Ready for the car with a licence to kill?

The first autonomous vehicles are expected in the next few years. They should ease traffic and reduce pollution and accidents compared with today's cars. But these self-driving cars (SDC) will face tragic dilemmas: for example, they will have to choose between saving the lives of their passengers or those of pedestrians. CNRS researchers (the first author of the study is a member of and Toulouse School of Economics at Université Toulouse Capitole and the CRM¹), and colleagues from the University of Oregon and MIT have carried out the first study of how Americans perceive these vehicles and whether they would use them. Surprisingly, the people surveyed had a strong moral preference for SDCs that "sacrificed" their passenger for the greater good. But they would be much less inclined to buy a SDC if the government required these vehicles to save the maximum number of people. Paradoxically, a law to this effect could actually cost more lives, by hindering the take-up of autonomous cars, which are safer than current vehicles. This study is published on June 24th . The anticipated emergence of autonomous vehicles in the next few years is set to cause a revolution. These cars have a number of appealing advantages: their smoother driving style is less energy-intensive, their wide use will reduce congestion, and, above all, they will have a significant effect on the number of accidents. But these vehicles will sometimes have to choose between two disasters. Self-driving cars (SDC) may have to decide, in a fraction of a second, whether to save the life of their passenger or a group of pedestrians. The chance of this situation arising is infinitely small, but are we ready to drive in cars licenced to kill us if this means saving more lives?