Ethical Advancement
A major theme this week has been the social ramifications of technical advancement. We read about how the height of a bridge can be socially motivated and how many jobs were lost to an automatic tomato picker. While these objects don’t hold political affiliation themselves, they can be used to push an agenda, my be interpreted in a certain political light, or force certain policies by their nature (and it’s interaction with human psychology). It’s important to look at emerging technologies in this light, and see what effects they may have beyond their obvious ones.
The cutting edge of automobiles boast a number of technologies that, in theory, help eliminate human error. Some vehicles can park themselves, or break in an emergency. Even the most passive systems can monitor the environment around the car and warn the driver of potential danger. Despite these safety features, traffic deaths topped 40,000 in 2017 as in 2016 before that. We’re seeing a shift towards totally autonomous passenger vehicles, which could help eliminate traffic deaths altogether. Virtually every accident is caused by a human making a bad decision, either through selfishness, distraction, or ignorance. Computers can’t be selfish or distracted, and we can feed them more information that humans can acquire through our natural senses. Self-driving cars could even be designed to commuicate with each other or a central network to facilitate route changes or turns. We might be able to eliminate traffic signals completely. Self-driving cars could drive much closer together at higher speeds, delivering passengers much faster than they could before.
Of course, there are some major societal issues to work out. Even assuming we could demonstrate our algorithms are perfect and hack-proof, there would be people who wouldn’t trust the computer over a human driver. It’s a totally irrational stance, given how unpredictable human drivers actually are, but that wouldn’t stop people from adhering to it. Additionally, to get the full benefit of self-driving cars, we’d either need a separate, parallel infrastructure for them to operate on, or ban human driving. By necessity, we’d need some authoritarian policy to either fund a new infrastructure, or enact and enforce that ban.
Banning human driving could potentially hurt those further down the economic ladder than the rich. The rich can just buy new cars that conform to the new laws, but the poor might not be able to replace a vehicle even with years of warning. Again, an authoritarian policy to aid those less fortunate would have to be in place, maybe offering increased trade-in value.
Additionally, a ban on human driving would have a major economic impact. Just over 1% of Americans are truck drivers, who would be laid off. So would all the taxi and Uber drivers. Postal workers and deliver people would probably hang on for a while, but eventually someone would develop an economical way of eliminating those jobs, as well. With no accidents and no one violating traffic laws, we no longer need traffic police. The funds that traffic citations brought in to municipal governments would dry up, as would the jobs of judges and support personnel for traffic courts. The reduction in traffic accidents would impact the healthcare industry, choking off a major supply of organ donors and reducing (though by no means eliminating) the need of emergency medical personnel. If the vehicles can be programmed to take themselves in for preventative maintenance, that industry will see some shifts in income. More preventative maintenance will also mean less emergency or catastrophic maintenance, which may effect net earnings. Auto-body shops will likely see a huge drop in demand. And pay-to-park may become a thing of the past, as the car can drop passengers off at the entrance and find somewhere to “hang out” before it’s needed again.
