Autonomous vehicles
Additional Considerations
For a fully autonomous network to truly be achieved, manufacturers and governments must cooperate to implement changes throughout different areas of society, providing that government would want to pursue a fully autonomous network. I believe that infrastructure in several areas/industries must be set up before any level 5 autonomy becomes commercially available. One area that must be looked at is the DVLA (or any equivalent institute depending on different countries). Government must initially increase funding for the DVLA to allow the organization to restructure and develop a whole new application process; driving lessons will need to change to teach people on how to become a passenger rather than a driver. On top of this, the newly established funding must be enough to subsidize or cover the costs of providing autonomous cars for most individual driving schools, but since there are so many, the upfront cost would be enormous. However, this could force only a selection of driving schools in each area to be provided with an autonomous car, putting other, smaller businesses under pressure. Another initiative that governments and manufacturers need to carry out is public information. As demonstrated by the results of the survey in the previous section, manufacturers need to win the trust of the general public if they are to succeed, but the messages they convey to people should not just be centred around promoting their products. Instead, I believe that each individual company has a duty to inform people about the limitations and specifics of their autonomous vehicle, including the morals programmed into the car. If companies define and clearly advertise key aspects of the vehicle that would concern the public, confusion would be avoided in certain situations (such as people questioning the morals of a company due to a crash that their vehicle was in). Many surveys and focus groups should be conducted to ascertain the public’s opinions and worries so that companies can work to come up with solutions for problems raised by different people. Companies can approach the design of certain aspects of their vehicle in a user-centred way, increasing the chances of their product being a success. The costliest advancement governments or manufacturers may need to make could be the development of new, physical infrastructure. For autonomous vehicles to truly mimic a human driver, it must be able to quickly adapt to a new or unexpected situation, e.g., when there are road works. To maximize the effi ciency of object recognition, ‘smart’ temporary traffic/construction signs and cones may need to be developed. These signs could use DSRC, and once placed they can notify approaching cars, allowing these computers to reconfigure their maps and find another route. But naturally the sheer quantity of the individual signs would exacerbate the costs, not to mention the costs of implementing the ‘smart’ technology which would allow the signs to connect to the cars. The final area that would need reform is the law, as incidents involving autonomous vehicles would have to be treated uniquely in court. Society cannot meaningfully hold a computer accountable for its actions, therefore legislators and courts need to determine which party/parties will be liable for an accident involving autonomous vehicles, or any form of autonomy for that matter. But this would not be sufficient. As well as identifying the liable parties, legislators and courts must agree on how to properly compensate the injured or affected parties. If this is not established, manufacturers could incur excessive penalties and costs. On the other hand, the injured parties may not be adequately compensated (Lin 2020). Currently, if the manufacturers were to be legally responsible for an accident, the incident could fall under tort liability or products liability. The latter can be extremely costly and time-consuming for both parties, and in this case, the claimant[s], who would most likely be composed
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