Fournier 1

Joshua Fournier
Assignment: Revision - Research Paper Prospectus
ENGL 231 229999
April 14, 2016

Whether were ready or not, car manufacturers all over the globe have been
pushing the limits of technology and the limits of law to develop and society where
all vehicles are autonomous (self-driving). Despite all these advancements,
however, the question still remains on whether these new vehicles are truly safe or
practical to use on public roads. Though current autonomous vehicles have accident
rates that are merely half that of traditional vehicles, mass production of these cars
leaves the door open for hackers to take control of vehicles, for cars to be used as
weapons of destruction, or for people to take advantage of loopholes in outdated
law books and use them in massive court cases.
The question on hand is extremely important because autonomous vehicles
that are put on roads that arent ready for them can transform from being a luxury
to being a weapon capable of running people over just like a regular car can, only
this time theres no human inside to keep the car from a collision course. Along with
being blatantly dangerous, if law books are not re-written with modified standards
for autonomous vehicles, a simple crash or accident caused by one of these
vehicles could be turned into a massive, multi-million-dollar lawsuit in determining
who is to blame. With the cyber-crime industry growing by the day, these new types
of cars also face the risk of hackers who are able to remotely control them through
the vehicles advanced electronic system, and could be used in an act of terrorism
by remotely transporting a bomb into an area of high population.
The outcome of interest in this study is to see how much further we, as a
society, have to go before autonomous vehicles can safely become a regular part of
everyday life, to figure out exactly what areas of our legal, road, and industrial
systems are still holding us back, and to spot possible dangers of autonomous
vehicles that are overlooked by the normal eye. To define, conceptualize and
conduct this study, it will be necessary to first figure out exactly how autonomous
vehicles think/work, to look at the current problems our roadways hold and research
ideas to fix them, and to talk to individuals who work in our legal system to find out
why some individuals are still hesitant to the idea of self-driving cars.
Even though the automotive industry is spending billions in developing state
of the art technology, fully autonomous vehicles are not seen on the same roads
with human drivers because they think very differently than we do. As an example,
if an autonomous vehicle was moving along a road and it sensed a small stick
blocking the path, the computer would tell the car to come to a complete stop, and
could cause an accident between vehicles behind it. If a human was driving
however, though not always legal, common sense would tell them to make sure
nobody is coming and shift over the line for a brief moment. Our roadways would

Fournier 2
need to be changed and made more secure, so that things like this would not
happen in a fully autonomous society. Our traffic law book would also need to be
updated, so that autonomous vehicles would have to follow the same rules as the
ones currently set in place.
Information on this topic could be collected in numerous ways, however, it
will be important to analyze data of accidents caused by human error and compare
it to accidents caused by autonomous vehicles. It will also be important, to talk to
individuals and gain opinions of what the general public thinks about a fully
autonomous society and their safety within one. To fully evaluate the papers
hypothesis, I will need to combine data from legal, social, and physical aspects of
autonomous vehicles and compare it to data collected from traditional cars that
roam our roadways currently.
In the final project, the possibility of a society where all vehicles are
autonomous will first be introduced to the reader, followed by reasons why they are
not already on the road, and paragraphs listing the changes to the roadways,
changes to the legal system, and changes in the thoughts of individuals that must
happen in order to obtain the goal. Because autonomous vehicles are being pushed
by manufacturers, and that they are a very hot topic of interest in controversial
subjects, the feasibility of the project is very high and there will be numerous sets of
data that can be used within studies.

Bibliography
Abrams, Rachel. "Self-Driving Cars May Get Here Before We're Ready." 21 January
2016. The New York Times. Online. 16 March 2016.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/22/business/dealbook/davos-self-drivingcars-may-get-here-before-were-ready.html?_r=0>.
Bertoncello, Michele and Dominik Wee. "Ten Ways Autonomous Driving Could
Redefine The Automotive World." McKinsey & Company Quarterly 1 June
2015: 18-21. Document. 15 March 2016.
Kiss, Jemima. Your Next Car Will Be Hacked. Will Autonomous Vehicles Be Worth It?
13 March 2016. The Guardian. Online. 15 March 2016.
<http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/13/autonomous-carsself-driving-hack-mikko-hypponen-sxsw>.
Lin, Patrick. "The Ethics of Autonomous Cars." 8 October 2013. The Atlantic. The
Atlantic . Online. 16 March 2016.
<http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/10/the-ethics-ofautonomous-cars/280360/>.
Ng, Andrew and Yuanqing Lin. "Self Driving Cars Won't Work Until We Change Our
Roads - And Attitudes." 15 March 2016. WIRED. Online. 16 March 2016.
<http://www.wired.com/2016/03/self-driving-cars-wont-work-change-roadsattitudes/>.

Fournier 3
Whitsitt, Sean and Jonathan Sprinkle. "Modeling Autonomous Systems." Journal of
Aerospace Information Systems (2013): 396 - 413. Document. 16 March
2016.
Wolff-Mann, Ethan. Google to Ask Congress to Help Put Self-Driving Cars on the
Road. 14 March 2016. TIME. Online. 15 March 2016.
<http://time.com/money/4258122/google-asks-congress-self-driving-cars/>.
Yun, Joseph Jinhyo. "The Relationship Between Technology, Buisiness Model, and
Marketing in Autonomous Car and Intelligent Robot Industries." Technological
Forecasting and Social Change (2016): 142-155. Document. 16 March 2016.