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Distributive justice as an ethical principle for autonomous vehicle behavior beyond hazard scenarios

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Abstract

Through modern driver assistant systems, algorithmic decisions already have a significant impact on the behavior of vehicles in everyday traffic. This will become even more prominent in the near future considering the development of autonomous driving functionality. The need to consider ethical principles in the design of such systems is generally acknowledged. However, scope, principles and strategies for their implementations are not yet clear. Most of the current discussions concentrate on situations of unavoidable crashes in which the life of human beings is existentially affected. In this paper, we argue that ethical considerations should be mandatory for any algorithmic decision of autonomous vehicles, instead of a limitation to hazard situations. Such an ethically aligned behavior is relevant because autonomous vehicles, like any other traffic participants, operate in a shared public space, where every behavioral decision impacts the operational possibilities of others. These possibilities concern the fulfillment of a road-user’s safety, utility and comfort needs. We propose that, to operate ethically in such space, an autonomous vehicle will have to take its behavior decisions according to a just distribution of operational possibilities among all traffic participants. Using an application on a partially-autonomous prototype vehicle, we describe how to apply and implement concepts of distributive justice to the driving environment and demonstrate the impact on its behavior in comparison to an advanced but egoistic decision maker.

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Notes

  1. See for example Waymo’s self-driving cars (Waymo 2017) or Volvo’s Drive Me plans for alpha-testing with real families (https://www.volvocars.com/intl/about/our-innovation-brands/intellisafe/autonomous-driving/drive-me).

  2. The trolley-problem is a classic ethical thought experiment, which is referred to in the ethics of autonomous vehicles. It can be described as follows: A driverless trolley is heading towards a group of people on a track. The only chance to safe their lives is to pull a switch which has the effect that the trolly is redirected to a side-track where only a single person is killed instead. This scenario is used to compare ethical justifications in dilemma situation.

  3. “Protecting the human right to free movement while ensuring that the opportunities to meet human needs and interests are fairly distributed” (Mladenovic and McPherson 2016, p. 1135).

  4. For example the results of the German “Ethics Commission” strongly stresses this fundamental right with respect to autonomous driving (Ethics-Commission 2017). See Luetge (2017) for comments on the report.

  5. Lamont and Favor (2017) presents a similar set of key aspects (see chapter: “Scope and Role of Distributive Principles”).

  6. One definition: “justice in distribution of good and evil” in a “comparative treatment of individuals” (Frankena 1963, p. 10).

  7. “Things that every rational man is presumed to want”, for example: “liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the social bases of self-respect” (Rawls 2009, p. 54).

  8. He defines common goods as “resources, opportunities, profits and advantages, roles and offices, responsibilities, taxes and burdens - in general, the common stock and the incidents of communal enterprise, which do not serve the common good unless and until they are appropriated to particular individuals” (Finnis 2011, p. 166).

  9. This perspective has become popular as “luck egalitarianism” (Anderson 1999, p. 327).

  10. For instance Persson argues for an extreme egalitarianism position (Persson 2007).

  11. “Imagine a case in which the enslavement of a very small minority population will make the much larger majority population very happy” (Shafer-Landau 2007, p. 415).

  12. For instance Ferretti argues that any “risk imposition” is of ethical relevance even when in the end no actual damage occurs (Ferretti 2016).

  13. Leben is also aware of that and claims a more general applicability of his approach in the conclusion of his article (Leben 2017).

  14. In some autonomous vehicle prototypes, behavioral decisions are made by a “black-box” machine learning algorithm, that maps incoming information (e.g. image data) to behavior output based on prior training examples (Bojarski et al 2016).

  15. In a report of the ethic-commission, assigned by the German Ministry of Transport, the authors claim that autonomous vehicles should be programmed that they “drive in a defensive and anticipatory manner, posing as little risk as possible to vulnerable road users” (Ethics-Commission 2017, p. 6).

  16. Researchers have pointed at a potential responsibility gap with respect to autonomous systems (Danaher 2016; Sparrow 2007).

  17. For instance Nyholm and Smith assume that autonomous vehicles will be programmed to optimize their passengers’ interests: “optimally safe, fuel-efficient, and travel time-efficient” (Nyholm and Smids 2018, p. 2).

  18. The assistance system is an extension of an adaptive cruise control system with behavior prediction capabilities as introduced in Kleinehagenbrock et al (2015), Schmuedderich et al (2015).

  19. For technical details on the system, see Weisswange et al. (2019).

  20. For instances an ambulance could be a privileged traffic participant.

  21. See for example: Ethics-Commission (2017).

  22. In Ethics-Commission (2017): Paragraph 9 and in more detail in the appendix (only in the German version).

  23. Street regulations for example in Germany may contain general traffic principles, which are relevant for such scenes. The street regulation in Germany obliges cautious driving and mutual respect and understanding as a first principle (Paragraph (1) in the StVO - Germany). It is a vague formulation but still an important principle because it allows people to be held partly responsible for e.g. being incautious, even when strict traffic law (for example the right of way) is on their side - Paragraph (1) in the StVO - Germany (http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stvo_2013/).

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their support towards improving the overall quality of the paper through the process.

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  1. Honda Research Institute Europe GmbH, Offenbach, Germany

    Manuel Dietrich & Thomas H. Weisswange

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  1. Manuel Dietrich
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Correspondence to Manuel Dietrich.

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Dietrich, M., Weisswange, T.H. Distributive justice as an ethical principle for autonomous vehicle behavior beyond hazard scenarios. Ethics Inf Technol 21, 227–239 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-019-09504-3

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