Code of Ethics for Autonomous Vehicles

Abstract

This case study focuses on autonomous vehicles and the ethical and sustainable considerations surrounding them. Autonomous vehicles have potential to greatly impact a variety of areas of daily life in a large scale, such as public health and privacy. It is important to address the concerns of autonomous vehicles before they are completely introduced to market. Proactive planning of how autonomous vehicles should be designed will be useful for creating a smoother timeline of achieving valuable implementations of the technology. For these reasons, the uncertain future of autonomous vehicles should be guided towards ethical and sustainable outcomes with a code of ethics. This paper therefore proposes a possible code of ethics, guided by a literature review on autonomous vehicles and a historic case analysis. The developed code is justified through findings from the literature and considering how it is applicable to a real-world event and the future of transportation.