that those that design control algorithms for automated vehicles face every day," he said.

Gerdes called on researchers, automotive engineers, and automotive executives at the event to prepare to consider the ethical implications of the technology they are developing. "You're not going to just go and get the ethics module, and plug it into your self-driving car," he said.

Other experts agree that there will be an important ethical dimension to the development of automated driving technology.

"When you ask a car to make a decision, you have an ethical dilemma," says Adriano Alessandrini, a researcher working on automated vehicles at the University de Roma La Sapienza, in Italy. "You might see something in your path, and you decide to change lanes, and as you do, something else is in that lane. So this is an ethical dilemma."

Alessandrini leads a project called CityMobil2, which is testing automated transit vehicles in various Italian cities. These vehicles are far simpler than the cars being developed by Google and many carmakers; they simply follow a route and brake if something gets in the way. Alessandrini believes this may make the technology easier to launch. "We don't have this [ethical] problem," he says.

Others believe the situation is a little more complicated. For example, Bryant Walker-Smith, an assistant professor at the University of South Carolina who studies the legal and social implications of self-driving vehicles, says plenty of ethical decisions are already made in automotive engineering. "Ethics, philosophy, law: all of these assumptions underpin so many decisions," he says. "If you look at airbags, for example, inherent in that technology is the assumption that you're going to save a lot of lives, and only kill a few."

Walker-Smith adds that, given the number of fatal traffic accidents that involve human error today, it could be considered unethical to introduce self-driving technology too slowly. "The biggest ethical question is how quickly we move. We have a technology that potentially could save a lot of people, but is going to be imperfect and is going to kill."

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A philosopher is perhaps the last person you'd expect to have a hand in designing your next car, but that's exactly what one expert on self-driving vehicles has in mind. Chris Gerdes, a professor at Stanford University, leads a research lab that is experimenting with sophisticated hardware and software for automated driving.

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When it comes to automotive technology, self-driving cars are all the rage. Standard features on many ordinary cars include intelligent cruise control, parallel parking programs, and even automatic overtaking-features that allow you to sit back, albeit a little uneasily, and let a computer do the driving.

So it'll come as no surprise that many car manufacturers are beginning to think about cars that take the driving out of your hands altogether (see " Drivers Push Tesla's Autopilot Beyond Its Abilities "). These cars will be safer, cleaner, and more fuel-efficient than their manual counterparts. And yet they can never be perfectly safe.

And that raises some difficult issues. How should the car be programmed to act in the event of an unavoidable accident? Should it minimize the loss of life, even if it means sacrificing the occupants, or should it protect the occupants at all costs? Should it choose between these extremes at random? (See also " How to Help Self-Driving Cars Make Ethical Decisions.")

The answers to these ethical questions are important because they could have a big impact on the way self-driving cars are accepted in society. Who would buy a car programmed to sacrifice the owner?

So can science help? Today, we get an answer of sorts thanks to the work of Jean-Francois Bonnefon at the Toulouse School of Economics in France and a couple of pals. These guys say that even though there is no right or wrong answer to these questions, public opinion will play a strong role in how, or even whether, self-driving cars become widely accepted.

So they set out to discover the public's opinion using the new science of experimental ethics. This involves posing ethical dilemmas to a large number of people to see how they respond. And the results make for interesting, if somewhat predictable, reading. "Our results provide but a first foray into the thorny issues raised by moral algorithms for autonomous vehicles," they say.

Here is the nature of the dilemma. Imagine that in the not-too-distant future, you own a self-driving car. One day, while you are driving along, an unfortunate set of events causes the car to head toward a crowd of 10 people crossing the road. It cannot stop in time but it can avoid killing 10 people by steering into a wall. However, this collision would kill you, the owner and occupant. What should it do?

One way to approach this kind of problem is to act in a way that minimizes the loss of life. By this way of thinking, killing one person is better than killing 10.

But that approach may have other consequences. If fewer people buy self-driving cars because they are programmed to sacrifice their owners, then more people are likely to die because ordinary cars are involved in so many more accidents. The result is a Catch-22 situation.

Bonnefon and co are seeking to find a way through this ethical dilemma by gauging public opinion. Their idea is that the public is much more likely to go along with a scenario that aligns with their own views.

So these guys posed these kinds of ethical dilemmas to several hundred workers on Amazon's Mechanical Turk to find out what they thought. The participants were given scenarios in which one or more pedestrians could be saved if a car were to swerve into a barrier, killing its occupant or a pedestrian.

At the same time, the researchers varied some of the details such as the actual number of pedestrians that could be saved, whether the driver or an on-board computer made the decision to swerve and whether the participants were asked to imagine themselves as the occupant or an anonymous person.

The results are interesting, if predictable. In general, people are comfortable with the idea that self-driving vehicles should be programmed to minimize the death toll.

