CDIO 2017 #Assignment 3 Ethical
# Ethical issue of autonomous driving car
Ethical issue brought by the autonomous vehicle has been debated long time since the concept come out, even impede its development in some extent. Usually, there will be two options when autonomous vehicle find itself cannot deal with the situations, that it keeps its passenger and driver safe while keeping pedestrain or other road user at risk, or it does the inverse to put pedestrain at higher priority of safety while passenger at risk. It seems that which option it will makes is programmed before, in other words, the ethical choice is determined by the programmers who design the whole system. However, should the programmer be responsible to every accident happened on the designed vehicle? Or since drivers are responsible for all driving tasks even in AVs they are the ones blamed. Or the vehicle manufactors or the pedetrains themselves, or the government agency certificated safety regulation?
Like famous trolley dilemma, it is hard to determine which is better to risk driver and passenger to save pedetrain or risk pedestrain to keep driver safe. Most participants in surveys of similar trolley problem would thought it is more moral to sacrifice driver than 10 pedestrain since it minimize the number of casualties [1]. However, when they are forced to be positioned in driver's place, they consider it differently since they are prior to be dead. With the "predefined death vehicle", people are reluctant to drive an AV but welcome it on road since they could be much safer as a road user. Everyone involved wants to be more likely to be saved instead of being killed when he or she plays a different role.
Currently, a number of research group are working to study how possible this situation might happen or is there an appropriate to judge who's fault. There is still a long way to get specific conclusion since it is difficult to collect data of accident and how drivers make their decisions during that situation. Even it is possible to build a robust driver model and get impact data, it is still difficult to assign a specific proportion to each contribution of accident.
But I would like also point that in a larger scope, AVs could save more lives when it operates as expected. AVs with multiple sensors, ECUs are more capable than human to monitor environment, and more faster to make more rational decision. Besides, future AVs could learn itself to be a experienced driving manuveor if it could be trained with the accident situation data. Higher level of performance than we human driver definitely helps to avoid accident and make both drivers and pedestrian lower risks of being injured. At least, nowadays we could see that various driving assistance systems do help.
As for the single case in the assignment, it is really hard to determine who should be responsible for the accident as we discussed previously. Trolley question does not happen only when AV is involved, but also could happen in situation with human drivers. However, we definitely could estimate that AVs will decrease the occurence of this dilemma and maximize both possibility of servive of pedestrians and drivers.
[1] http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self-driving/people-want-driverless-cars-with-utilitarian-ethics-unless-theyre-a-passenger
Like famous trolley dilemma, it is hard to determine which is better to risk driver and passenger to save pedetrain or risk pedestrain to keep driver safe. Most participants in surveys of similar trolley problem would thought it is more moral to sacrifice driver than 10 pedestrain since it minimize the number of casualties [1]. However, when they are forced to be positioned in driver's place, they consider it differently since they are prior to be dead. With the "predefined death vehicle", people are reluctant to drive an AV but welcome it on road since they could be much safer as a road user. Everyone involved wants to be more likely to be saved instead of being killed when he or she plays a different role.
Currently, a number of research group are working to study how possible this situation might happen or is there an appropriate to judge who's fault. There is still a long way to get specific conclusion since it is difficult to collect data of accident and how drivers make their decisions during that situation. Even it is possible to build a robust driver model and get impact data, it is still difficult to assign a specific proportion to each contribution of accident.
But I would like also point that in a larger scope, AVs could save more lives when it operates as expected. AVs with multiple sensors, ECUs are more capable than human to monitor environment, and more faster to make more rational decision. Besides, future AVs could learn itself to be a experienced driving manuveor if it could be trained with the accident situation data. Higher level of performance than we human driver definitely helps to avoid accident and make both drivers and pedestrian lower risks of being injured. At least, nowadays we could see that various driving assistance systems do help.
As for the single case in the assignment, it is really hard to determine who should be responsible for the accident as we discussed previously. Trolley question does not happen only when AV is involved, but also could happen in situation with human drivers. However, we definitely could estimate that AVs will decrease the occurence of this dilemma and maximize both possibility of servive of pedestrians and drivers.
[1] http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self-driving/people-want-driverless-cars-with-utilitarian-ethics-unless-theyre-a-passenger
While your post does touch upon aspects of the ethical problems facing autonomous vehicles, including the trolley dilemma, it does not answer some specific questions from the assignment scenario. Please consider how your research may be applied to the scenario and questions given. - The CDIO Academy Team
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