Annotated Source 3 - Walker, Alissa. “Are Self-Driving Cars Safe for Our Cities?” Curbed, Curbed, PDF

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Walker, Alissa. “Are Self-Driving Cars Safe for Our Cities?” Curbed, Curbed, 8 Jan. 2020, archive.curbed.com/2016/9/21/12991696/driverless-cars-safety-pros-cons....

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Annotated Bibliography 3

Walker, Alissa. “Are Self-Driving Cars Safe for Our Cities?” Curbed, Curbed, 8 Jan. 2020, archive.curbed.com/2016/9/21/12991696/driverless-cars-safety-pros-cons. The author, Alissa Walker, questions whether or not self-driving cars are safe, and if they’re possibly safer than humans. Walker’s claim is that self-driving cars are dangerous and although they are becoming very popular, they are not at fault when involved in computer-error accidents. One example that the author provides is the testing destination of self-driving cars. It would only make sense not to test the cars out in the public and risk lives if there were to be a possible malfunction. The author explains her argument that self-driving cars are not safe and provides many different examples of accidents occurring within these vehicles. She goes into detail further about many accidents that have happened as of 2016, such as 49-year-old Elaine being hit by an Uber self-driving vehicle when she was walking her bike along the crosswalk” (Walker). Not only does the author talk about self-driving cars being involved in accidents, but the theory of how reducing the amount of human drivers may or may not fix traffic deaths. Alissa Walker is known as an American writer from Denver, Colorado. She currently is a Urbanism Editor at Curbed, an urban-design website located in Seattle, Washington. She has different works such as authoring Word on the Street, civic designing, and being named a USC Getty Arts Journalism Fellow and Journalist of the Year by Streetsblog Los Angeles. This author has been involved in many other different works, which makes her credibility a reliable source. She specializes in writing, speaking, highlighting the pioneer transit, and designing. If I compare this source to my other sources, I don’t believe that Walker’s claim is contradicting, but supports my reasoning for why I believe self-driving cars are not safe. I don’t see that her argument could

be biased as she elaborates on different perspectives on self-driving cars. From Walker’s argument, I can interpret why she believes that self-driving cars are dangerous. I believe that the author sounds like a very reasonable person and is willing to see both sides of an argument before making an ultimate decision. She also sounds like she is capable of having an argument without belittling the other person or throwing out insults. “To truly make self-driving technology the safest it can be, all the vehicles on the road should be fully autonomous—not just programmed to obey the rules of the road, but also to communicate with each other” (Walker). She backed up her argument with the amount of accidents involved, statistics, and a rebuttal against why people would think these autonomous cars are safe. I believe that this source is useful because she provides a lot of different examples regarding self-driving cars, and discusses the roles of self-driving cars will be when involved in accidents....