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Annotated Bibliography

Why Autonomous Cars are Beneficial to Society

Elliot Panicco
Professor Malcolm Campbell
English 1103
March 9, 2015

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Annotated Bibliography
Bailey, Ronald. "The Moral Case For Self-Driving Cars." Reason 46.4 (2014): 18. Points of View
Reference Center. Web. 9 Mar. 2015.
Bailey provides great solutions to many posing problems with autonomous cars. Bailey
answers the biggest question of who is responsible when autonomous cars crash? He
answers the question a few different ways. The first saying that insurance companies
would always cover the damage, which is a great idea but could pose problems for those
who cannot afford insurance. The second says that everyone must sign a contract at
purchase of the vehicle saying that they are responsible for the car even though they may
not be driving. Bailey provides another great idea saying that with each one of these cars,
there are multiple cameras which could tell who was really at fault for each crash. The
author also tells us the advantages of autonomous cars. First he says that because
autonomous cars are safer, death and injury would go down because of the lack of
accidents. Second he informs us that currently humans use about 5 percent of the road.
This could go up to 80 percent with all autonomous cars on the road. Having autonomous
cars also means fewer cars because now they can drive and pick up people and take them
places while others are at work or school. This article is very effective in communicating
several ideas in a condensed and easy to read manner. It provided a lot of new unfound
information as well as possible solutions to many of the problems that we face with the
unknown of autonomous cars. This article was the most helpful with my research and
gave me many more ideas and places to research.

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Kanter, Zack. "How Ubers Autonomous Cars Will Destroy 10 Million Jobs And Reshape The
Economy by 2025." CBS SF Bay Area. CBS, 27 Jan. 2015. Web. 10 Mar. 2015.
Kanter goes into detail about how the introduction of autonomous cars will have a large
impact on the economy and millions of jobs. He explains how autonomous cars could
help taxi services like Uber because 75% of the fair goes to the driver. Only 9,000 Uber
vehicles will be needed to replace all of the taxis in New York City and fairs could be cut
to 50 cents a mile. Kanter then explains some of the downfalls of having autonomous
cars. He says the 99% of the cars on the road will be off with a system of all autonomous
cars. This would cause a large decrease in revenue for car companies and the laying off of
thousands of workers. However the author estimates that sharing autonomous cars instead
of owning one would allow 1 trillion dollars of now usable income for the country.
Money wouldnt be the only thing saved. Lives will be saved too. About 30,000 lives will
be saved every year with an autonomous fleet of cars. Also billions of gallons of gas will
be saved every year. Kanter provides great facts and numbers for the advantages and
disadvantages of having autonomous cars. This source was able to give me a good insight
to the statistical evidence that autonomous cars would bring to the table.
Lin, Patrick. "Here's a Terrible Idea: Robot Cars with Adjustable Ethics Settings." Wired. N.p.,
18 Aug. 2014. Web. 9 Mar. 2015.
Lin explains why autonomous cars are not exactly a no brainer that everyone thinks they
are. He explains to us that with self-driving cars comes a lot of responsibility. Lin
conducted a survey asking people if they would want settings for what to happen during
an accident, or in other words who should die and who should live. 44 percent of people
wanted to have this feature included in their autonomous car. Lin conducted another

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survey asking if people would sacrifice themselves to save a child they were about to hit.
64 percent of people reported that they would kill the child. Whether or not we would be
able to program the ethics setting there is still a lot of issues. Lin tells us that people
could sue the engineers for writing code that choose to take a persons life is wrong and
how can they decide whos life is more important? Lins article is effective in a way that
makes us hesitate and think Are we ready for autonomous cars and the questions that
they bring Lin provides the counter argument for why autonomous cars are not
beneficial to society and how they can tear it apart.
Urmson C, and W Whittaker. Self-Driving Cars and the Urban Challenge. Ieee Intelligent
Systems. 23.2 (2008): 66-68. Print.
All Autonomous cars are made for the same purpose but not all are made the same way.
Urmson and Whittaker say that autonomous cars would be much safer than cars driven by
humans and that they would be more fuel-efficient. The authors are able to explain this
by saying that because the cars will get into fewer accidents, safety will be less of an
issue and manufactures will start to take out safety equipment allowing for lighter and
more fuel-efficient cars. The authors go on to say that those who cannot drive due to old
age or disability would no longer be home bound or need to rely on others for driving
them around. Urmson and Whittaker then tell us about a Chevy Tahoe named Boss and
how it transformed into an autonomous car. Boss is not like the other autonomous cars
that use cameras at almost every spot on the car to help the car see the road. It was able to
drive very effectively with only the use of GPS, laser, and radar. This only worked
because Boss was apart of a challenge test track that had only cars and no traffic signals
or signs. The radar and laser were used to tell where the other cars were in relation to

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Boss and the GPS was used to tell where the lines were on the road and to indicate what
the other cars were doing. I believe this to be a very reliable source because it is a
scholarly article from Carnegie Mellon University and it was peer reviewed. I do think
that although the creation of Boss was a success it was not too beneficial to the
autonomous car industry. There were too many missing factors like traffic signs signals as
well as pedestrians. It did provide new information about how GPS can be used to track
and predict car movements using the lines on the roadway. Also the authors were able to
explain how autonomous cars could be beneficial to not only the average person but also
those who couldnt drive. This article gave me a new perspective on why autonomous
cars are beneficial to society.

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