scholarly journals Economic Rationality and Ethical Values in Design-Defect Analysis: The Trolley Problem and Autonomous Vehicles

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Bradley Wendel
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Autonomous Vehicles ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Autonomous Vehicle ◽  
Strict Liability ◽  
Trolley Problem ◽  
Products Liability ◽  
The Third ◽  
Design Defect

The trolley problem is a well-known thought experiment in moral philosophy, used to explore issues such as rights, deontological reasons, and intention and the doctrine of double effect. Recently it has featured prominently in popular discussions of decision making by autonomous vehicle systems. For example, a Mercedes-Benz executive stated that, if faced with the choice between running over a child that had unexpectedly darted into the road and steering suddenly, causing a rollover accident that would kill the driver, an automated Mercedes would opt to kill the child. This paper considers not the ethical issues raised by such dilemmas, but the liability of vehicle manufacturers for injuries that foreseeably result from the design of autonomous systems. Some of the recent commentary on the liability of autonomous vehicle manufacturers suggests unfamiliarity with modern products liability law, particularly the design-defect standard in the Third Restatement of Torts. A superficial understanding of products liability principles – for example, believing it is a regime of strict liability in any meaningful sense – can lead to serious errors in the application of this area of law to autonomous vehicles. It is also a mistake to believe that the economic approach to negligence liability, as developed by Posner and Calabresi, accurately characterizes modern products liability principles. Under the Third Restatement approach, a court or jury will consider whether a product embodies a reasonable balance of safety and utility, and “reasonable” can be interpreted in accordance with ordinary community ethical standards. Thus, some of the issues that are central to resolving trolley problems in moral philosophy may actually recur in design-defect litigation.

Future Blockchain Technology for Autonomous Applications/Autonomous Vehicle

2022 ◽  
pp. 1027-1038
Author(s):  
Arnab Kumar Show ◽  
Abhishek Kumar ◽  
Achintya Singhal ◽  
Gayathri N. ◽  
K. Vengatesan
Keyword(s):  
Autonomous Vehicles ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Autonomous Vehicle ◽  
The Self ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Traffic Information ◽  
Online Transactions ◽  
The Third ◽  
Blockchain Technology ◽  
Self Driving Cars

The autonomous industry has rapidly grown for self-driving cars. The main purpose of autonomous industry is trying to give all types of security, privacy, secured traffic information to the self-driving cars. Blockchain is another newly established secured technology. The main aim of this technology is to provide more secured, convenient online transactions. By using this new technology, the autonomous industry can easily provide more suitable, safe, efficient transportation to the passengers and secured traffic information to the vehicles. This information can easily gather by the roadside units or by the passing vehicles. Also, the economical transactions can be possible more efficiently since blockchain technology allows peer-to-peer communications between nodes, and it also eliminates the need of the third party. This chapter proposes a concept of how the autonomous industry can provide more adequate, proper, and safe transportation with the help of blockchain. It also examines for the possibility that autonomous vehicles can become the future of transportation.

scholarly journals Technological Triggers to Tort Revolutions: Steam Locomotives, Autonomous Vehicles, and Accident Compensation

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald G. Gifford
Keyword(s):  
Autonomous Vehicles ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Strict Liability ◽  
Social Utility ◽  
Fault System ◽  
Workers Compensation ◽  
Technological Changes ◽  
Severe Injuries ◽  
Products Liability ◽  
Human Decision

AbstractWaves of technological change explain the most important transformations of American tort law. In this Article, I begin by examining historical instances of this linkage. Following the Industrial Revolution, for example, machines, no longer humans and animals, powered production. With greater force, locomotives and other machines inflicted far more severe injuries. These dramatic technological changes prompted the replacement of the preexisting strict liability tort standard with the negligence regime. Similarly, later technological changes caused the enactment of workers’ compensation statutes, the implementation of automobile no-fault systems in some states and routinized automobile settlement practices in others that resemble a no-fault system, and the adoption of “strict” products liability. From this history, I derive a model explaining how technological innovation alters (1) the frequency of personal injuries, (2) the severity of such injuries, (3) the difficulty of proving claims, and (4) the new technology’s social utility. These four factors together determine the choice among three liability standards: strict liability, negligence, and no-fault liability with limited damages. I then apply this model to the looming technological revolution in which autonomous vehicles, robots, and other Artificial Intelligence machines will replace human decision-making as well as human force. I conclude that the liability system governing autonomous vehicles is likely to be one similar to the workers’ compensation system in which the victim is relieved of the requirement of proving which party acted tortiously and caused the accident.

