Hurting Others versus Hurting Myself, a Dilemma for Our Autonomous Vehicle

Miguel Luzuriaga, Antonio Heras and Oliver Kunze

Review of Behavioral Economics, 2020, vol. 7, issue 1, 1-30

Abstract: Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) will soon be a reality on our roads. Up to now, their standard behaviour is predetermined since it is the result of programmed algorithms. Under risky traffic situations, however, they will face dilemmas such as, deciding between affecting the passenger or affecting others. Thus, in this experiment, we investigate how people solve a reframed version of the well-known Trolley-problem [Foot, P. 1967. “The problem of abortion and the doctrine of double effect,†Oxford Review 5: 5–15] under two conditions: when subjects actually drive a vehicle simulator, versus when they solve the same dilemma by programming a hypothetical AV. In both settings, the participants’ decisions have real monetary consequences, which affect others and themselves. Our Probit models indicate that subjects who program an AV and who are more cautious in terms of speed are less (more) likely to sacrifice a pedestrian (themselves) compared to those who actually drive and prefer a higher driving speed. Moreover, we find that the subjects’ choices are associated with risk aversion but not with moral beliefs or loss aversion. Implications of the driving vs programming discrepancies for the design of AVs algorithms are discussed.

Keywords: Experiments; Ethical dilemmas; Trolley problem; Risk-aversione; Social preferences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D81 D91 R41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1561/105.000001115 (application/xml)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:now:jnlrbe:105.00000115

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Review of Behavioral Economics from now publishers
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lucy Wiseman ().