People’s Perception and Expectation of Moral Settings in Autonomous Vehicles: An Australian Case

Abstract

While Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) can handle the majority of driving situations with relative ease, it is indeed challenging to design a system whose safety performance will fit every situation. Technology errors, misaligned sensors, malicious actors and bad weather can all contribute to imminent collisions. If we assume that the wide-spread use and adoption of AVs is a necessary condition of the many societal benefits that these vehicles have promised to offer, then it is quite clear that any reasonable ethics policy should also consider the various user expectations with which they interact, and the larger societies in which they are implemented. In this paper we aim to evaluate Australian’s perception and expectation on personal AVs relating to various ethical settings. We do this using a survey questionnaire, where the participants are shown 6 dilemma situations involving an AV, and are asked to decide which outcome is the most acceptable to them. We have designed the survey questions with consideration for previous research and have excluded any selection criteria which we believed were biased or redundant in nature. We enhanced our questionnaire by informing participants about the legal implications of each crash scenario. We also provided participants with a randomised choice which we named an Objective Decision System (ODS). If selected, the AV would consider all possible outcomes for a given crash scenario and choose one at random. The randomised decision is non-weighted, which means that all possible outcomes are treated equally. We will use the survey analysis, to list and prioritise Australian’s preferences on personal AVs when dealing with an ethical dilemma, that can help manufacturers in programming and governments in developing AV policies. Finally, we make some recommendations for further researchers as we believe such questionnaires can help arouse people’s curiosity in the various ways that an AV could be programmed to deal with a dilemma situation and would encourage AV adoption.