This utilitarian approach is certainly laudable but the participants were willing to go only so far. "[Participants] were not as confident that autonomous vehicles would be programmed that way in reality-and for a good reason: they actually wished others to cruise in utilitarian autonomous vehicles, more than they wanted to buy utilitarian autonomous vehicles themselves," conclude Bonnefon and co.

And therein lies the paradox. People are in favor of cars that sacrifice the occupant to save other lives-as long they don't have to drive one themselves.

Bonnefon and co are quick to point out that their work represents the first few steps into what is likely to be a fiendishly complex moral maze. Other issues that will need to be factored into future thinking are the nature of uncertainty and the assignment of blame.

Bonnefon and co say these issues raise many important questions: "Is it acceptable for an autonomous vehicle to avoid a motorcycle by swerving into a wall, considering that the probability of survival is greater for the passenger of the car, than for the rider of the motorcycle? Should different decisions be made when children are on board, since they both have a longer time ahead of them than adults, and had less agency in being in the car in the first place? If a manufacturer offers different versions of its moral algorithm, and a buyer knowingly chose one of them, is the buyer to blame for the harmful consequences of the algorithm's decisions?"

These problems cannot be ignored, say the team: "As we are about to endow millions of vehicles with autonomy, taking algorithmic morality seriously has never been more urgent."

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1510.03346 : Autonomous Vehicles Need Experimental Ethics: Are We Ready for Utilitarian Cars?

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Why Self-Driving Cars Must Be Programmed to Kill

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When it comes to automotive technology, self-driving cars are all the rage. Standard features on many ordinary cars include intelligent cruise control, parallel parking programs, and even automatic overtaking-features that allow you to sit back, albeit a little uneasily, and let a computer do the driving.

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Ethics

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As a part of our continued exploration of the morality behind advances in technology, today we take a look at self-driving cars. Some features of these autonomous vehicles have already been in use for some time: cars that park themselves, intelligent cruise control, and other advanced features may already be in a car you own or have used before. Fully autonomous vehicles are already on the road, being actively tested by major car and tech corporations, companies which are looking at a future where our cars drive us instead of the other way around.

While this all sounds quite cool and very exciting, a recent article points out that there are more complicated issues at hand than simply making cars that have the technological capability of getting themselves from point A to point B. In the end, a self-driving car is an advanced robot, a piece of technology that has to make important decisions on the fly and think critically to rapidly adapting situations. When you consider that human passengers and other living drivers come into the mix, these can be serious issues of life and death.

The idea of a self-driving car starts to get complicated when we are forced to consider what happens when things go wrong. What happens when an accident becomes unavoidable? How should the automated car act? Should it work to minimize loss of life? Protect the occupants of the self-driving car? The other car? If an impact would likely kill one of the occupants but not the others, can it be trusted to make that decision?

Another article, entitled " How to Help Self-Driving Cars Make Ethical Decisions " helps to shed light on some of these questions, while also exploring further queries related to the idea of entrusting our safety and ethical decisions to robotic cars.

One scenario explored by those researching and developing an ethical code for self driving cars involves a possible collision with a group of pedestrians. In this scenario, a self-driving car finds itself on a collision course with ten people on the sidewalk, all of whom would likely be killed by a collision. The alternative is for the car to swerve into a wall, which would save the ten pedestrians but sacrifice the passenger of the driverless car. Scientists and researchers asked this very same question we encourage you all to answer now: should the car choose to minimize loss of life (killing the one passenger instead of ten people) or should it protect itself?

Statistically, cars operated by humans have a higher rate of accidents because of human error. At the same time, if self-driving cars are designed to be purely altruistic to the point of sacrificing their passengers to save lives, would anyone buy them? Are we caught in a cycle in which the only way to avoid more accidents is through self-driving cars, but we won't be able to sell self-driving cars because they are programmed to potentially sacrifice their passengers?

The list of problematic decisions goes on and on, including whether self-driving cars should act differently when children are on board, whether they should take into account the relative safety of different vehicles and which are more likely to survive an accident, and any number of other, very complicated questions. In the end, are ideas like self sacrifice and general safety better left to human operators, or can they be reduced to mathematical equations and other scientific data points that allow cars to be programmed with the capacity to make these incredibly important decisions?

The main takeaway from the article discussed today is that part of the research and development of self-driving technology involves the input of public opinion. Discussions we have now will impact what kinds of decisions they self-driving cars will make. Start your discussion today with your own family, and look towards the future we will all share.

If you enjoyed your discussion of this article, we recommend another tech ethics piece, " The Challenge of Developing Robot Morality."

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The Ethics of Making and Using Self-Driving Cars - Inspire Conversation

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As a part of our continued exploration of the morality behind advances in technology, today we take a look at self-driving cars. Some features of these autonomous vehicles have already been in use for some time: cars that park themselves, intelligent cruise control, and other advanced features may already be in a car you own or have used before.