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Responsibility for Crashes of Autonomous Vehicles: An Ethical Analysis

A number of companies including Google and BMW are currently working on the development of autonomous cars. But if fully autonomous cars are going to drive on our roads, it must be decided who is to be held responsible in case of accidents. This involves not only legal questions, but also moral ones...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Hevelke, Alexander, Nida-Rümelin, Julian
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Netherlands 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4430591/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25027859
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11948-014-9565-5
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author Hevelke, Alexander
Nida-Rümelin, Julian
author_facet Hevelke, Alexander
Nida-Rümelin, Julian
author_sort Hevelke, Alexander
collection PubMed
description A number of companies including Google and BMW are currently working on the development of autonomous cars. But if fully autonomous cars are going to drive on our roads, it must be decided who is to be held responsible in case of accidents. This involves not only legal questions, but also moral ones. The first question discussed is whether we should try to design the tort liability for car manufacturers in a way that will help along the development and improvement of autonomous vehicles. In particular, Patrick Lin’s concern that any security gain derived from the introduction of autonomous cars would constitute a trade-off in human lives will be addressed. The second question is whether it would be morally permissible to impose liability on the user based on a duty to pay attention to the road and traffic and to intervene when necessary to avoid accidents. Doubts about the moral legitimacy of such a scheme are based on the notion that it is a form of defamation if a person is held to blame for causing the death of another by his inattention if he never had a real chance to intervene. Therefore, the legitimacy of such an approach would depend on the user having an actual chance to do so. The last option discussed in this paper is a system in which a person using an autonomous vehicle has no duty (and possibly no way) of interfering, but is still held (financially, not criminally) responsible for possible accidents. Two ways of doing so are discussed, but only one is judged morally feasible.
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spelling pubmed-44305912015-05-18 Responsibility for Crashes of Autonomous Vehicles: An Ethical Analysis Hevelke, Alexander Nida-Rümelin, Julian Sci Eng Ethics Original Paper A number of companies including Google and BMW are currently working on the development of autonomous cars. But if fully autonomous cars are going to drive on our roads, it must be decided who is to be held responsible in case of accidents. This involves not only legal questions, but also moral ones. The first question discussed is whether we should try to design the tort liability for car manufacturers in a way that will help along the development and improvement of autonomous vehicles. In particular, Patrick Lin’s concern that any security gain derived from the introduction of autonomous cars would constitute a trade-off in human lives will be addressed. The second question is whether it would be morally permissible to impose liability on the user based on a duty to pay attention to the road and traffic and to intervene when necessary to avoid accidents. Doubts about the moral legitimacy of such a scheme are based on the notion that it is a form of defamation if a person is held to blame for causing the death of another by his inattention if he never had a real chance to intervene. Therefore, the legitimacy of such an approach would depend on the user having an actual chance to do so. The last option discussed in this paper is a system in which a person using an autonomous vehicle has no duty (and possibly no way) of interfering, but is still held (financially, not criminally) responsible for possible accidents. Two ways of doing so are discussed, but only one is judged morally feasible. Springer Netherlands 2014-06-11 2015 /pmc/articles/PMC4430591/ /pubmed/25027859 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11948-014-9565-5 Text en © The Author(s) 2014 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are credited.
spellingShingle Original Paper
Hevelke, Alexander
Nida-Rümelin, Julian
Responsibility for Crashes of Autonomous Vehicles: An Ethical Analysis
title Responsibility for Crashes of Autonomous Vehicles: An Ethical Analysis
title_full Responsibility for Crashes of Autonomous Vehicles: An Ethical Analysis
title_fullStr Responsibility for Crashes of Autonomous Vehicles: An Ethical Analysis
title_full_unstemmed Responsibility for Crashes of Autonomous Vehicles: An Ethical Analysis
title_short Responsibility for Crashes of Autonomous Vehicles: An Ethical Analysis
title_sort responsibility for crashes of autonomous vehicles: an ethical analysis
topic Original Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4430591/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25027859
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11948-014-9565-5
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