The pros and cons of the self-driving car revolution

According to a 2024 survey by AAA, close to 70% of Americans are afraid of fully self-driving cars, a number which has not decreased from last year. This uneasiness, the findings say, is largely due to a public misunderstanding of self-driving technology and "numerous and well-publicized incidents involving current vehicle technologies," said Greg Brannon, the director of automotive engineering research for AAA. As technology becomes more advanced, both sides of the debate on whether self-driving is the future are gaining more ammo.

Con: Machines are not as smart as humans

A self-driving system "struggles more than humans during low-light conditions and when performing turns," said New Scientist. A new study published in the journal Nature Communications said "accidents involving Advanced Driving Systems occur more frequently than Human-Driven Vehicle accidents under dawn/dusk or turning conditions." The discrepancy would be even higher in unpredictable systems. The development of automatic vehicles (AVs) has proven to be more difficult than expected because "the brain makes judgments and assesses probabilities," and "every aspect of that thought process (conscious or unconscious) must be programmed to ensure safety," said the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.

"We have lots of empirical evidence that humans are incredibly good at intuiting the intentions of others," Sam Anthony said at Quartz in 2017. "The perils of lacking an intuition for state of mind are already evident" in self-driving technology. For now, self-driving cars "are less adept in unusual or unexpected situations," said The New York Times. "That's why they still need the humans in the fusion center."

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Many self-driving vehicle companies still rely on human assistance from a distance. "For years, companies avoided mentioning the remote assistance provided to their self-driving cars," said the Times. "The illusion of complete autonomy helped to draw attention to their technology."

Pro: Self-driving cars could make our roads safer

Despite concerns over whether self-driving vehicles could match up to human drivers, the same Nature Communications study found that self-driving vehicles were safer and less likely to cause accidents in most scenarios. "Fully autonomous vehicles would take human error out of the equation, thereby making our roads safer not just for drivers, but also passengers, cyclists and pedestrians," Bernard Marr said at Forbes.

While not yet perfect, AVs have the ability to evolve quickly. "Autonomous vehicles are designed to learn from driving experiences, together, as a community," Martin Kristensson, Volvo's head of product strategy, said to The Wall Street Journal. "This drastically increases their rate of learning in comparison to an individual driver." Given time, automatic vehicles have the potential to become safer than human drivers.

Con: They could cause privacy and security concerns

"A real cyberattack against autonomous vehicles is very much in the realm of possibility," said The Hill. If a hacker figures out the system being used by a potential car, they "can now target those cars on the road," said Shane Tews, a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise, to The Hill. It could allow vehicles to become "instruments of terror."

Aside from the mechanics of the car, privacy could also be a concern because "AVs will record everything that happens in and around them," said The Economist. Self-driving taxis can contain large amounts of information about passengers, which "could open the door to segregation and discrimination" and "restrict people's movements."

Pro: They could mark the end of traffic

The widespread adoption of self-driving cars has the "potential to dramatically reduce traffic congestion." especially in "mega-cities like New York, Los Angeles or Tokyo," said Forbes. "By communicating with each other, self-driving cars can optimize speed, route and timing to maintain a steady traffic flow, minimizing the stop-and-go scenarios that contribute to bottlenecks." The caveat is that true traffic reduction requires vehicles to share data with each other, according to a study published in the journal Transportation Research Record.

With more use of AVs, fewer people would require personal cars. "With less need for parking spaces, city planners could repurpose this valuable real estate, especially in densely populated city centers," said Forbes. "The vast stretches of concrete now used for parking lots and garages could transform into green spaces, recreational zones, pedestrian walkways and bicycle lanes."

Con: They could cause job losses

The shift to autonomous vehicles could be "costly for some people, especially workers in legacy industries," said Carolyn Fortuna at CleanTechnica. While there is a lot to gain in a growing new industry, some historic jobs may prove to become obsolete. "People who earn their living from driving these vehicles will suddenly find themselves out of a job" and it will likely "be difficult ... to quickly find new work," Investopedia said.

A study published in 2021 said that people "believe governments are not prepared for the transformations AVs will force upon workplace arenas." Therefore, "efforts to design new jobs created by AVs should take advantage of the skills that people in the disrupted occupations already have," Fortuna said.

Pro: They could be more environmentally friendly

In the future, self-driving vehicles could possibly help to reduce emissions, as they "use significantly less gas and energy when driving, compared to a vehicle driven by a human" said Greener Ideal. Also, most of the autonomous vehicles being developed and driven currently "are already fully electric," making them less damaging than their gas counterparts. The development could also lead to people purchasing fewer cars and avoiding "unnecessary overlapping trips that contribute to emissions."

However, the benefit is contingent on whether companies could improve the efficiency of the computing technology at a "significantly faster pace," Soumya Sudhakar, a researcher at MIT, said to The Washington Post. "If we get ahead of it, we could design more efficient autonomous vehicles that have a smaller carbon footprint from the start."