Companies, regulators wrestle with ethics of autonomous vehicles

Autonomous vehicles are coming — but how will they solve ethical issues?

What you probably already know: As automakers race to develop autonomous vehicles, they’re increasingly relying on AI to make the split-second decisions necessary to put the cars on the road. That, however, comes with significant ethical questions that the AI-driven vehicles will have to answer. Should a car brake for a cat in the road, thus increasing the likelihood of being rearended? Should the car take the safer route with statistically fewer accidents, or should it take the more direct route that’s more energy efficient? Then there are the harder decisions: Do you risk the life of the two people in the car to swerve into oncoming traffic when a child darts out into the street?

Why? While humans make these decisions every time we take to the road — and sometimes we aren’t great at that — autonomous vehicles will be held to a higher standard as companies work to prove that these systems are safe. Companies including Tesla have already had to recall vehicles when they did things as seemingly small as a rolling stop at stop signs. There are high levels of public scrutiny on these systems, and the introduction of autonomous vehicles will likely force the creation of new regulations.

What it means: Some experts suggest that this is the opportunity to improve the rules we have in place, rather than training autonomous vehicles to do what humans do. More than 7,500 pedestrians were killed by cars in 2022, the highest number since 1981 and a 70% increase in the last decade, and more than 42,000 people were killed in vehicle-related deaths that same year, suggesting the status quo isn’t something we might want to replicate.

What happens now? There are already 29 laws governing self-driving cars and regulators are being asked to develop new rules to govern safety as well as create some standardization across all vehicle systems. That would prevent, for example, autonomous vehicles from favoring their own passengers over a competitor’s passengers. Currently, no such rules exist. Meanwhile, car companies are racing to get these systems tested and into use. California’s Department of Motor Vehicles established an Autonomous Vehicle Tester program in 2018 and many other states have similar programs. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has a site where you can track where these vehicles are being tested on public roads in San Francisco, Austin, Seattle, Detroit and many other areas.

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