A woman named Nancy lives in a world where the idea of self-driving vehicles has been fully realized. She calls for a cab, and the cab arrives, but there’s no driver. She doesn’t think anything of it and she simply wants to get out of the rainy night. The car starts driving and the car collides with a truck. She is fine, however, the truck driver isn’t. Is she responsible for the accident? Was it just the wrong place and the wrong time? Can we blame a car with no driver? So many questions, no real answers. Self-driving cars have always been something people simply only saw in movies or TV shows, however as technology has become more and more advanced, more and more people are now debating whether or not this idea should become a reality or if it should stay in the shows. While the idea seems achievable at first, once putting in more thought, this idea comes with many complications and many factors that are important to look at including safety, practical, and ethical implications. For these reasons, self-driving cars should be illegal or at least have more regulations.
One of the biggest concerns when it comes to self-driving cars is the safety aspects and whether or not technology can drive significantly better than humans. According to Jessica Chicchino, the vice president of the insurance substitution for highway safety research, “It’s likely that fully self-driving cars will eventually identify hazards better than people, but we found that this alone would not prevent the bulk of crashes.” The same article that Chicchino co-authored, goes on to state that there has already been a case of a person being killed by a self-driving car, that being 49-year-old Eliane Hiezenberg. It was stated that the car was able to identify Miss Hiezenberg, however was not able to predict her movements and unfortunately hit her. The promise of self-driving car safety is also realized on,” sensors that worked perfectly and systems that never malfunctioned”, which are hard things to promise, not to mention how self-driving cars are vulnerable to hacking. According to author Jeffery R. Harris, from Harris Lowry Manton law firm, self-driving cars are not only susceptible to cyber attacks, but they are vulnerable to them. Harris uses an example of a legal hacker, also known as a whitehead, who can easily hack a Tesla to further his point. This is concerning because this experiment was conducted in 2019 and the number of cyberattacks has only risen since then. A cyber attack on someone’s car would not only mean access to people’s location, but it would also mean control over it. While all of this information is true there is a need to look at why there are such heated arguments on this topic to begin with and understand where the differences are.
There are many good reasons why the impact of self-driving cars would greatly impact the world, such as helping those with disabilities get around, increasing productivity, and increasing competition across countries. Firstly, those who suffer from a disability and the elderly would benefit greatly from having self-driving cars and allowing them to still get out and not rely on others for transportation. Many professionals such as Dr. Koepp, from the Center for Mental Health and Aging say that driving for the elderly helps them feel more “independent and helps maintain morale and a sense of confidence.” They go on to say that without transportation or access to it, people tend to feel worse, and the “risk fo depression nearly doubles.” This is all to say that self-driving cars would be a great solution for those who are elderly and disabled. This would allow the many who are not able to drive to still experience the independence and all other wonders that come with driving. Along with helping those from these communities, another benefit would be the increase in productivity. Productivity all around the world would also go up because people would now be able to do other things while driving. According to the Federal Highway Administration, the average amount of hours across all age and gender groups is roughly 13,476 hours per year. With that amount of time, many people would be able to do very beneficial things such as send quick emails or simply just lay back and take a load off. Many would benefit from this especially those who do a lot of road trips or those who come from an all-day shift at work and shouldn’t drive when that tired. Lastly, self-driving cars would lead to better and better technology. This is because many countries would try and get their foot in the idea of revolutionized transportation and would try to create better and hopefully safer modules as a mean to capitalize on the newfound market. There are many examples of better technology coming from countries racing to be “The First”. The biggest example of this would be the space race with Russia vs. the U.S. and the invention of the rocket ship. While all these points are valid and would be beneficial, however, there are still things that should make self-driving cars illegal.
The position of people who support self-driving cars is solid and would be hard to disprove, however going back to the beginning of this essay the idea of self-driving cars is incredible in concept, but are a whole lot different in practice. These are the safety, practical, and ethical reasons behind them and how they have been proven not to be any safer compared to humans, and bring up a sum of questions with answers that no one is sure of. In summary, self-driving cars should be illegal or at the very least put under harsh regulation, with laws that are cleared and defined before this idea even thinks about leaving the big screen.

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Harris, Jeffry R. “Can Driverless Vehicles Be Hacked?” Harris Lowry Manton
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Koepp, Dr. Regina. “Older Adults and Driving! Why Is Driving so Important to
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