PRE2020 3 Group11

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Problem statement

What are the relevant factors that contribute to the acceptance of self-driving cars for the private end-user?

Self-driving cars are believed to be more safe than manually driven cars. However, they can not be a 100% safe. Because crashes and collisions are unavoidable, self-driving cars should be programmed for responding to situations where accidents are highly likely or unavoidable (Sven Nyholm, Jilles Smids, 2016). There are three moral problems involving self-driving cars. First, the problem of who decides how self-driving cars should be programmed to deal with accidents exists. Next, the moral question who has to take the moral and legal responsibility for harms caused by self-driving cars is asked. Finally, there is the decision-making of risks and uncertainty.

There is the trolley problem, which is a moral problem because of human perspective on moral decisions made by machine intelligence, such as self-driving cars. For example, should a self-driving car hit a pregnant woman or swerve into a wall and kill its four passengers? There is also a moral responsibility for harms caused by self-driving cars. Suppose, for example, when there is an accident between an autonomous car and a conventional car, this will not only be followed by legal proceedings, it will also lead to a debate about who is morally responsible for what happened (Sven Nyholm, Jilles Smids, 2016).

A lot of uncertainty is involved with self-driving cars. The self-driving car cannot acquire certain knowledge about the truck’s trajectory, its speed at the time of collision, and its actual weight. Second, focusing on the self-driving car itself, in order to calculate the optimal trajectory, the self-driving car needs to have perfect knowledge of the state of the road, since any slipperiness of the road limits its maximal deceleration. Finally, if we turn to the elderly pedestrian, again we can easily identify a number of sources of uncertainty. Using facial recognition software, the self-driving car can perhaps estimate his age with some degree of precision and confidence. But it may merely guess his actual state of health (Sven Nyholm, Jilles Smids, 2016).

The decision-making about self-driving cars is more realistically represented as being made by multiple stakeholders; ordinary citizens, lawyers, ethicists, engineers, risk assessment experts, car-manufacturers, government, etc. These stakeholders need to negotiate a mutually agreed-upon solution (Sven Nyholm, Jilles Smids, 2016). This report will focus on the relevant factors that contribute to the acceptance of self-driving cars with the main focus on the private end-user. Taking into account the ethical theories: utilitarianism, kantianism, virtue ethics, deontology, ethical plurism, ethical absolutism and ethical relativism, the moral and legal responsibility, safety, security, privacy and the perspective of the private end-user.

Survey

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tranpol.2018.03.004

Ethical theories

A key feature of self-driving cars is that the decision making process is taken away from the person in the driver’s seat, and instead bestowed upon the car itself. From this several ethical dilemmas emerge, one of which is essentially a version of the trolley problem. When an unavoidable collision will occur, it is important to define the desired behaviour of the self-driving car. It might be the case that in such a scenario, the car has to choose whether to prioritize the life and health of its passengers or the people outside of the vehicle. In real life such cases are relatively rare [reference 1] , but the ethical theory underlying that decision will have possibly an impact on the acceptance of the technology. Self-driving vehicles that decide who might live and who might die are essentially in a scenario where some moral reasoning is required in order to produce the best outcome for all parties involved. Given that cars seem not to be capable of moral reasoning, programmers must choose for them the right ethical setting on which to base such decisions on. However, ethical decisions are not often clear cut. Imagine driving at high speed in a self-driving car, and suddenly the car in front comes to a sudden halt. The self-driving car can either suddenly break as well, possibly harming the passengers, or it can swerve into a motorcyclist, possibly harming them. One could argue that since the motorcyclist is not at fault, the self-driving car should prioritize their safety. After all, the passenger made the decision to enter the car, putting at least some responsibility on them. On the other hand, people who buy might buy the self-driving car will have an expectation to not be put in avoidable danger. No matter the choice of the car, and the underlying ethical theory that it is (possibly) based on, it is likely that the behaviour and decision-making of the car has more chance of being socially accepted if it can morally be justified. Therefore in this section there is first highlighted some possible ethical theories, and then we will discuss some relevant aspects that surround the implementation of all ethical theories. - Different ethical theories explanation - Explicitly choose ethical setting vs neural nets (which would effectively choose one, being a black box) - Ethical knob and letting the user set the ethical setting - Game theory - Relevance of ethical theories - Ethical theories that are bad for users might not be popular - Knowing the theory might change people’s behaviours (pedestrians who know the car will prioritize them might not pay as much attention; a perfect car might do everything in its power to avoid collision with them)

