Ethical and Social Aspects of Self-Driving Cars

Abstract

As an envisaged future of transportation, self-driving cars are being discussed from various perspectives, including social, economical, engineering, computer science, design, and ethics. On the one hand, self-driving cars present new engineering problems that are being gradually successfully solved. On the other hand, social and ethical problems are typically being presented in the form of an idealized unsolvable decision-making problem, the so-called trolley problem, which is grossly misleading. We argue that an applied engineering ethical approach for the development of new technology is what is needed; the approach should be applied, meaning that it should focus on the analysis of complex real-world engineering problems. Software plays a crucial role for the control of self-driving cars; therefore, software engineering solutions should seriously handle ethical and social considerations. In this paper we take a closer look at the regulative instruments, standards, design, and implementations of components, systems, and services and we present practical social and ethical challenges that have to be met, as well as novel expectations for software engineering.

Safety requirements vs. crashing ethically: what matters most for policies on autonomous vehicles

“…Of course, such test must be designed with a high level of variation to both ensure that the vehicle can manage all types of road conditions (for an early attempt to develop a framework for safety validation, see Koopman and Wagner 2018) and to ensure that vehicle manufactures do no designing their vehicles simply for the test, rather than for natural situations, similar to how Volkswagen cheated on emission tests. 20 Relatedly, there is also the question whether the source code should be evaluated by an independent organization (Holstein et al 2018).…”

On the Impact of the Rules on Autonomous Drive Learning

“…There are also important ethical and social considerations. It has been proposed to address the corresponding issues as an engineering problem, by translating them into algorithms to be handled by the embedded software of a self-driving car [24]. This way the solution of a moral dilemma should be calculated based on a given set of rules or other mechanisms-although the exact practical details and, most importantly, their corresponding implications, are unclear.…”

Driverless cars: Pro et contra

“…Употреба оваквих возила, поред техничке, има и етичку, социолошку, правну, економску, али и друге димензије. Етичка димензија се везује како за техничке, тако и за социјалне аспекте њиховог коришћења (Holstein, Dodig-Crnkovic and Pelliccione, 2018). Технички се, у крајњој линији, везују за различите аспекте сигурности возила, безбедности саобраћаја, заштите приватности, питање поверења у нову технологију, транспарентност, поузданост, одговорност и процес осигурања квалитета.…”

“…The use of such vehicles, in addition to technical ones, also has ethical, sociological, legal, economic and other dimensions. Ethical dimensions are related both to technical and social aspects of their use (Holstein, Dodig-Crnkovic and Pelliccione, 2018). They are technically linked to various aspects of vehicle safety, traffic safety, privacy protection, trust in new technology, transparency, reliability, accountability and quality assurance processes.…”