Ethical Obligation in Engineering Ethics: Autonomous Cars

<strike></strike>Autonomous Cars

The development of the autonomous car marks a significant stride in the automobile manufacturing industry. Amid this development, engineers continue to experience critical challenges in the development of car software. The biggest concern relates to the issue of ethical obligations of the situations on the road. The engineers must ensure that autonomous cars act ethically while on the road. These cars are programmed to choose the outcome with the most significant potential of offering safety to the passengers. The engineers have the task of ensuring the driverless vehicle makes an ethical decision in the unavoidable crash (Mervis, 2017). The engineer's findings should encompass the need to inflict minimal harm to all the parties involved in the accident.
Indeed, the autonomous vehicle should choose the option of swerving to a stationary object or drive straight towards a collision. 

Ethical consideration presents engineer A with critical choices. In extreme scenarios like an unavoidable crash, can be instructed to choose the path with the least damage. An example relates to an impending collision between a saloon car and a big truck. The engineer has the ethical obligation of ensuring the safety of the passengers on board. Indeed, a collision with the lorry has more potential severe damage than a collision with a saloon car.

Similarly, an unavoidable crash with the truck poses more potential harm than a saloon car. Therefore, Engineer A should program the autonomous vehicle to collide with the saloon car because it has the potential of causing a minimal threat to the passengers (Mervis, 2017). Alternatively, Engineer A can instruct the driverless to avoid colliding with the two vehicles in an instant. Double collision will further increase the cost of damages by a more significant margin. Also, the engineer has the option of instructing the vehicle to swerve to stationary objects to avert severe injuries to the passengers. 

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Figure 1 Autonomous knocks a stationary object to save passengers, (J. Mervis 2017)

  Secondly, the engineer has the obligation of ensuring the safety of the passengers. Therefore, the potential ethical responsibility would involve undertaking dangerous paths that include protecting the passengers. This path consists of adopting the course that offers more safety for the autonomous car and its occupants. This path considers maximum damage to the other road users (Lin, 2018). Ethically, the engineer programs the vehicle to care for the passengers at all costs.

Another ethical, moral obligation subject to consideration by the engineers in extreme circumstances entails the need for a tradeoff between environmental impacts and the vehicle's mobility. The realization of a tradeoff helps the engineer undertake critical decisions in the driverless software's coding. These cars have computer chips controlling their acceleration, braking, and cornering. The engineers have the moral obligation of ensuring that minimal energy is utilized and harmful emission leaks to the environment during extreme cases (Goodall, 2019). Therefore, the system for these cars must involve reliable controls system. The establishment of the tradeoff between these autonomous cars' emissions and efficiency becomes another ethical obligation for the engineers. Indeed, the tradeoff ensures the continuity of safety in extreme cases.

Other engineers consider the development of beyond harm programs as one of the ethical obligations. Beyond harm, the program targets the realization of minimal or zero harm in extreme cases where the autonomous car faces an imminent crash. Under such circumstances, the vehicle must plan to survey the nearby environment and choose the ideal with limited harm. The vehicle may be programmed to swerve into a motorist wearing a helmet while ignoring a motorist without a helmet. Programming the autonomous vehicle to shift into a safer pedestrian, motorist or motorcyclist provides the programmers' best ethical decision. This decision involves programming the driverless vehicle to discriminate based on safety levels. The sales will likely decline for the brands perceived to be less safe because they will be automatically targeted for autonomous cars. However, the engineers must adhere to the ethical obligation of maintaining the safety of road users. Also, vehicles perceived to be safer like Mercedes Benzes and Volvo will target driverless cars. However, the benefits attained from adopting beyond harm out way the detrimental impacts. Additionally, both public policies and the justice system do not attest to this ethical obligation. However, engineers chose to install systems that pose minimal damage during dire instances (Goodall, 2019). Engineers' ethical obligations have their basis on perceived human judgment. The autonomous vehicles borrow mostly from existing traffic regulations.

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Figure 2: Autonomous car saves a pedestrian, (D. Sperling, 2017)

The case of increasing utilization of autonomous cars presents the engineers with more ethical obligations in programming. The programmers choose to include decision-making capabilities in the car system to save lives during extreme cases. The programmers also undertake the moral obligation to decide for the passengers during severe cases. After significant analysis, the driverless car may choose the option that endangers the passengers while saving the magnitude. Such a program acts as extreme ethical decisions that engineers undergo. However, the subsequent decision adopted must ensure that maximum benefit is achieved.

References

Daniel Sperling (2017), Three Revolutions: Steering Automated, Shared, and Electric Vehicles to a Better Future, Island Press (https://islandpress.org).

Goodall, N. J.(2019): Machine ethics and automated vehicles. In: Meyer, G. and Beiker, S. (eds.) Road Vehicle Automation. Springer, Cham

Jeffrey Mervis (2017), “Are We Going Too Fast on Driverless Cars?,” Science Magazine (www.sciencemag.org); at www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/12/are-we-going-too-fast-driverless-cars. 

Lin, P (2018): The ethics of saving lives with autonomous cars is far murkier than you think. Wired. http://www.wired.com/2018/07/the-surprising-ethics-of-robot-cars