Introduction
Autonomous vehicles, or self-driving cars, usually refers to ground vehicles that can perceive the environment around them with sensors or image technologies. They can drive around safely without the need for a human driver. Autonomous vehicles are currently used for the transportation of civilians. The autonomous vehicles industry now is capable of remote driving, locating, and setting the speed to arrive at the accurate destination, avoiding passengers and vehicles, and auto parking. The article, “How Google’s Self-Driving Car Will Change Everything” by Joe D’allegro, “In 2009, reveals that Google pioneered the autonomous car project to drive these cars across an average distance of 100 miles without any interruption. Waymo, which is also an autonomous car manufacturer became a subsidiary of Alphabet, making the Google autonomous car project to become Waymo. The history of the auto-driving car has been tested and developed (Conde, 2016. P. 3). This technology can be used majorly for high-speed delivery, mailing packages, and carrying disabled people. And they can be easily arranged for the transportation department to avoid traffic, also allowing those sleepy drivers to take rest while driving. They can also set the exact speed to not pass the speed limit.
The levels of autonomy are scaled into 6 levels ranging from 0 to 5 which is “no automation”, “driver assistance”, “partial automation”, “conditional automation”, “high automation”, and “full automation” defined by The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE). In the lowest scales 0 and 1, it is human drivers monitoring the driving environment. And through a scale of 2 to 3, although drivers are still controlling the machine, they can relinquish certain controls at certain times to the assistant AI technologies. In “high automation” and “full automation”, the AV system monitoring the driving environment is completely achieved.
Both the ethics of autonomous cars and the problem of their technical implementation have now been researched in some detail. There has been a rise in the number of companies manufacturing autonomous cars and the purchase of autonomous cars globally. The intersection between ethics and the advancement in technology seems to be grey area and the legal teams are finding a problem solving the legal ethical issues about autonomous cars. In this paper, the main ethical and moral issues arising from autonomous cars are discussed with the view of the different scenarios when autonomous cars have presented problems. To improve on the ethical issues that arise due to the use of autonomous cars, there is a need for multidimensional approaches involving all the stakeholders to be able to come up with better regulations and approaches. The advancement in driverless cars will change our whole social structure and impact our future beyond just commuting in the next few years. These cars will not only help improve climate through the reduction of emissions, as they are likely to be electric but also help in saving time because traffic jams are likely to decrease. They will also help us think differently about how we commute and interact with each other (Emerald Publishing, 2020). For these reasons, we must think about how to solve the ethical issues arising from these autonomous cars.
Warrant for ethical solutions.
Regardless of the advantages presented by automated cars, the cars present numerous ethical risks to the drivers and the other road users. These risks go beyond the common, extremely narrow focus on improbable dilemma-like scenarios. These ethical issues have raised many debates across the globe. One of the most publicized accidents involving a self-driving car was the one involving the Uber car that caused a fatal crash leading to the death of a pedestrian. The pedestrian, Elaine Herberg was hit by the Uber car when crossing the road in Tempe, Arizona as the self-driving car failed to identify her properly as a pedestrian. The victim was walking with his bicycle across a poorly-lit multilane road. The probable cause of the accident was not found during the initial investigations, but later it was found that the car’s system design did not have a program to include considerations for jaywalking pedestrians. According to the same report, US National Transportation Board found that 37 more Uber self-driving cars had experienced crashes between September 2016 and March 2018(BBC, 2019).
Upon further investigations, it was found that the car that caused the accident in Arizona had a driver in it but he was watching television, thus forgetting to monitor the road. The Uber self-driving Trucks manager Robbie Miller suggested that the accident was mainly caused by the poor behaviors of the drivers operating the autonomous cars (BBC, 2018). This accident was labeled as totally avoidable by the police. The NTCB vice chairman, Bruce Landsberg went ahead to report that the Arizona accident Uber driver spent 34% of the journey looking at his phone while streaming at a television show. During the time of this accident, the public and the car manufacturers were very confident about autonomous vehicles technology (BBC, 2020). The drivers’ negligence and the inability of autonomous cars to detect pedestrians raises ethical and legal issues on the safety of these cars.
Another incident that led to the raising of the ethical issues regarding autonomous cars technology was with the Google self-driving car changing lanes and putting itself in line with an incoming bus. The Google autonomous car, a Lexus SUV, was driving itself down El Camino Real in Mountain View. It moved to the far right lane to make a right turn onto Castro Street but stopped when it detected sandbags sitting around a storm drain and blocking its path. After several cars had passed, the car proceeded back to the center of the lane to pass the sandbags. When the test car driver saw the public transit car approaching, he assumed that the bus would stop or slow down for him to go through, but it did not, leading to an accident. Although there were no people injured, this accident led to ethical questions regarding who or what was responsible for the accident and how it can be prevented (Zambelich, 2015).
