1. Legal Issue
1. Should Google car be legal?
“Everything is permitted unless prohibited”
The Geneva Convention
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
(NHTSA) regulations
The Vehicle Codes (U.S. states)
• Do not prohibit automated driving.
• Require every vehicle has a driver who is “at all
times”“able to control” the vehicle.
• Does not prohibit automated
driving
• New
vehicles must be certified
2. How
will the laws of driving have to adapt
self-driving car?
• Who should be responsible for the accident Google car involves?
• Some lawyers argue that the robot itself should be deemed liable.
They should be assigned legal personhood, which means that we
should give certain legal rights and obligations.
• Others say that if we don’t “assign liability to people,” there will be
“mass evasion of responsibility.”
Google car promises to revolutionize
the way of driving, making it easier
and safer for everyone to get around.
Such ambition impresses us deeply
and arouses our curiosity to explore
this new technology. Our research
object is to understand how Google
car works and what it means for
the whole sociotechnical system.
Specifically, we want to explore the
decision-making system of Google car
that enables it to safely navigate the
road without human interference. Also,
we are interested in the changes in
the lives of different groups if Google
delivers its promises. Our research
is meaningful, not only because of
its explanation on the mechanism of
Google car, but also its concentration
on the legal and moral issues caused by
Google car that can give people an in-
depth understanding of this technology
as well as its impacts on our society.
• The widespread of driverless cars will
lose thier jobs
• Self-driving cars aren’t smart enough
yet to zip around town without a
human driver
• Self-driving cars decrease accidents,
disrupting the demand for insurance
product from
current customers
• Self-driving cars can make driving
more efficient and safer by eliminating
distracted driving and other human error
Design:RuizhongLi,JiaxinWu
Research:JiaxinWu
Website:RuizhongLi,SooyeonHong
Video:XiangZhang
Dr.EvanBarba,Dr.J.R.Osborn
Sensor
Lasers, radars
and cameras
detect objects
in all directions
Rounded shape
Maximizes sensor field
of view
Computer
Designed specifically
for self-driving
Electric
batteries
To power the vehicle
Interior
Designed for riding,
not for driving
Stakeholders
• Self-driving car can free the visually
impaired from
public transportation
and dependence on others
• It also gives the visually impaired a
sense of
independence
• Google car will increase the capacity of highways by
a factor of 2 or 3
• Google car will result in the average American household cut-
ting its car ownership from
2.1 vehicles now
to 1.2 by 2040
• The number of
road deaths would
fall from
32400 a
year to 11300
• Google car will save the
average driver about
$1,000 annually regarding
car insurance
1.Zhu,Jiajun,DavidI.Ferguson,andDmitriA.Dolgov.System
andmethodforpredictingbehaviorsofdetectedobjects.US20120083960A1,issuedApril5,2012. http://www.google.c
patents/US20120083960.
2. Lin,P.(2013,October8).TheEthicsofAutonomousCars. TheAtlantic.Retrievedfrom
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/10/the-ethics-of-autonomous-cars/280360/
3. WhySelf-DrivingCarsMustBeProgrammedtoKill.(n.d.).RetrievedMarch13,2016,fromhttps://www.technologyreview.com/s/542626/why-self-driving-cars-must-be-programmed-to-kill/
4. Poczter,SharonL.,&Jankovic,LukaM.(2014).TheGoogleCar:DrivingTowardABetterFuture? JournalofBusinessCaseStudies.
5. Https://thenounproject.com.
6.Https://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/
Limitations
- Misunderstanding human drivers
A Crash
February 14, 2016, a Google self-driving car struck
a bus when attempting to avoid sandbags blocking
its path.
Google self-driving car cannot exhaust all the
possibilities that may occur on the road. Learning
experience from human drivers is an ongoing and
endless process.
Website:cctshineyourway.comFundamentalsofTechnology
GeorgetownUniveristy2016Spring
• It’s the responsibility
of programmers of
autonomous cars to
solve the trolley
problem
• Self-driving cars facilitate car-sharing,
and people’s demand for car decrease
• Google may manufacture the autonomous
vehicles itself