English

Machine Ethics and Automated Vehicles

Computers and Society 2020-10-30 v1

Abstract

Road vehicle travel at a reasonable speed involves some risk, even when using computer-controlled driving with failure-free hardware and perfect sensing. A fully-automated vehicle must continuously decide how to allocate this risk without a human driver's oversight. These are ethical decisions, particularly in instances where an automated vehicle cannot avoid crashing. In this chapter, I introduce the concept of moral behavior for an automated vehicle, argue the need for research in this area through responses to anticipated critiques, and discuss relevant applications from machine ethics and moral modeling research.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2010.15665,
  title  = {Machine Ethics and Automated Vehicles},
  author = {Noah J. Goodall},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2010.15665},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

12 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-23T19:44:55.227Z