Statement of the Problem
There are hills and valleys where most roads are constructed, and most rural areas have poor internet connectivity, and this might interrupt the fully-functioning internet self-driving modes. Additionally, these cars run on internet-run GPS and remote satellite which might be dwarfed by poor internet connectivity and hacking activities. The loss of internet connectivity when the cars are in motion can lead to serious accidents that can be dangerous to both drivers and other road users. This is the most arguable issue that rises is the legal issue that arises during a car accident. The legal dilemma rises since the driver is to ride the car and have the responsibility to pay attention to the environment, while the fully automated cars are to self-drive themselves. Either the driver or the self-driving car company will face the legal dilemma of taking responsibility for the car accident.
The heart of this dilemma is in the programming of these cars. Car manufacturing companies program how a car should react to different situations, and this programming is done by a small team. It, therefore, means that the fate of many different people is entirely in the hands of these programmers. Too many people can be affected by the moral convention of a small group of people in a big corporation and what they believe is right.
Google company has been tested the auto-driving technique for many years, yet it was involved in a relatively silly accident. Why the auto-driving vehicle did not change lanes at the moment while the behind car is about to hit is a legal dilemma. Since the auto-driving car does not have human judgment or intuition while an accident is about to happen, it can only follow the system and the coding that engineers designed. However, the emergency avoidance system has already been developed and equipped with the car, in fact, at that moment, the car has to stay where it is. Imagine this situation, the self-driving car is carrying passengers while near a walkway. A car behind is about to hit the back but it only causes little harm towards the driver and the car itself, however, the auto-car is capable to change lanes and drive to the walkway but might hit the people who are walking which causes more damage. The self-driving car cannot be judgmental as same as a human being, but the system will only allow it to take the action which is responsible for the least legal issue. On the other hand, even if the auto-driving car did avoid accidents and hit the people on the walkway, it is still reasonable because auto-cars are supposed to minimize the driver’s arm to the least and the action is driven by the emergency avoidance system.
The website “Autonomous Vehicles Statistics” states “The self-driving car sector is growing at a rate of 16 percent each year worldwide. The belief in this technology has resulted in massive financial investments. This market is expected to be worth a trillion dollars by 2025, according to estimates.” The huge profit of the self-driving market will make more drivers drive self-driving cars and have a great chance to have a car accident while driving it. So here comes the legal dilemma for the auto vehicle industry. It is difficult to avoid accidents and unknown harms towards pedestrians and conform to the daily morals and laws. Since the engineers who design auto-driving have a bias that depends on how they lay on the moral side or the legal side, it is hard to find a perfect solution to balance both sides. Firstly, the life choosing problem is always difficult for machines. People always say that life cannot be quantified, however, machines have to choose and quantify people’s life during accidents. Imagine the self-driving car’s brake system malfunctioned on the road and it has to choose either hit the people on the walkway, or the right side’s car or sacrifice the driver’s life. The self-driving cars will minimize the driver’s harm first and always choose the least legally responsible side which chooses to hit the right-side car which only causes one person’s death compared to more people on the walkway. But life is life, there is no comparison between one life or thousands of lives, the machines cannot be emotional as humans and cannot stand at the moral aspect as human beings. Secondly, the technology required more than thousands of tests to be improved to be fully matured. Auto-driving cars cannot be improved without driving by themselves on the road. However, these tests might cause lots of accidents that sacrifice lots of people’s life. People might be afraid of the life-losing consequences brought by these self-driving vehicles which result in the test drive of self-driving cars cannot being achieved on the roads. So the technique will be standstill which does not allow the industry to have deeper development.
Finally, who will be responsible for the legal consequence of the accident will be the crucial problem. The driver is supposed to take responsibility for driving the vehicle but the self-driving cars drive by car themselves, either the driver or the self-driving car company will face the legal dilemma for taking responsible for the car accident.
Obstacles to resolving Autonomous Ethical and Moral Issues.
One challenge that is affecting the management of self-driving cars is the problem of division of responsibility when a car causes a problem or kills a person. The different regions of the world have different views on what ethics is and this proves to be challenging to international bodies to come up with laws that are inclusive in helping manage the autonomous car industry. Moral choices are not universal, and this is evident through the Moral Machine survey which laid out 13 scenarios where someone’s death was inevitable through an autonomous car. The stark differences between the responses revealed cultural nuances that governments and individuals face in making decisions (Maxmen, 2018, p. 3). Coming up with a universal code of ethics is important in controlling any ethical issues that may arise due to the manufacture and use of autonomous cars.
