How should self-driving cars decide in an accident? The ethical dilemma with autonomous cars
By: Niclas Schmidt
Tags: Ethical Dilemma, Autonomous Cars, Ethical Design, Self Driving Cars, Social Dilemma

Photo by Esri Esri on Unsplash

Imagine the following scenario: An autonomous car is driving down a busy highway. In front of it, there is a construction truck loaded with heavy material. Two vehicles are located on either side of the autonomous car. An SUV on the left side and a motorbike on the right side. Suddenly, the construction equipment falls from the truck and lands in front of the autonomous driving car. The car recognises the danger and doesn’t have any other option than swerving to either of one side to save its own passengers from a possibly fatal accident. Shifting to the right might result in killing the motorbike driver but saving the car owner’s life. Swerving to the left and hitting the SUV could endanger the car driver, but because of its better safety features would probably cause the least harm to all passengers involved. However, actively hitting the SUV merely because its driver opted for a safer car would be penalising them for that decision and result in discrimination.

With autonomous and self-driving cars becoming a reality in the future, we as a society are not only faced with its promising advantages it brings, but also with ethical and social questions that arise when active decision making in car accidents become possible and programmable.

Self-driving cars are not only a technology of the future but one that does exist already. Tesla may be the first car company that has already implemented this feature in their cars, but many more will join the market soon. This technology aims to make the human factor as an active driver redundant and promises to bring some crucial advantages. By removing human error as a factor on the street from the equation traffic safety will be massively increased. Therefore, as a result, deaths from car accidents reduced considerably. Besides security, It promises to ease road congestion, decrease harmful emissions and of course minimise stressful driving while increasing productive and useful time for the driver to spend.

Nonetheless, when it comes to car accidents, Tan ethically problematic and incomparable situation to manual driving occurs. While a manual car driver reacts to an accident situation with an instinctive panic move which cannot be forethought, the autonomous car system can make a deliberate decision based on a pre-programmed algorithm which senses conditions and decides according to them. That means that the programmer creates an algorithm which predetermines a future accident outcome. Rules for the car need to be established regarding whose protection is prioritised in certain situations. As of today, no policies or official laws are defining how to handle such situations.

Thus, the question arises whether the government should be responsible for setting rules on how autonomous driving cars are programmed in accident scenarios where decision making is possible?

Yes, it should, and I see no other option than starting to discuss this topic in politics as soon as possible. Even if those scenarios are relatively rare, they are inevitably going to happen, and therefore, the programmed algorithm needs to be based on decision rules. This, however, is not an easy task, and there are a lot of different people and perspectives involved. Before arguing my standpoint, I want to illustrate the most critical perspectives and stakeholders involved.

Let’s take the previous scenario with the inevitable accident. This time, however, the vehicles left, and right have several passengers. The first logical design principle for the car to react would be to minimise harm and serve the greater good. Minimising harm in this situation would mean not swerving at all and sacrificing its own passengers for the least harm. The widespread trolly dilemma illustrates that in an abstract way. The Trolly dilemma describes a situation where an unstoppable train is driving towards a group of people. You are standing beside a lever and could actively decide to change the direction of the train, so it runs over only one person. To minimise harm, killing only one person is better than killing several. This is obviously not a real-life situation, and no scenario is as easy and straightforward as this one.

The Trolly Problem by BBC Radio 4

A prevalent situation, however, would be to either protect the car’s passenger at all costs or to minimise harm for all people involved in the accident. A research done by Jean-François Bonnefon, Azim Shariff, and Iyad Rahwan and published in “The social dilemma of autonomous vehicles” (2) shows that there is a general public agreement that if many people are involved in an accident, the least harm should be caused and the car should sacrifice its own passengers. When it comes to buying a vehicle which is programmed to minimise harm, in other words actively sacrificing the passenger, the majority would instead buy one that protects them at all cost. Therefore, car companies, as a direct stakeholder, would rather have their systems programmed to save their owner while possibly killing more people or lead to more significant damage. In a world in which no government law specifies these decisions, programmers and ultimately, car companies decide upon what drives more sells and not what does the least harm. That is what ultimately matters in a competitive capitalist market. Not having an official and consistent decision-law also affects indirectly involved parties. Besides pedestrians, cyclists and other vehicles, the question of guilt for the damage of property and medical expenses are not clearly defined. Insurance companies don’t know whom to charge how much and predetermined decisions by car companies that damage or harm other stakeholders on purpose to protect its owner are highly questionable. Is the car owner responsible for property damages made by a programmed algorithm and based on a company’s decision rules? Without official rules and policies, a lot of uncertainty remains.

The dilemma between saving the autonomous car’s passenger or saving the most people is solvable only if the government decides to rule consistently and set guidelines for all car companies. These decisions should serve the greater and common good instead of the individuals. In that way, the government frees the buyer from the decision to buy such a system and leaves room only for autonomous cars that follow official and consistent rules.

Nonetheless, difficulties arise when considering a more complicated situation with other ethical and social problems involved. Let’s look back on our previous example. This time there is one motorbike on either side. The left motorbike driver wears a helmet, and the right one does not. Both scenarios mean potentially killing the motorbike driver, but the one wearing a helmet has a higher chance of surviving than the one without a helmet. Taking the initial design principle of minimising harm, hitting the left one would be more reasonable, but does also mean penalising him for being safer. The other option would be hitting the right driver to actively target him for being irresponsible and not complying with the law. This goes beyond the initial design principle. The same applied to factors such as demographics (e.g. age, gender, health), race or criminal history. In a situation where the possibilities are equal, and a decision is possible, there needs to be a decision. Having the government set rules to prioritise one person over another is active discrimination. Even though such situations will be extremely rare, they need to be considered and programmed in advance. Leaving these decisions to private companies, however, is pure anarchy and not based on the public opinion at all but based on a manager’s opinion.

Either way, this is highly problematic from an ethical point of view and can’t be solved overnight. It needs time and open discussions. In my opinion, there is no other way than providing an official, public and lawful guideline with rules and laws. In the end, it needs to be socially accepted and not cause any outrage. The closest thing to the public opinion in such a scale is the elected government. It should represent its citizen in a democracy. It is the government’s responsibility to conduct a transparent and open discussion and find consent within society.

References

(1) Johannes Himmelreich. The everyday ethical challenges of self-driving cars. The Conversation Magazine. March 27, 2018. https://theconversation.com/the-everyday-ethical-challenges-of-self-driving-cars-92710.

(2) Jean-François Bonnefon, Azim Shariff, Iyad Rahwan. The social dilemma of autonomous vehicles. Science Mag. 24 Jun 2016. Vol. 352, Issue 6293, pp. 1573–1576. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6293/1573.

(3) Self-driving car dilemmas reveal that moral choices are not universal. Nature.com. 24 OCTOBER 2018. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07135-0.

This discussion was written during my study “User Experience Design” at The Hague University of applied science in the context of the course “Values in Design”.