Responsibility

One very important factor in the development and sale of automated vehicles is the question of who is responsible when things go wrong. In this section we will look in detail at all factors involved and come up with certain solutions. As brought up by Marchant and Lindor, there are three questions that need to be analysed. Firstly, who will be liable in the case of an accident? Secondly, how much weight should be given to the fact that autonomous vehicles are supposed to be safer than conventional vehicles in determining who of the involved people should be held responsible? Lastly, will a higher percentage of crashes be caused because of a manufacturing ‘defect’, compared to crashes with conventional vehicles where driver error is usually attributed to the cause (Marchant & Lindor, 2012)?

The manufacturer It would be obvious to say the manufacturer of the car is responsible. They designed the car, so if it makes a mistake, they are to blame. Any flaw in the system that might cause the car to crash, the manufacturers could have known or did know beforehand. If they then sold the car anyway, there is no question in that they are responsible. However, by holding the manufacturer responsible in every case, it would immensely discourage anyone to start producing these autonomous cars. Especially with technology as complex as autonomous driving systems, it would be nearly impossible to make it flawless (Marchant & Lindor, 2012). In order to encourage people to manufacture autonomous vehicles and still hold them responsible, a balance needs to be found between the two. This is necessary, because removing all liability would also result in undesirable effects (Hevelke & Nida-Rümelin, 2015).

Safety

One of the main factors deciding whether self-driving cars will be accepted is the safety of them. Because who would leave their life in the hands of another entity, knowing it is not completely safe. Though almost everyone gets into buses and planes without doubt or fear. Would we be able to do the same with self-driving cars? Cars have become more and more autonomous over the last decades. Furthermore, self-driving cars will operate in unstructured environments, this adds a lot of unexpected situations. (Wagner M., Koopman P. (2015))

Software

Traffic behaviour

The cars safety will be determined by the way it is programmed to act in traffic. Will it stop for every pedestrian? If it does pedestrians will know and cross roads wherever they want. Will it take the driving style of humans? How does the driving behavior of automated vehicles influence trust and acceptance?

In a research two different designs were presented to a group of participants. One was programmed to simulate a human driver, whilst the other one is communicating with it’s surroundings in a way that it could drive without stopping or slowing down. The research showed no significant different in trust of the two automated vehicles. However, it did show that the longer the research continued the trust grew. (Oliveira, L., Proctor, K., Burns, C. G., & Birrell, S. (2019)) It is therefore to say that the driving behaviour does not necessarily influence the acceptance. But the overall safety of the driving behaviour determines this.

Errors

Despite what we think, humans are quite capable of avoiding car crashes. It is inevitable that a computer never crashes, think about how often your laptop freezes. A slow response of a mini second can have disastrous consequences. Software for self-driving vehicles must be made fundamentally different. This is one of the major challenges currently holding back the development of fully automated cars. On the contrary automated air vehicles are already in use. However, software on automated aircraft is much less complex since they have to deal with fewer obstacles and almost no other vehicles.

Hackers

Vs humans

Self-driving cars hold the potential of eliminating all accidents, or at least those caused by inattentive drivers. (Wagner M., Koopman P. (2015))

The city

Trust

Questions of whether or not to trust a new technology are often answered by testing. (Wagner M., Koopman P. (2015))

Perspective of private end-user

Additional features important for users

While many people look positively towards the implementation of SDC’s, less people are willing to buy one. Also, many people don’t want to invest more money in SDC’s than they do in conventional cars right now. Therefore, a car sharing scheme is preferred by many. Also many people say that they will still have concerns riding a SDC and they prefer to be able to intervene manually whenever they want or need to. Additionally, people like to take over full control when they like to.

