Self Driving Cars

In response to popular controversy, author Jason Levine aptly titled his article “Americans Are Right Not To Trust Self-Driving Cars.” Despite the auto industry’s encouragement, Levine believes that people should be warned against self-driving cars due to a statistically high level of opposition, potential safety hazards, and a lack of guidelines. In surveys from AAA and MIT, an average of almost 83% “said they would not want to ride in a self-driving car” (Levine). Levine attributed this not to a fear of new technology, but to a lack of safety standards in the automobile industry; bringing to light the Transportation Department’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) “spotty history when it comes” to vehicular safety. Regardless …show more content…
Even at first glance, the article title blatantly informs the reader that “Americans Are Right Not To Trust Self-Driving Cars”(Levine). Levine states that all people must “remain reticent about this leap into the future;” and, in discussing the dangerous lack of guidelines for self-driving cars, said “everyone’s spidey-sense should be tingling.” All of these have a similar theme: that all should feel wary of this new technology because it concerns the safety of every American. This central idea exemplifies bandwagon. In concern for the NHTSA’s lack of action “handling defects or design flaws” in human dependant automobiles, Levine draws the conclusion that autonomous vehicles will never be safe. The incorrect assumption that autonomous cars will have issues because of the NHTSA's unreliable history makes this a hasty generalization. Levine continues, stating the NHTSA has “recently weaken[ed] an existing set of voluntary guidelines” for self-driving cars; and with the future production of such vehicles, low safety standards will make accidents inevitable. He not-so-subtly hints that the only way to “arrive alive” will be with the dissolution of autonomous cars (Levine). This represents appeal to emotion and slippery slope, as Levine tried to scare the reader into thinking the worst (death) would happen if they didn’t agree with his

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