For the past few years, talk of self-driving cars has been everywhere. But beyond the techs and specs involved, self-driving cars also raise some really interesting, and really important, questions about what the future will look like and how safe it will be. Vox's take on this question is a good one, raising all sorts of important points, like, "who is responsible if something goes wrong?"
"As with any innovation, self-driving cars bring with them a lot of technical issues, but there are moral ones as well. Namely, there are no parameters for how safe is considered safe enough to put a self-driving car on the road."
With technology that is so new, and that is still actively being tested and discussed, there can be a real sense of surrealism to the whole conversation. What would a self-driving future even look like in practical terms? But the reality is that self-driving cars do not exist in the future, they exist in the present, which makes the practical considerations of safety absolutely critical.
For more on the practical and moral considerations of self-driving cars, Emily Stewart's piece in Vox is a great start.