Ethical Issues in Automated Driving—Opportunities, Dangers, and Obligations

Abstract

Automated vehicles (AVs) not only face questions of technical feasibility but also of moral desirability. Traffic is one of the major sources of death and injury in modern society–human error causing about ninety percent of traffic accidents. Prima facie this yields a strong ethical obligation to further the development and adoption of AVs. However, moral desirability cannot be analyzed solely in terms of increased safety. Broad societal adoption of automated vehicles will entail many ethical issues. One cluster of ethical issues concerns the role of non-human entities occupying positions that usually are reserved for proper moral agents: how should AVs make decisions? And who could be held responsible for their choices? Another cluster of issues concerns the impact widespread adoption of AVs could have on society: which social groups would be negatively affected by the widespread adoption of AVs? Is society becoming too reliant on technology and which potential for abuse is entailed by this dependence? Should citizens remain free to drive vehicles themselves, though they make traffic less safe for everyone? In this paper, I advocate a cautionary position, mindful of the inevitability of technological progress and its great potential, attempting to highlight the obligation to steer this development towards an ethically acceptable trajectory.