Unit Name/Code Assessment Type Group Assessment Number 3 Assessment Name Presentation and Report Unit Learning Outcomes LO2: Demonstrate comprehension of Graduate Assessment Attributes Assessed...

ETHICAL DECISIONS IN SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT: HOW SAFE ARE SELF-DRIVING CARS
Executive Summary
With advancements in technology manufacturer of many car companies have started to evolve by focusing on self-driven cars so that road accidents could be avoided and lives of thousands of people could be saved by avoiding human errors. Self driving cars will no doubt make driving safe on the roads and will ensure that accidents are minimised as a result of human errors but ethical dilemmas continue to prevail with the advancements in the technology.
Table of Contents
Introduction    4
Liabilities of self Driving Cars when Involved in Accidents    4
Artificial Intelligence Algorithm    6
Pros of Implementing Standard Artificial Intelligence Algorithm    7
Cons of Implementing Standard Artificial Intelligence Algorithm    8
Automated System Driving Ranges and the Degree of Care    9
Conclusion    10
References    11
Introduction
With advancements in technology manufacturer of many car companies have started to evolve by focusing on self-driven cars so that road accidents could be avoided and lives of thousands of people could be saved by avoiding human errors. This will eliminate costs of nearly $190 billion in the repair of automobiles and other health care costs. However, ethical dilemmas have been bothering the designers and software developers to address moral questions like, which would a self-driven car, save if a fatal crash is unavoidable and is bound to occur. Dilemmas like these are difficult to handle as moral preferences of people vary between different countries.
Liabilities of self Driving Cars when Involved in Accidents
Questions such as who should a self-driven save, when the choice is to be made between saving the lives of school going children or the life of the owner of the car. Answering such question is where the dilemma lies. The liabilities of autonomous self driving vehicles lie in the responsibility of driving, with the primary motivation of reducing the frequency of traffic collisions. Liability of accidents involving autonomous cars lies is still a developing area, which has managed to grab the attention of policy makers, designers and software developers (Schellekens, 2015). The law and policies that may decide who is responsible for causing damage to the physical property or persons involved in case of an accident by a self-driven car is still under development. The existing liability laws need to evolve considering the fact that a shift has been observed form human beings to machine and technologies. These laws will help to identify and determine the appropriate remedies by the actions of a self-driven car. Several liability theories have come forward such as:
Tort Liability: This theory takes into consideration three basic theories, which are described as:
· Traditional negligence: Driver is held liable for the harms caused.
· No-fault: Crash victims have no rights to sue the driver of the vehicle unless the injuries caused by the car are serious.
· Strict liability: The people involved in the accident bear the cost of the damage caused irrespective of the regardless of the fact whether they are at the fault or not.
Product liability: Another concept, which has been put forward to determine the liabilities of such autonomous vehicles, is that of product liability. Product liability governs the liability of manufacturers in terms of negligence and strict liability. The negligence part of this liability is that the manufacturers must take care and take all the precautionary measures that are required to manufacture safe products (Greenblatt, 2016). The strict liability portion will include that manufacturers must be held responsible for the damages caused irrespective of the type of precautions they might have taken. This concept might distinguish the liability on the basis of three kinds of defects namely manufacturing defects, design defects and failure to warn.
Imposing liability: This is another important concept, which must be understood to determine the fault in case of accidents caused by the self-driven vehicles. In this case a person who suffered the losses in a crash involving an autonomous car has four options:
· Operator of the vehicle: An operator is considered to be the person who has engaged this technology irrespective of the fact whether the person is physically in the vehicle or not. The passenger seated in the car may not be found at fault if a car crash occurs.
· Manufacturer of the car: In this case it has to be ensured whether the manufacturer of the car has installed the autonomous technology into the vehicle or not.
· Company who created the finished automated product: Certain companies such as Volvo take full responsibility for the collisions caused by the self-driven vehicles.
· Company that created the technology installed in the autonomous car: These are the people who have been developing the technologies behind these cars and manufacturing the sensors these cars use to detect its surroundings.
Based on the above liability concepts, which takes into consideration different situations it is clear that the passenger seated in the car is not faulty under all the circumstances. However, the operator who engaged this technology may be faulty as even small errors in such precise systems may lead to disasters taking the lives of many people and causing damage to...