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The Case for Self-Driving Cars
by Nicholas Paleos
Have you ever struggled to get somewhere on time? If you have, imagine trying to get to work on time while also having a disability. These are the struggles that many Americans experience today. Because of this, many are unemployed.
We need to be using self-driving cars. They are safe, reliable, and can help people with disabilities who can physically not drive themselves, or for whom driving is difficult or dangerous.
One reason why self-driving cars are extremely safe and great to use is because they are far more accurate and drive better than humans do. One example is from the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration). They say, “What is available to consumers today: active safety systems. These are types of advanced driver assistance systems, which provide lower levels of automation that can assist a driver by anticipating imminent dangers and working to avoid them.” This is a big reason why self-driving cars can help people get where they need to go in a quick manner, while also being safe.
Another reason why self-driving cars would be extremely beneficial to society is just the number of people who lack a reliable way to get to work on time every day. A quote from The Washington Post states, “The Labor Department believes the wide inequalities in employment rates between people with disabilities and those without are partly due to a lack of access to reliable transportation. About 25 million Americans report having a disability that limits their travel choices. Only about a fifth of those who are of working age hold a job, compared with three-quarters of the rest of the population, according to the Transportation Department.” Twenty-five million Americans have trouble getting to work. And this is just how many people in America are struggling with this. This idea could help millions more. Because of this disability, ⅕ of those 25 million have a job. That’s 20 million people who don’t have a job because of transportation issues.
Self driving cars can also help with the global climate change problem. As shown from the Alliance For Automotive Innovation, “Fewer traffic jams save fuel and reduce greenhouse gases from needless idling. Automated driving systems may reduce unnecessary braking and acceleration that waste fuel. Vehicles with fully automated driving systems may be able to travel more closely together, reducing air drag and thereby reducing fuel use. One estimate is that a highway platoon of automated vehicles could reduce fuel consumption by 10%. Automation – and car-sharing — may spur more demand for all types of electric vehicles. When the vehicle is used more hours a day through car-sharing, any up-front battery costs could be shared also, increasing the economic appeal of electric cars.” This reveals that self-driving cars can be safe for the people and safe for the earth. It saves 10% of fuel consumption by cars which will decrease climate change drastically.
Some people say that self-driving cars are unsafe because of how they run a lot of red lights and can hit pedestrians by accident. People are also scared of self-driving cars because of the fact that they think that autonomous cars can have a system failure. However, this is untrue because self-driving cars make way less mistakes than humans do; it’s just that people expect humans to make mistakes and that the news focuses on when a self-driving car gets into an accident. Also, system failures are extremely rare.
How can this issue be resolved? Well, car manufacturers could start making more autonomous vehicles, and car dealerships could start to show them that self-driving cars cause way fewer problems than humans do.
I want you to offer to someone in your family who has a disability–or who is getting older and struggles with driving–to show them the option of getting a self-driving car to help themselves, and the Earth.
A Need to Abolish the Death Penalty
by Violet Acerra
“Capital punishment is against the best judgment of modern criminology and, above all, against the highest expression of love in the nature of God.”
— Martin Luther King Jr., in an interview with Ebony magazine
In the present day, we look back at the past and often call its methods of justice barbaric. Burning “witches” on stakes, hysterical crowds cutting off heads, hanging innocent people on a whim, gruesome punishments that make your skin crawl; it's easy for us to feel superior to our forefathers’ flawed views of righteousness. And although it's clear we have progressed significantly, we still use the same ultimate punishment: the death penalty. How can we consider ourselves better than our ancestors when we still use this cruel, inhumane practice? A practice that is rooted deep in dark beliefs, is particularly costly, and always comes at the risk of ending innocent lives?
Clearly, we can't. The death penalty is immoral and impractical, and should not continue to be used any longer.
One reason why the death penalty should be banned is because of its deep roots in prejudice and malpractice against particularly vulnerable groups. The death sentence is a "direct descendant of lynching", the killing and torturing vulnerable groups, mostly black people, for crimes they were not guilty of or just simply for intimidation. Later this practice gave way to execution, but it's still based on the same racism and discrimination similar to its antecedent. According to the Equal Justice Initiative Organization, "Race still influences who is sentenced to death and executed in America today. The data in Georgia has actually gotten worse: people convicted of killing white victims are 17 times more likely to be executed than those convicted of killing Black victims.” Clearly, this data shows the unfair racial bias that the death penalty is based on.
Additionally, the death penalty has historically been used to dispose of people with mental difficulties and troubled children (children of color more often than not). According to the Equal Justice Initiative, mental health experts estimate at least 20% of people on death row today have a serious mental illness, and 10% are military veterans with documented trauma disorders. Instead of giving these people the help they need, the justice system chooses to send these people, often innocent but regarded as guilty because of their disorders, to their deaths. 71 people were also on death row for crimes they committed as children, while they were still developing. To add to this two-thirds were people of color, and more than two-thirds of the victims were white.
An additional reason why the death sentence should be banned is because of how much it costs: a lot! According to “The Financial Implications of the Death Penalty” by Jeffery Miron, "the death penalty has grown to be much more expensive than life imprisonment, whether with or without parole. This greater cost comes from more expensive living conditions, a much more extensive legal process, and increasing resistance to the death penalty from chemical manufacturers overseas. These costs could even become higher, pending the outcome of various lawsuits against various states for their ‘botched’ executions. Each death penalty inmate is approximately $1.12 million (2015 USD) more than a general population inmate.” This shows how expensive the death penalty can be, a cost that taxpayers pay for, and a cost much more than the alternative of life in prison which that same article found to be $60,000-$70,000. Both of these quotes show how impractical the death sentence is, and the necessity to abolish it.
Finally, the death penalty should be banned due to the unavoidable risk of killing innocent people. Human judgment is bound to make errors in court, and it is inevitable for innocent people to be convicted of crimes they didn't commit. If someone given life in prison is proven innocent, their sentence can be reversed. The alternative to this, execution, is obviously a bit more permanent. According to The Death Penalty Information Center, more than 200 innocent people have been sentenced to death since 1973. Victims and their families deserve justice, but the death penalty is plagued with so much error and prejudice that it isn't worth the risk of killing innocent people, which make up 1 out of 8 people on death row. Clearly, it is unfair to carry out the death penalty due to misconduct that ends the lives of innocent individuals rather than give victims and their families the justice they deserve.
Some may say that the death penalty deters crime with fear. This is a popular opinion with judges, as supported by a statement from Paul Cassell, a former U.S. District Court judge, that says, “Perhaps the most straightforward argument for the death penalty is that it saves innocent lives by preventing convicted murderers from killing again. If the abolitionists had not succeeded in obtaining a temporary moratorium on death penalties from 1972 to 1976, [Kenneth Allen] McDuff would have been executed, and Colleen Reed and at least eight other young women would be alive today.” However, besides statements and opinions, there is no reliable evidence or statistics that backs up this claim whatsoever.
The most clear and obvious solution to this is a full abolishment of the death penalty and replacing it with life in prison or psychiatric hospitalization. But it may not be so simple, due to the many people against banning the death penalty. If the death penalty cannot be banned, at the very least its usage should be more limited.
Ultimately, the death penalty is a very flawed method of punishment, due to its financial burden, roots in prejudice against vulnerable people, and the risk of killing innocent people. The death penalty is an inhumane practice that should be banned.
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