Whats Holding Self Driving Cars Back?

The Moral Problems With Self Driving Cars.

 We are going to cover 2 moral problems that companies face that no one really talks about.

This Is Moral Problem One Of 2 Major One We See.

There is a Link to Moral Problem #2 we see at the bottom of this page.

I know that this is going to sound a bit morbid or possibly evil. But, here it goes.

The Value of A Human Life Has to Have an Acknowledged and accepted Dollar Value. 

Again this may sound a bit absurd and possibly just something that people will probably just say “This Will NEVER Happen”. But, truthfully if you like it or not it already exists in some instances and we all live with a price tag on our heads. But, here comes the biggest dilemma . Depending on where you look you will see that our lives are worth completely different dollar amounts. And, this is where the issue lies. 

It may seem that we go off in a bit of a tangent here, but just follow me for j a bit. I’m am going to go over four ways dollar amounts are fixed onto a human life and then explain how in the world this effects self driving cars. 

Example One

Life If Not Priceless and really does have a price 

I personally agree that my life is completely priceless. I would pay an infinite amount of money. But, the sad truth is that I don’t have an infinite amount of money. And I can really only buy so much health insurance.

Health Insurance Companies

Here in America there are many health insurance options that can drastically vary from one another. Some insurances can be worth the paper they are written on, and some can be amazingly valuable (especially when you need it). 

Nowadays it is common to be expected to pay something when you go to the doctors office. Whether this be a copay, deductible, or simply a set percentage of the total procedure (many times 20%).

The Truth

This is the sad truth and this really deserves a lot of attention on its own. But, our health insurance options can be absolutely terrible. There are low cost plans that can require you to pay massive deductibles. Currently health insurance planes have Maximum out of pocket expense that are $8,150 for individuals and up to $16,300 for families. This means that your health insurance will only kick in after your pay a massive amount of money. The worst pat of it all is that if you were on a low cost plan to save money because you couldn’t afford better coverage. You most likely would find it quite difficult to come up with $16,300 if you have a family plan. 

But I’m Priceless Afterwards Right?

Nope,

Time Did a great article on this. They explained that the international standard for private and government run health insurance plans use a dollar amount to determine if treatment is worth its cost. Health insurance companies use a dollar amount to determine if a treatment is worth its cost. They state this amount is $50,000 per year of “quality life”. While Stanfords economist demonstrated that this figure should be $129,000, it’s really up the insurance company right now. 

How does this relate?

This shows that even though I may believe I’m priceless. If I have a health insurance plan that has a deductible that I can’t afford. I’m sort of out of luck and not even worth that 8 to 16K.

You can see these numbers at HealhtCare.gov

Example Two 

Life Insurance

This one is going to be a bit quick because it literally is a dollar value that we put on out own lives. Wether it be $1,000 or many Millions, we literally put on paper a value we put on our own lives.

Example Three

Use the current numbers.

Currently the value of a human life can vary drastically depending on who you ask. Some look at age, current income, and potential income. But surprisingly, our government actually puts a pretty high dollar amount on our lives. But, even in the government this number changes and there’s really not one set number. The EPA, FDA and USDA all have different  number but they are mostly 7+ million dollars. Here the EPA’s take on the subject EPA.gov

Even though these numbers are pretty high these kinds of amounts are not often paid. This then leads to our final example that now leads to the self driving car dilemma 

Example Four

The Hard Way

This is the hard way because it is extremely expensive and time consuming for both the person that is seeking compensation and the company that is set to pay the amount. This is Going to Court. 

Currently when there is an accident and there is some sort of damages caused especially by a large company. The amounts of compensation has to be determined for that specific situation. Whether this is through the courts or some sort of intermediary. This process has been used for a long time and has it benefits and negatives. 

The Connection 

Accepting the Truth

Driving is dangerous and we have to accept that people do die in motor vehicle accidents. In 2018 the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recorded that 36,560 people died in traffic related deaths. This mean on average there are more than 4 deaths per hour every hour. 

Accepting this fact we must understand that self driving cars will have accidents. When there is small accident that there isn’t any bodily harm. The process can be very simple. With the use of cameras and just how it has always been handled the fault is determined. The damages are assessed, amount owed is paid and then repaired. But, what happens when there is bodily harm?

