Topic: Autonomous Vehicles
Introduction
Autonomous vehicles are those made with driving systems that are automated. They are driverless or self-driving vehicles. In the United States, automated cars have been able to save more than 30,000 lives per year (Bonnefon et al., 2017). These vehicles have shown the most significant auto safety by changing the focus from post-crash injury reduction to prevention of collision. Autonomous cars have crucial implications in public health through the ethical issues that are related to them. The principles and moral values of public health are applied in various areas concerning automated vehicles. The spread of computerized vehicles globally has enhanced saving more than 10milkion lives in the world, which is much pertinent in the field of public health on accident reduction (Ramanujam, 2018). This paper, therefore, entails giving the ethical considerations that the manufacturers of automated vehicles make concerning the reduction of accidents in the world. Below are several improvements in the field of motorized vehicles that prevent accidents.
How autonomous vehicle designers impact the public health sectors?
The field of public health has boom been impacted by the advancements in automatic designed vehicles like automatic airbags and seatbelts, and this has portrayed a significant reduction of mortality and morbidity rates from the accidents (Michieli, 2018). The safety of the motor vehicle has marked a significant achievement in public health for the last decade because it would reduce the fatalities of the in the traffic by almost 90% by lowering accidents resulting from human errors. Globally the automated vehicles in the 21st century could save about 10million lives creating the most crucial advance in health. Despite the act that avoiding crashes and reducing harms resulting from motor vehicle accidents are public safety issues have injected public health safety issues under the intellectual umbrella of public health. Public health is seeking to change the current approach to automatic safety by mitigating harm from accidents during collisions to complete prevention of such injuries. However, it may be impossible to manufacture a vehicle that never crashes (Wang et al., 2019).
In automotive designs, there are many crucial and sophisticated policies and regulatory guidelines like insurance policies, including automatic no-fault insurance for automotive models. Tort liability, and product issues, and the issues concerning the privacy of the communications inside and within the vehicle are highly prevented in these vehicles. We are looking at the impacts of automatic cars on the environment like pollution. Autonomous cars have less pollution in the environment compared to motor vehicles (Talley, 2019). This means less harmful gases are not released into the atmosphere, which is an excellent achievement for the health of the public.
Another way in which the autonomous vehicles prevent accidents is when algorithms are created for the cars in a forced-choice like whether to hit a vehicle parked or a pedestrian on the road covered with ice. During the designing period, public health leaders can collaborate with the designers and give them the universal values and guidelines that are used in making the ultimate decisions. This helps the designers to focus on the social and ethical impacts of the autonomous vehicle (Fleetwood, 2017). They then collaborate with other designers like Uber, and nu Tonomy to ensure they foster safety and equity across the communities. This has enhanced the reduction of numbers of injuries from motor vehicle crashes and collisions hence being an achievement in the health of the public.
A broad context of a framework for the health of the public offers a beginning place of the health of the public authorities to make the questions and impact the decisions that will be made in the future on designing the autonomous vehicles (Goodall, 2017). The code of ethics for public health requires that public health advocates have to advocate the rights of communities and individuals while protecting the health of the public by ensuring an opportunity for input from the individuals or the society. The leaders of the public health have to ensure that the communities are aware of the informed decisions on how the autonomous vehicles will traverse their roads and they can ensure that the drivers who will deploy and test the autonomous cars get the society’s consent for their implementation (Crayton, 2017). This will enable the community to stay away from the streets and the roads during the testing and prevent injuries. This is a significant concern for the health of the people.
The autonomous vehicles also have the 15 safety standards of testing, including the safeguards when the car fails and many more. These standards are generally made to ensure safety in trial, and the deployment of the autonomous vehicles. These standards may arise from government regulations to protect the health of the people. Although the autonomous vehicles mitigate the morbidity and mortality rates, it must adhere to the government regulations guidelines that protect the public health values (Kelley, 2017). In situations of forced choice, autonomous vehicles will be capable of detecting danger far away and avoid any accident. With the application of health ethical assumptions, the cars are now being programmed to be able to react to different conditions. The automobile vehicles learn from their mistakes like omnipotent human beings, and with time, they are assumed they will be perfect enough. Their ability to detect a danger far enough helps prevent the occurrence of accidents, and that is a pertinent improvement in the health of the people (Bonnefon et al., 2016).
Leaders of the health of the public should accept autonomous vehicles as a unique invention that transforms transportation mostly in urban places while improving efficiency and saving lives. It is the role of the public health to keep in touch with the evolving advancements in technology, participate actively in informative discussions, interact societies broadly and advocate rational rules and regulations on the public health ethical issues, and persist that the outcomes of the technologies are measured effectively (Pettigrew, 2018). Through early and consistent discussions and communications, the skills, knowledge, and values of the public health leaders will be used in making the decisions on autonomous vehicles.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I have discussed the autonomous vehicle and how their designers respond to the ethical issues on the health of the people and the reduction of accidents. The autonomous cars are suited with airbags and the seatbelts that prevent any deaths from the crashing. The use of algorithms in forced-choice also enables autonomous vehicles to detect and react to the faraway dangers. The public health leaders also have to create awareness to the public when the vehicles are to be tested and deployed. This enables the community to keep off the paths to avoid accidents. The health leaders also have to welcome the autonomous inventions as they improve efficiency and safety, but they also have to discuss various ethical issues of health that are to be considered during decision making to design autonomous vehicles in the future.
References
Bonnefon, J.F., Shariff, A. and Rahwan, I., 2016. The social dilemma of autonomous vehicles. Science, 352(6293), pp.1573-1576.
Ramanujam, M., 2018. Parking autonomous vehicles. U.S. Patent 10,023,231.
Michieli, U. and Badia, L., 2018, September. Game theoretic analysis of road user safety scenarios involving autonomous vehicles. In 2018 IEEE 29th Annual International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC) (pp. 1377-1381). IEEE.
Wang, H., Huang, Y., Khajepour, A., Zhang, Y., Rasekhipour, Y. and Cao, D., 2019. Crash mitigation in motion planning for autonomous vehicles. IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 20(9), pp.3313-3323.
Talley, E., 2019. Automatorts: How Should Accident Law Adapt to Autonomous Vehicles? Lessons from Law and Economics.
Fleetwood, J., 2017. Public health, ethics, and autonomous vehicles. American journal of public health, 107(4), pp.532-537.
Goodall, N.J., 2017. From trolleys to risk: Models for ethical autonomous driving.
Crayton, T.J. and Meier, B.M., 2017. Autonomous vehicles: Developing a public health research agenda to frame the future of transportation policy. Journal of Transport & Health, 6, pp.245-252.
Kelley, B., 2017. Public health, autonomous automobiles, and the rush to market. Journal of public health policy, 38(2), pp.167-184.
Bonnefon, J.F., Shariff, A. and Rahwan, I., 2016. The social dilemma of autonomous vehicles. Science, 352(6293), pp.1573-1576.
Pettigrew, S., Fritschi, L. and Norman, R., 2018. The potential implications of autonomous vehicles in and around the workplace. International journal of environmental research and public health, 15(9), p.1876.