- different countries have different traffic laws;

may not even be allowed to use driverless cars on the road

- if vehicle gets in an accident; are the developers responsible? (could be kinda ethical tho!)

- data protection

- computer misuse (could be hacked!)

Ethical issues:

- taking humans jobs

- surveillance type issues

- acquiring raw resources often uses exploitative labour

Environmental issues:

- EVs are often lower-emissions than fossil fueled cars

- fewer vehicles needed as they are more efficient at their jobs

- manufacture of vehicles requires raw resource acquisition

This also leads to one ethical issue that is the acquisition of raw materials often involves unethical labour practices. This is because of the high demand for cheaper materials, at the expense of the quality of the work environment and pay of workers. This leads to workers being treated unfairly and being underpaid.

Also, in some countries the legality of allowing autonomous vehicles on the road may be called into question, as since they are not sentient beings they are incapable of responding properly to unique situations they are not prepared for, which may happen on the road, If such an accident does take place, then the developers may be held as legally responsible for the accident caused by their product.

There is also the risk of computer misuse and the danger posed by malicious individuals, if someone were to program them wrongly or hack the autonomous vehicles, they could be used for terrorist purposes.

Another potential legal issue is that any data recorded by the autonomous vehicles falls under the Data Protection Act, and must be held securely.

One ethical issue about autonomous vehicles is that they will take away humans’ jobs. There will be less and less driver jobs because businesses will take the advantage of paying less in their transportation of their goods. This takes away drivers’ jobs and will result in a mass of unemployment in the area. It will be harder for the drivers to make a living. This could lead to a fall in the country’s economy as the number of jobless people increases.

If we start to use autonomous vehicles, it can cause many problems in our society. Firstly, there are many legal problems with using these vehicles when considering laws, there can be different laws about using autonomous vehicles in different countries, so it may be difficult for the lorries to drive long distances across Europe. Since the vehicles are computers, they can get hacked, where misuse and cybercrime can be done onto these vehicles and might cause an accident where it can be difficult to decide to who’s at fault, where it is most likely developers of the program will be liable.

Ethically, this can take lorry drivers out of their jobs, where this is wrong as people who do these jobs need the money to live. It is also that producing these vehicles will need the resources to make them where they are usually obtained from exploitative labour.

Thinking environmentally, it can be good environmentally as driverless lorries are more efficient than human controlled lorries, this means that we need fewer vehicles. It is also that these are electric-powered lorries because it contains the artificial intelligence, so it should have lower emissions into the atmosphere. Although, manufacturing these vehicles could be more difficult and environmentally damaging as more resources are needed to construct one.

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A legal issue with builder driverless cars is that if they cause an accident who is responsible for the accident the company or the developers and another legal issue is what kind of data protection, will the recordings be public or would they hide people’s face because people might not feel comfortable with them potentially being recorded and are they going to follow all data laws in all the countries they are available in or are they legally allowed to drive driverless cars on the road at all, and how protected from hacker would they be because if they’re in the road and someone takes control that would probably put others in danger.

However, this decision would be good for the company who introduces them because it would mean that their costs would be lowered significantly. This would be because they don’t need to pay a human to drive long distances, which cuts down on employment costs. Also, an autonomous lorry doesn’t get tired, so it can keep driving for longer than a human. This would also lead to more profits, which would be good for owners and shareholders.