Solutions
These ethical issues that have been identified to arise from self-driving cars can be solved by all the stakeholders coming together to come up with laws that guide autonomous car manufacturing and testing protocols. These guidelines will also be able to streamline the car manufacturing companies and prompt them to make ethical cars that are sustainable. Nearly all world governments have not taken the initiative to come up with policies that govern autonomous cars (Bostrom, 2020 62-63). The present laws lack legal uniformity, therefore this industry continues to hurt the consumers. These ethical issues come up when looking at how these autonomous cars are defined, who should operate them, how they should be operated, is mandated with the responsibility of maintain and repairing them.
The first approach to solving the ethical issues arising from self-driving cars should be to regulate the standards of automobiles through the formation of policies and vehicle safety regulatory bodies. These regulatory bodies should set safety and manufacturing standards that apply to all self-driving cars. These regulatory bodies can also set uniform guidelines that coordinate national and international safety formulas. They should also be able to teach citizens about road safety use with regards to autonomous cars. In the United States, there is already a body that regulates the manufacturing of autonomous cars and their use. The Federal Oversight of Vehicle Safety and Manufacturing. The NHTSA has the broad authority to come up with uniform guidelines for a coordinated safety formula and the promotion of vehicle safety innovations (Roth, 2020).
Through proper guidelines, autonomous cars should be able to reduce human death without discrimination of individuals in regards to age, or any other factor. These regulations consider human lives to be sacred and should be always be given the highest priority over property or animals. Germany has tried to solve these ethical issues of autonomous cars using definite guidelines. German citizens and government believe that self-driving cars should make ethical decisions on who to save or harm depending on the standard rules by the government and not the programming feature of the manufacturers (Luetge, 2018, p 550). In a study done by Science, 75% of the respondents supported this German utilitarian approach while the remaining population had no strong feelings about the government laying down rules that intervened for their lives. These people believed that the government have no moral authority over their lives (Lau, 2020 p. 2).
These precedent rules should be based on data, and one of the outstanding suggestions by the German government is that these autonomous cars should have an aviation-like “black box” that will continuously record the vehicle’s surroundings and events, including who or what is in control at any given time. In an event where the car causes an accident, the ethical dilemma about who or what is in control of the car can be solved through a thorough investigation (Guidotti et al, 2018, pp 12-18). The first and most obvious reason for the government pushing for laws of using the black box is that the opportunity of a wrong answer will be low concerning the value of the correct answer. The black box also should be used to produce the greatest results, like in reading the standard field of view of these cars and enhancing the performance of the human drivers or the results when solving ethical disputes regarding self-driving cars. The black box also makes life and death decisions without an opportunity for human intervention. This quality will help in making self-driving cars to be safer than those piloted by human beings. They will be able to produce the best results regarding traffic injuries and fatalities (Holm, 2019).
Another approach to manage the ethical dilemma arising due to autonomous cars is that governments can collaborate in coming up with universal traffic rules. These traffic rules should be strictly promoted and governments to ensure that everyone is following these traffic rules as much as possible. These rules can be in form of traffic lights placed at every intersection to greatly lower the risk of accidents due to masses not following the traffic rules. The judgment of if the masses are following the rules should also be well monitored to formulate traffic rules that are very functional (Zhu, Gu, and Wang, 2021, p. 04016).
The above solutions are good in solving the ethical dilemma arising from autonomous cars, the issue arises in the need for stakeholders’ collaboration. Most people regard autonomous cars as safer than driver-operated cars, thus, these collaborations may prove less effective. A 2019nreport by McKinsey and Company showed that self-driving cars will reduce the rate of car accidents by up to 90%, and prevent damages of up to $190 yearly. Additionally, autonomous cars are programmed to obey all the traffic rules and they are not distracted by their surroundings, fatigue, or mobile phones. Out of 400000 traffic accidents, 90% were found to be due to human errors, thus the advantage of autonomous cars Lau, 2020, p. 4). These advantages further reduce how governments’ collaborations can work together to define moral ethics.
Conclusion
The above insights in solving ethical challenges facing autonomous cars are practical in different settings. Although self-driving cars are facing many challenges in terms of technological costs laws, and regulations, these cars are very important for transportation. The safety and the ethical efficiency of this technology represent a great future in intelligent driving and should be managed well. It is not wise to give up developments because of risks, but look at the numerous advantages that this technological advancement presents.
Works Cited
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Roth, Mathew. “Regulating the Future: Autonomous Vehicles and the Role of Government.” Iowa Law Review, 2020, ilr.law.uiowa.edu/print/volume-105-issue-3/regulating-the-future-autonomous-vehicles-and-the-role-of-government/. Accessed 17 Mar. 2022.
Zhu, Xi, Zhiqiang Gu, and Zhen Wang. “Ethical Challenges and Countermeasures of Autonomous Vehicles.” E3S Web of Conferences. Vol. 233. EDP Sciences, 2021.
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