Future Blockchain Technology for Autonomous Applications/Autonomous Vehicle

2021 ◽  
pp. 165-177
Author(s):  
Arnab Kumar Show ◽  
Abhishek Kumar ◽  
Achintya Singhal ◽  
Gayathri N. ◽  
K. Vengatesan
Keyword(s):  
Autonomous Vehicles ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Autonomous Vehicle ◽  
The Self ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Traffic Information ◽  
Online Transactions ◽  
The Third ◽  
Blockchain Technology ◽  
Self Driving Cars

The autonomous industry has rapidly grown for self-driving cars. The main purpose of autonomous industry is trying to give all types of security, privacy, secured traffic information to the self-driving cars. Blockchain is another newly established secured technology. The main aim of this technology is to provide more secured, convenient online transactions. By using this new technology, the autonomous industry can easily provide more suitable, safe, efficient transportation to the passengers and secured traffic information to the vehicles. This information can easily gather by the roadside units or by the passing vehicles. Also, the economical transactions can be possible more efficiently since blockchain technology allows peer-to-peer communications between nodes, and it also eliminates the need of the third party. This chapter proposes a concept of how the autonomous industry can provide more adequate, proper, and safe transportation with the help of blockchain. It also examines for the possibility that autonomous vehicles can become the future of transportation.

scholarly journals Five William Shakespeares Versus One Santa Claus; Self-Sacrifice and The Trolley Problem in the Series “The Good Place”

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 366
Author(s):  
Frank G. Bosman
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Moral Dilemma ◽  
Trolley Problem ◽  
Television Series ◽  
True Nature ◽  
Moral Attitude ◽  
Good Place ◽  
Santa Claus ◽  
Four Seasons

The television series The Good Place (2016–2020), created by Michael Schur revolves around four humans who—after their deaths—end up in what they believe to be heaven: the “Good Place”. In reality, however, they are in a very sophisticated torture place, built and directed by demons from the “Bad Place”. During the four seasons of the series, the four humans discover the true nature of their predicament and try to reach to “real” Good Place, through—among other means—improving their moral attitude, e.g., becoming a better person by taking ethical lessons provided by one of the four, who is an actual professor of moral philosophy. During these lessons, the four discuss many ethical and philosophical notions, ideas and problems, among which is Philippa Foot’s famous 1967 thought experiment known as the Trolley Problem. The series as a whole, the author of this article argues, revolves around this impossible moral dilemma, suggesting self-sacrifice as an ultimate solution to the Trolley Problem.

scholarly journals The Trolley Problem Version of Autonomous Vehicles

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yair Wiseman ◽  
Ilan Grinberg
Keyword(s):  
Data Structures ◽  
Spatial Data ◽  
Autonomous Vehicles ◽  
Autonomous Vehicle ◽  
Trolley Problem ◽  
Spatial Data Structures ◽  
Bounding Volumes ◽  
Human Driver ◽  
Ethics Dilemma

Introduction:The Trolley problem is a very well-known ethics dilemma about actively killing one or sometimes even more persons in order to save a number of persons. The problem can occur in autonomous vehicles when the vehicle realizes that there is no way to prevent a collision, the computer of the vehicle should analyze which collision is considered to be the least harmful collision.Method and Result:In this paper, we suggest a method to evaluate the likely harmfulness of each sort of collision using Spatial Data Structures and Bounding Volumes and accordingly to decide which course of actions would be the less harmful and therefore should be chosen by the autonomous vehicle.Conclusion:The aim of this paper is to emphasize that the “Trolley Problem” occurs when the human driver is replaced by a robot and if a moral answer is given by an authoritative and legitimate board of experts, it can be coded in autonomous vehicle software.

