This book reports on theoretical and practical analyses of the ethical challenges connected to driving automation. It also aims at discussing issues that have arisen from the European Commission 2020 report “Ethics of Connected and Automated Vehicles. Recommendations on Road Safety, Privacy, Fairness, Explainability and Responsibility”. Gathering contributions by philosophers, social scientists, mechanical engineers, and UI designers, the book discusses key ethical concerns relating to responsibility and personal autonomy, privacy, safety, and cybersecurity, as well as explainability and human-machine interaction. On the one hand, it examines these issues from a theoretical, normative point of view. On the other hand, it proposes practical strategies to face the most urgent ethical problems, showing how the integration of ethics and technology can be achieved through design practices. All in all, this book fosters a multidisciplinary approach where philosophy, ethics, and engineering are integrated, rather than just juxtaposed. It is meant to inform and inspire an audience of philosophers of technology, ethicists, engineers, developers, manufacturers, and regulators, among other interested readers.

Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs) are emerging as a new technology and new form of mobility in Europe. Expectations are high: these vehicles can bring down the number of road fatalities near zero; increase accessibility of mobility services; and help to reduce harmful emissions from transport by making traffic more efficient. However, technological progress alone will not be able to bring about the full potential of CAVs. The timely and systematic integration of ethical and societal considerations, from inception to use, will be essential to ensure their ethical and positive impact. With its strategy on Connected and Automated Mobility, the European Commission aims to make Europe a world leader in the development and deployment of CAVs. To tackle ethical issues, the Commission formed in 2019 an independent Expert Group to provide practical support to researchers, policymakers, manufacturers and developers in the safe and responsible transition towards connected and automated mobility. The 20 recommendations presented in this report consider ethical principles and shared moral values as stimuli in shaping CAV innovation, rather than be perceived as an obstruction to their progress.

The European Commission's strategy on cooperative, connected and automated mobility (CCAM) aims to make Europe a world leader in the development and deployment of connected and automated vehicles (CAVs). Expectations are high. These vehicles can bring down road fatalities to near zero , increase accessibility of mobility services and help to reduce harmful emissions from transport by making traffic more efficient. To reap the full benefits of these vehicles, many challenges have to be addressed: societal, technical, regulatory, economic, environmental and ethical.

This book offers a systematic and thorough philosophical analysis of the ways in which driving automation crosses path with ethical values. Upon introducing the different forms of driving automation and examining their relation to human autonomy, it provides readers with in-depth reflections on safety, privacy, moral judgment, control, responsibility, sustainability, and other ethical issues. Driving is undoubtedly a moral activity as a human act. Transferring it to artificial agents such as connected and automated vehicles necessarily raises many philosophical questions. When driving is automated, what happens to its ethical dimensions? Could artificial agents accomplish ethical objectives on our behalf, take moral decisions in our place, and drive us into a more ethical transportation future? In doing so, would they be “moral” as we are or in a way that is similar to, but also remarkably different from, our own? And what role is yet to be played by human responsibility and commitment? The book addresses these questions with the aim of stimulating an interdisciplinary dialogue between different stakeholders. They include automotive engineers, computer scientists, and moral philosophers, as well as industry representatives, policymakers, regulators, transportation experts, and the general public. Indeed, connected and automated vehicles will not take the high road for us . We must drive them there.

As the development of autonomous vehicles proceeds full-speed ahead, it is often said that this new, disruptive form of transportation will change everything. Such a claim has drawn both philosophical and public attention to what could be called ethical emergencies: imaginary situations ranging from life-or-death trolley-problem conundrums to large-scale cyber-attacks on mobility networks. This perspective puts other important, but less dramatic, ethical dilemmas connected with driverless vehicles at risk of being underexplored or simply ignored. The primary focus of the original essays collected together in this volume shifts to considering these issues, ones arising out of more everyday human-autonomous vehicle relations and encounters. Topics investigated range from how driverless vehicles ethically affect what it is to be a pedestrian to how they could inspire more opportunities for social justice, along with a consideration of the need for policy makers to look at the softer impacts of driverless cars. Overall, this volume contributes to defining a new area of exploration connected to the ethics of driverless vehicles, one that should appeal not only to philosophers of technology but to engineering designers, regulators, and urban planners as well. Contributors: Jason Borenstein, Jeremy Carp, Shane Epting, Sven Ove Hansson, Joseph Herkert, Ike Kamphof, Robert Kirkman, Diane Michelfelder, Keith Miller, Sven Nyholm, Robert Rosenberger, Patrick Schmidt, Tsjalling Swierstra, and Galit Wellner

"A runaway trolley is speeding down a track" So begins what is perhaps the most fecund thought experiment of the past several decades since its invention by Philippa Foot. Since then, moral philosophers have applied the "trolley problem" as a thought experiment to study many different ethical conflicts - and chief among them is the programming of autonomous vehicles. Nowadays, however, very few philosophers accept that the trolley problem is a perfect analogy for driverless cars or that the situations autonomous vehicles face will resemble the forced choice of the unlucky bystander in the original thought experiment. This book represents a substantial and purposeful effort to move the academic discussion beyond the trolley problem to the broader ethical, legal, and social implications that autonomous vehicles present. There are still urgent questions waiting to be addressed, for example: how AVs might interact with human drivers in mixed or "hybrid" traffic environments; how AVs might reshape our urban landscapes; what unique security or privacy concerns are raised by AVs as connected devices in the "Internet of Things"; how the benefits and burdens of this new technology, including mobility, traffic congestion, and pollution, will be distributed throughout society; and more. An attempt to map the landscape of these next-generation questions and to suggest preliminary answers, this volume draws on the disciplines of philosophy, sociology, economics, urban planning and transportation engineering, business ethics and more, and represents a global range of perspectives.

This edited book comprises papers about the impacts, benefits and challenges of connected and automated cars. It is the third volume of the LNMOB series dealing with Road Vehicle Automation. The book comprises contributions from researchers, industry practitioners and policy makers, covering perspectives from the U.S., Europe and Japan. It is based on the Automated Vehicles Symposium 2015 which was jointly organized by the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) and the Transportation Research Board (TRB) in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in July 2015. The topical spectrum includes, but is not limited to, public sector activities, human factors, ethical and business aspects, energy and technological perspectives, vehicle systems and transportation infrastructure. This book is an indispensable source of information for academic researchers, industrial engineers and policy makers interested in the topic of road vehicle automation.