Never Mind the Trolley: The Ethics of Autonomous Vehicles in Mundane Situations.
Trolley cases are widely considered central to the ethics of autonomous vehicles. We caution against this by identifying four problems. (1) Trolley cases, given technical limitations, rest on assumptions that are in tension with one another. Furthermore, (2) trolley cases illuminate only a limited r...
| Published in: | Ethical Theory & Moral Practice Vol. 21; no. 3; pp. 669 - 685 |
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| Format: | Article |
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Springer Nature
Jun2018
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=134039470&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 134039470 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 13862820 OEY jtl: Ethical Theory & Moral Practice issn: 13862820 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Jun2018 vid: 21 iid: 3 pid: 237 pub: Springer Nature artinfo: ui: 134039470 10.1007/s10677-018-9896-4 ppf: 669 ppct: 16 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 514KB tig: atl: Never Mind the Trolley: The Ethics of Autonomous Vehicles in Mundane Situations. aug: au: Himmelreich, Johannes affil: McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society, Stanford University, 450 Serra Mall, 94305, Stanford, CA, USA su: Trolley cars Autonomous vehicles Structural frames Safety Hypothesis sug: subj: Trolley cars Autonomous vehicles Structural frames Safety Hypothesis keyword: Applied ethics Driverless cars Ethics of autonomous vehicles Ethics of self-driving cars Ethics of technology Methodology Self-driving cars Thought experiments Trolley problem ab: Trolley cases are widely considered central to the ethics of autonomous vehicles. We caution against this by identifying four problems. (1) Trolley cases, given technical limitations, rest on assumptions that are in tension with one another. Furthermore, (2) trolley cases illuminate only a limited range of ethical issues insofar as they cohere with a certain design framework. Furthermore, (3) trolley cases seem to demand a moral answer when a political answer is called for. Finally, (4) trolley cases might be epistemically problematic in several ways. To put forward a positive proposal, we illustrate how ethical challenges arise from mundane driving situations. We argue that mundane situations are relevant because of the specificity they require and the scale they exhibit. We then illustrate some of the ethical challenges arising from optimizing for safety, balancing safety with other values such as mobility, and adjusting to incentives of legal frameworks. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Ethical Theory & Moral Practice is a copyright of Springer, 2018. All Rights Reserved. item: Ethical Theory & Moral Practice holder: Springer Nature dt: @attributes: year: 2018 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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