The Complicated accidents

Whether the bodily harm is serious or minimal. This actually become complicated for a variety of reasons. 

Responsibility

Currently any driving assist features currently available are classified as driver assist. Even though they may have other names that may sound different. The current technologies are only to assist the driver. The driver is meant to pay full attention and be responsible for the vehicles actions and take control when needed. This removes the responsibility form the technology as it is only there to assist. But, now let’s cover if the car was truly self driving or completely autonomous with out a steering wheel. This is where responsibility becomes very vague. 

If you are the owner of the autonomous vehicle. You will most likely have certain responsibilities to maintain the the vehicle to certain standards. But, what if there is a malfunction out of your control that cause bodily harm or a death. This is where laws will most likely place the manufacture responsible. But this isn’t the problem yet.

Insurance

Every manufacture has an insurance policy that takes into the risk of damage and possible costs of the product they produce. Companies can possibly estimate the amount of accidents that may occur though possible equipment/software malfunctions or environmental impacts. This may sound like the company is acting unethical, but accidents will most likely happen. If you still disagree with this, what if a company can lower the number of traffic related deaths every year.  Every death less is one less family losing a loved one. Should we accept a number then just continually seek lower numbers in the future?

The Incalculable 

Damages can be determined relatively easy. If the self driving car hit a mail box. The damages are simple. A mail box and installation. If the self driving car totals a brand new $90,000 car, the replacement is $90,000. But lets go over what’s not simple.

I am not saying that this process is wrong and I am not arguing the importance of the process. But, when a life is lost or a person is injured the process for proper compensation can be very lengthy and extremely expensive for both the injured and the company at fault. 

The Dilemma 

If a company plans on launching thousands, if not millions of self driving cars on to the roads accidents are going to be inevitable. With the current process it is nearly impossible to calculate a risk cost or insurance policy. When two people are in an accident the cost are calculated in a few ways. 

When Regular People Get Into Accidents

Who is at fault. If the person that is not at fault suffered bodily harm the insurance to the maximum limits are available to be sued for. If the amount the injured are seeking is above the person’s (at fault) insurance limits. The injured can then attempt to sue the person at fault personally. This can only work so much because you can’t take what the person doesn’t have. This is the reason why having under and uninsured mortise insurance is so important. Legal minimums can be very little and cover almost nothing in some states. 

Now When Companies Are involved

When commercial vehicles are involved, the entire “sueing” changes. Commercial policies usually carry much higher limits. While people with personal policies may carry $10,000 limits on their vehicles. Commercial policies usually carry limits in the upper 100’s of thousands and even millions. Then like the example above that you can personally sue the responsible person the company has much more value that can then play a role in how much money the injured is seeking. The level of possible compensation can be drastically different. This is why some lawyers specifically seek cases involving commercial vehicles like truck accidents. 

For Companies To Make The Last Jump

For Companies to make the last jump into self diving isn’t just technology improvements. I believe it’s a streamline in handling the shear number of claims that they will be responsible for.

There Will be a Massive Volume

Some people will argue that if everyone else already deals with every case individually why can’t the company with self driving cars do this.

Understand Scale

• • Let’s put this into scale and look and the shear of vehicles a company would be responsible for. 
  • Ford Sold about 5,386,000 vehicles in just the year of 2019 according to their Annual Report filing. This doesn’t include GM Chrysler Toyota, Nissan and every other company.
  • Everyone can agree that the US Postal Service Has A LOT of vehicles. According to USPS.com the USPS has about 216,000 owned vehicles. We all see USPS trucks everywhere and every day.
  • If a company looked at creating a ride share company like Uber with Self Driving Cars. Let take a close look at Uber. According to SEC filling Uber filed with the SEC. Uber has about 3.9 million drivers . Imagine replacing all of those drivers with self driving cars. Even if Uber needed just  10 percent of the number of  self driving cars to replace all their drivers. That is still nearly doubly of the vehicles the USPS operates.

Conclusion 

The number of vehicles that will be under the responsibly of any company that offers truly self driving technology will be massive. And until a list of responsibilities and compensations are set, companies cannot sufficiently calculate risk. Causing Self Driving to be for the future.

Link: The Second Moral Problem To Self Driving Cars.

• Self Driving Cars Will Have To Be Programed To Allow People To Die, Seriously! (coming Soon)