Accidents involving autonomous vehicles: legal issues and ethical dilemmas

Accidents involving autonomous vehicles (AVs) raise difficult ethical dilemmas and legal issues. In this paper, we argue that self-driving cars should not be programmed to kill, that is, they should not be equipped with pre-programmed approaches to ethical dilemmas. On the contrary, we believe that AV systems should be designed in such a way that only user/passenger has the task (and burden) of deciding what ethical approach should be taken in unavoidable accident scenarios. We thus propose that AVs be equipped with what we call an “Ethical Knob”, a device enabling the passenger to choose between different settings corresponding to different moral approaches or principles. An AV would accordingly be entrusted only with implementing the user’s ethical choices, while the manufacturer/programmer would be tasked with enabling the user’s choice and ensuring its implementation by the AV.