Ethical and Legal Concerns relating to Autonomous Vehicles, in the Light of Experimental Findings and Regulatory Attempts
Ethical and Legal Concerns relating to Autonomous Vehicles, in the Light of Experimental Findings and Regulatory Attempts

Summary/Abstract: When thinking about autonomous vehicles, their decision-making units and the resulting ethical and legal concerns we face many dilemmas. These dilemmas will become more pronounced as the driver gradually becomes a passenger and loses control of the vehicle, which in many cases is the basis for liability in different jurisdictions. The wide range of ethical concerns that as a set of social norms in their own right, continue to influence contemporary societies, even if many authors describe their role as having an increasingly limited impact, cannot be overlooked. The reason is that in many respects it is this system of norms that fills mere formal law with appropriate content - or shapes the development and evolution of formal law - and plays a prominent role in the interpretation of substantive law, which is so often emphasised. The paper examines the worth situation where autonomous vehicles have to choose the 'best' of several decision alternatives with explicitly negative consequences in their autonomous decision-making, without the possibility of making a consequence-free decision. Even if, at first sight this may seem to be an abstract programming issue, it is in fact, a very serious and burdensome responsibility for the creators of autonomous vehicles. In these situations, both social, ethical regulation and legal regulation must provide answers to the concerns raised - in this article we attempt to bring together these answers in order to show where the regulation of autonomous decision-making is heading in this specific area.

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