Self-driving cars are upheld as a shining solution to so many problems. Drunk driving doesn’t matter if the car drives the drunk home. Teens can take rides anywhere at any time. Older adults can still access transportation even as vision and reflexes deteriorate. However, there are risks introduced by self-driving cars many fail to consider. Here is a short list of concerns beyond your insurance rate spiking because you’re braking so hard:

  • Pay the malware ransom, or you’re not getting to work today. Conversely, the server that handles payments for self-driving car usage gets hacked and steals your financial information.
  • If someone crashes the right/wrong servers, your car can’t go anywhere.
  • Hackers could tweak the settings of the vehicles so that they’re too close to each other or obstacles, possibly even laughing as they watch panicked passengers get bounced around.
  • Today, Mexican gangs pretending to be cops setting up road blocks to rob people. Tomorrow, gangs fooling self-driving cars to stop and robbing people.
  • I hope the government isn’t mad enough at you to turn off your car. There’s not much point in a driver’s license if no car will pick you up, either, because you’re blacklisted.
  • You better hope no one has sent Child Protective Services a false report. Otherwise, you put your kids in the car to be taken to school and they’re sent to CPS instead.
  • Your private conversation on the way home cannot be considered private.
  • Anyone with system admin permissions could send you somewhere you don’t want to go, including off the grid. And they’re likely locked in, too.
  • If the average person is reliant on self-driving cars for transportation, almost no one is able to go “off the grid” or into areas the government doesn’t want them in.
  • If China launches a satellite killer at GPS satellites over the U.S., self-driving cars could experience major problems.
  • You won’t fight over the radio. You’ll be forced to listen to the ads the self-driving car service broadcasts.

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Check out Tamara Wilhite’s Amazon Author Page and see her on Hubpages.

Photo by Photographing Travis

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