Ethics Settings for Autonomous Vehicles

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Millar
Keyword(s):  
Autonomous Vehicles ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Autonomous Vehicle ◽  
Ethical Considerations ◽  
Vehicle Technology ◽  
Definition Of

This chapter explores the underlying arguments for and against designing ethics settings into autonomous vehicles. I begin by offering a definition of “ethics setting” and by discussing how designers and engineers embed ethics settings in technology. I then provide an overview of some of the ethics settings that are currently embedded in vehicles and some that are proposed or foreseeable in emerging autonomous vehicle technology. I also discuss the various ethical considerations that have been raised in response to each kind of ethics setting. After describing the landscape of ethics settings and related ethical issues that accompany them, I raise three questions that must be answered by those designing ethics settings into autonomous vehicles. I conclude by providing some considerations that can help engineers, designers, and policymakers answer them in practice.

Disanalogical Discourse on Trolley Problem for Autonomous Vehicles

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mayukh Mukhopadhyay ◽  
Kaushik Ghosh ◽  
Abhisita Chakraborty ◽  
Malay Goswami
Keyword(s):  
Autonomous Vehicles ◽  
Trolley Problem

Vision-Based Navigation of Autonomous Vehicles in Roadway Environments with Unexpected Hazards

2019 ◽  
Vol 2673 (12) ◽  
pp. 494-507 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mhafuzul Islam ◽  
Mashrur Chowdhury ◽  
Hongda Li ◽  
Hongxin Hu
Keyword(s):  
Object Detection ◽  
Autonomous Vehicles ◽  
Autonomous Vehicle ◽  
Semantic Segmentation ◽  
Steering Wheel ◽  
Potential Hazard ◽  
Driving System ◽  
Hazardous Object ◽  
Vision Based Navigation ◽  
Navigational System

Vision-based navigation of autonomous vehicles primarily depends on the deep neural network (DNN) based systems in which the controller obtains input from sensors/detectors, such as cameras, and produces a vehicle control output, such as a steering wheel angle to navigate the vehicle safely in a roadway traffic environment. Typically, these DNN-based systems in the autonomous vehicle are trained through supervised learning; however, recent studies show that a trained DNN-based system can be compromised by perturbation or adverse inputs. Similarly, this perturbation can be introduced into the DNN-based systems of autonomous vehicles by unexpected roadway hazards, such as debris or roadblocks. In this study, we first introduce a hazardous roadway environment that can compromise the DNN-based navigational system of an autonomous vehicle, and produce an incorrect steering wheel angle, which could cause crashes resulting in fatality or injury. Then, we develop a DNN-based autonomous vehicle driving system using object detection and semantic segmentation to mitigate the adverse effect of this type of hazard, which helps the autonomous vehicle to navigate safely around such hazards. We find that our developed DNN-based autonomous vehicle driving system, including hazardous object detection and semantic segmentation, improves the navigational ability of an autonomous vehicle to avoid a potential hazard by 21% compared with the traditional DNN-based autonomous vehicle driving system.

The human-like trajectory planning for autonomous vehicles based on optimal control in a test track environment

2021 ◽  
pp. 095440702110090
Author(s):  
Xing Xu ◽  
Minglei Li ◽  
Feng Wang ◽  
Ju Xie ◽  
Xiaohan Wu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Optimal Control ◽  
Autonomous Vehicles ◽  
Optimal Trajectory ◽  
Control Method ◽  
Autonomous Vehicle ◽  
Trajectory Data ◽  
Test Track ◽  
Optimal Control Method ◽  
The Future ◽  
On The Road

A human-like trajectory could give a safe and comfortable feeling for the occupants in an autonomous vehicle especially in corners. The research of this paper focuses on planning a human-like trajectory along a section road on a test track using optimal control method that could reflect natural driving behaviour considering the sense of natural and comfortable for the passengers, which could improve the acceptability of driverless vehicles in the future. A mass point vehicle dynamic model is modelled in the curvilinear coordinate system, then an optimal trajectory is generated by using an optimal control method. The optimal control problem is formulated and then solved by using the Matlab tool GPOPS-II. Trials are carried out on a test track, and the tested data are collected and processed, then the trajectory data in different corners are obtained. Different TLCs calculations are derived and applied to different track sections. After that, the human driver’s trajectories and the optimal line are compared to see the correlation using TLC methods. The results show that the optimal trajectory shows a similar trend with human’s trajectories to some extent when driving through a corner although it is not so perfectly aligned with the tested trajectories, which could conform with people’s driving intuition and improve the occupants’ comfort when driving in a corner. This could improve the acceptability of AVs in the automotive market in the future. The driver tends to move to the outside of the lane gradually after passing the apex when driving in corners on the road with hard-lines on both sides.

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