Ethical and legal challenges of automated driving: The prioritization of socio-political values

Abstract

Much research on the ethics of automated driving (AD) focusses on moral decision-making processes in extreme traffic situations. However, more likely scenarios involving daily trade-offs among different values in the design and implementation of AD are also worth considering. Our main goal was to provide an in-depth analysis of how diverse experts and stakeholders prioritize different socio-political values. Through a series of workshops, semi-structured interviews, and focus groups, we assessed today's major social, ethical, and legal concerns related to AD, as well as their relative prioritization in specific near-future realistic traffic scenarios. We summarize experts’ and lay-people's opinions on the trade-offs among six socio-political values (privacy, autonomy, safety, security, performance, and costs) and present overall recommendations for the design of future AD technologies.