Most important benefits or concerns (in order of relevance).

- An SDC could solve transport-problems for older or disabled people.

- People are able to do other things while driving an SDC.

- People are concerned of legal issues caused by SDC’s.

- People are concerned of hackers’ attacks at SDC’s.

Strategic implications (in order of relevance).

- A feature making the user able to take over full control should be implemented. Female and old users showed the highest agreement. Pros: People are still able to enjoy the pleasures of manually driving and they don’t lose the emotion of freedom. Cons: The total efficiency of driving will decrease. People will most likely drive less efficient, if they don’t speed. If every car drives autonomously, the cars can communicate better and adapt earlier and better to each other. Other SDC’s can’t predict what a human driver will do. It is likely that more accidents will take place, because SDC’s will most likely be safer.

- Free test rides should be offered to people.

- Salesmen should offer comprehensive information in the showroom.

(König, M., & Neumayr, L. 2017b)

As already said above, more people are willing to accept SDC’s when they don’t have to buy a car themselves. This means that sharing cars will be the new normal. The idea is that you can order one with a mobile app or something like that and it will drive to you by itself. This is only possible if SDC’s become autonomous at the highest level. If they are autonomous, but require a person to intervene when things go wrong, they may not drive without passenger. As also mentioned, people don’t accept fully autonomous cars as much as cars with a possibility to intervene. The problems posed by ridesharing are that not all passengers, who don’t know each other, may travel from the same point to the same point. Also, people may not always feel to comfortable when they travel with strangers. Therefore, people are willing to accept this idea more when they can order a ride for themselves and when it doesn’t stop to pick up others. That way, it will become available again when the ride is finished. This will require more cars on the road in total than when rides are shared, so it only solves part of the traffic problem. The same amount of people need to move themselves at the same time as now and buses or trains will be made less use of, because cars will be more accessible. As world population also increases, ridesharing may be necessary. A solution would be that ordering a private ride will be more expensive. Then, only a part of the population (wealthy businessmen etcetera), would make use of this option and the majority of the people would have to ride with others. Only the existence of this option and the possibility of enjoying a private ride when you really need to, could make it easier for people to accept. One benefit of not owning cars, will be that parking spots within cities won’t be needed anymore. The cars could be deployed from a base outside the city and they can be parked there when not needed.

References

Sven Nyholm, Jilles Smids. (2016). The Ethics of Accident-Algorithms for Self-Driving Cars: an Applied Trolley Problem? Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 1275–1289.

Hevelke, A., & Nida-Rümelin, J. (2015). Responsibility for Crashes of Autonomous Vehicles: An Ethical Analysis. Science and Engineering Ethics, 21(3), 619–630. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-014-9565-5

Marchant, G. E., & Lindor, R. A. (2012). Santa Clara Law Review The Coming Collision Between Autonomous Vehicles and the Liability System THE COMING COLLISION BETWEEN AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES AND THE LIABILITY SYSTEM. Number 4 Article, 52(4), 12–17. Retrieved from http://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/lawreview

Wagner M., Koopman P. (2015) A Philosophy for Developing Trust in Self-driving Cars. In: Meyer G., Beiker S. (eds) Road Vehicle Automation 2. Lecture Notes in Mobility. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19078-5_14

Oliveira, L., Proctor, K., Burns, C. G., & Birrell, S. (2019). Driving Style: How Should an Automated Vehicle Behave? Information, 10(6), 219. MDPI AG. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/info1006021

Shladover, S. (2016). THE TRUTH ABOUT “SELF-DRIVING” CARS. Scientific American, 314(6), 52-57. doi:10.2307/26046990