TY - JOUR
T1 - Ethical Decision-Making for Self-Driving Vehicles
T2 - A Proposed Model & List of Value-Laden Terms that Warrant (Technical) Specification
AU - Poszler, Franziska
AU - Geisslinger, Maximilian
AU - Lütge, Christoph
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2024.
PY - 2024/10
Y1 - 2024/10
N2 - Self-driving vehicles (SDVs) will need to make decisions that carry ethical dimensions and are of normative significance. For example, by choosing a specific trajectory, they determine how risks are distributed among traffic participants. Accordingly, policymakers, standardization organizations and scholars have conceptualized what (shall) constitute(s) ethical decision-making for SDVs. Eventually, these conceptualizations must be converted into specific system requirements to ensure proper technical implementation. Therefore, this article aims to translate critical requirements recently formulated in scholarly work, existing standards, regulatory drafts and guidelines into an explicit five-step ethical decision model for SDVs during hazardous situations. This model states a precise sequence of steps, indicates the guiding ethical principles that inform each step and points out a list of terms that demand further investigation and technical specification. By integrating ethical, legal and engineering considerations, we aim to contribute to the scholarly debate on computational ethics (particularly in autonomous driving) while offering practitioners in the automotive sector a decision-making process for SDVs that is technically viable, legally permissible, ethically grounded and adaptable to societal values. In the future, assessing the actual impact, effectiveness and admissibility of implementing the here sketched theories, terms and the overall decision process requires an empirical evaluation and testing of the overall decision-making model.
AB - Self-driving vehicles (SDVs) will need to make decisions that carry ethical dimensions and are of normative significance. For example, by choosing a specific trajectory, they determine how risks are distributed among traffic participants. Accordingly, policymakers, standardization organizations and scholars have conceptualized what (shall) constitute(s) ethical decision-making for SDVs. Eventually, these conceptualizations must be converted into specific system requirements to ensure proper technical implementation. Therefore, this article aims to translate critical requirements recently formulated in scholarly work, existing standards, regulatory drafts and guidelines into an explicit five-step ethical decision model for SDVs during hazardous situations. This model states a precise sequence of steps, indicates the guiding ethical principles that inform each step and points out a list of terms that demand further investigation and technical specification. By integrating ethical, legal and engineering considerations, we aim to contribute to the scholarly debate on computational ethics (particularly in autonomous driving) while offering practitioners in the automotive sector a decision-making process for SDVs that is technically viable, legally permissible, ethically grounded and adaptable to societal values. In the future, assessing the actual impact, effectiveness and admissibility of implementing the here sketched theories, terms and the overall decision process requires an empirical evaluation and testing of the overall decision-making model.
KW - Autonomous driving
KW - Computational ethics
KW - Ethical decision-making
KW - Risk distributions
KW - Risk ethics
KW - Self-driving vehicle
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85206280489&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s11948-024-00513-0
DO - 10.1007/s11948-024-00513-0
M3 - Article
C2 - 39387983
AN - SCOPUS:85206280489
SN - 1353-3452
VL - 30
JO - Science and Engineering Ethics
JF - Science and Engineering Ethics
IS - 5
M1 - 47
ER -