The Potential Legal Hurdles Posed by Self-Driving Cars (Research Paper Sample)

The Potential Legal Hurdles Posed By Self-Driving Cars
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Introduction
Fully self-driving cars are becoming a reality sooner than the world expected. Despite the world reeling from the havoc wreaked by the coronavirus pandemic, companies are continuously making strides in advancing the reality of fully self-driving cars. The most notable development is the supercomputer by Tesla, which gives the vehicles a computer vision, allowing them "to give meaning to the data collected hence to act out of their own volition." As such, it signals a sooner shift to level 3, 4, and 5 autonomous cars that will remove the human beings from the driving equation altogether, thereby eliminate human error that findings note is responsible for 99% of all the accidents. Such removal would undeniably bode well with the futuristic definition of self-driving cars, which suggests they are totally driverless.[Cox, quoting Andrej Karpathy, the senior director of AI at Tesla.] [Hanlon, 2016.]
The preceding automation developments undeniably suggest a greater degree of autonomy by cars during driving, in place of human beings. Such greater autonomy undeniably signals greater potential upset of the laws that govern the automobile industry, from determining liability for faults to settling claims by insurance companies. Already, society has interacted with some of these issues, as evident in the 2018 incident when an Uber self-driving car hit a woman while in autonomous mode. The car did not stop since “Uber had suspended the automatic braking system, and the operator was distracted” (Hanlon, 2016). The uber issue raises questions about who is truly liable between the company, the manufacturer, and the operator.
In the context of the above issues and recent developments, this research paper investigates the potential legal hurdles posed by self-driving cars. In particular, the paper analyzes the problems these cars pose to regulation, insurance, the finding of liability, employment, privacy, and freedom. However, in doing this, the paper does not seek to deny the apparent advantages granted by self-driving cars, such as “reduced accidents, greater fuel efficiency, and increased human productivity” (Hanlon, 2016). The legal hurdles are in the analysis below, though a brief history of self-driving cars precedes it.
History
Self-driving cars are vehicles with some level of automation in their system. Their production begun in 2009