Integrating human acceptable morality in autonomous vehicles

Abstract

Our study aims at progressing the assessment of the moral behaviour of human drivers. It is a felicitous coincidence that psychological and philosophical research into human morality has been dominated by thought experiments, resembling vehicles facing emergency situations. These thought experiments involve a running trolley, and have been used to contrast different moral principles, especially deontology versus utilitarianism. We designed an ecologically valid trolley-like dilemma with the help of virtual reality, aimed to understand the moral behavior of human subjects when facing a car accident situation. We report and comment on early results of our first tests.