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Ethical dilemma: autonomous vehicle

Ethical dilemma

Ethical dilemma

An empty driverless car, on the way to meet a customer, stops at a road intersection on a red light. Coming from its left side, a human-driven car moves on the green light and enters the intersection at normal speed. Suddenly a pedestrian begins to cross the road just in front of it.

Thanks to its constant data collection and analysis, the driverless car computes that the human-driven car will collide with the pedestrian.

Intersection diagram from the exercise, showing two cars, traffic lights and a pedestrian. The driverless car has two options: move ahead and block the passage, or stay without moving.
Illustration from the exercise. Source and image credits.

Your task

Two options are possible for the driverless car:

  1. Move ahead and block the passage
  2. Stay without moving

How should its action be programmed? Make your choice and justify your decision.

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Source: A. Prégent and A. Grinbaum, Developing Competency in AI Ethics: A training framework. arxiv:2610.13319

Adapted drawing and scenario from: V. Bonnemains, Cl. Saurel, C. Tessier, Autonomous ‘ethical’ machines: technical and ethical questions. Revue française d’éthique appliquée (RFEA), no. 5, May 2018 (based on images from Fotolia and Freepik).