How Should Autonomous Vehicles Make Moral Decisions? Machine Ethics, Artificial Driving Intelligence, and Crash Algorithms.

• Author: Rowthorn, Michael

1. Introduction

   Autonomous vehicles constitute an essential disruptor in the subsequent technology upheaval, but the chief obstacle to acceptance is the absence of public trust. (Kaur and Rampersad, 2018) Driverless cars will confront inevitable crashes, and the algorithms in the means of transport's on-board computers will bring about some innocent individual being chosen as the injured party of the collision. (Cowger, 2018) A significant amount of robotic agents will be introduced into a sphere of human activity where the risk factors are considerable whenever there are accidents. (Nyholm and Smids, 2018)

2. Conceptual Framework and Literature Review

   The capacity of the autonomous vehicles to satisfy performance requirements and their soundness represent relevant adoption drivers. (Kaur and Rampersad, 2018) Driverless cars advance innovative routes for transportability and have economic and societal upsides, but there are controversies as to the degree of their strong points and their casual ramifications. (Taeihagh and Lim, 2019) The broad proliferation of driverless cars will cause hybrid traffic, encompassing both autonomous vehicles and conventional ones, the former seemingly featuring various levels and kinds of automation, being configured to operate in optimizing manners, and being inflexible rule-followers. (Nyholm and Smids, 2018)

3. Methodology and Empirical Analysis

   Building my argument by drawing on data collected from AUVSI, Ipsos, Nature, Pew Research Center, Perkins Coie, Statista, and YouGov, I performed analyses and made estimates regarding U.S. adults who say they would/would not want to ride in a driverless vehicle (%), statements closest to international drivers' opinion (I am in favor of self-driving cars and cannot wait to use them/I am unsure about self-driving cars, but I find the idea interesting/I am against self-driving cars and would never use them), U.S. adults that would feel (un)safe as a pedestrian in a city with self-driving cars (%), countries that are most prepared for autonomous vehicles (policy and legislation, technology and innovation, infrastructure, and consumer acceptance), and the top data infrastructure requirements in smart cities to facilitate autonomous vehicle testing (wireless connectivity to other cars, parking meters, traffic lights and other smart infrastructure, wireless connectivity to nearby towers/antennas, and data centers to perform analytics on large volumes of data received from vehicles). The data for this research were gathered via an online survey questionnaire and were...