It is widely acknowledged that the existence of autonomous vehicles contributes to a revolutionary alternation in transportation. While some people argue that enormous benefits would be brought by the widespread adoption of driverless cars, I, however, completely reject such opinions.
On one hand, some arguments in favour of broadly utilizing automatic cars might be their time-saving function. It is agreed that driverless cars are able to free people from driving, which enables them to make the best use of their time. Employees, for example, will take advantage of extra available time to cope with their jobs while commuting by driverless cars, and so do those who would like to relax and refresh their minds after busy working hours. In this case, it seems reasonable for some people to support the broad utilisation of automatic steerings.
On the other hand, there are increasing concerns about the drawbacks of automatic vehicles in terms of their safety and reliability. Traditionally, drivers on the conventional automobiles would flexibly cooperate together to deal with complex and infrequent road matters. By contrast, whether or not the computerised design behind those driverless vehicles would tackle unpredictable traffic issues, as well as how their responses would be when facing complicated situations remain doubtable. Additionally, the security of automatic steering is worrisome as the programme systems could be jeopardized by hacking, giving rise to uncontrolled cars thereby causing unintended consequences such as severe collisions and accidents.
I, therefore argue that the transition from conventional automobiles to driverless vehicles has negative social and economical implications. This is because certain jobs, for example, taxi and bus drivers, who often come from lower educational backgrounds and lack transferrable skills, could easily be replaced by autonomous vehicles, leading to severe job losses in transportation sectors. By and large, the resulting increase in unemployment would lower their income, making necessicities unaffordable for them and hence reduce individual standards of living.
In conclusion, although the idea of encouraging driverless cars could lift people out of heavy time pressure to some extent and promote efficiency, there are enormous challenges yet to be overcome. Based on its inevitable drawbacks, including the technical flaws related to reliability concerns and employment issues, I totally disagree with the widespread use of automatic vehicles.