Caught Up in Ethical Dilemmas: An Adapted Consequentialist Perspective on Self-Driving Vehicles

lthough being potentially able to reduce the number of severe road accidents, self-driving vehicles will still face situations where harming someone cannot be avoided. Therefore there is a need for an ethical investigation into the programming of crash-optimization algorithms: which ethical principles are suitable to guide decisions in dilemma situations and to morally justify them? This paper presents an in-depth overview of research articles revealing the difficulties of a potential utilitarian solution. It evaluates an aggregative consequentialist approach that is adapted to the specific characteristics of dilemmas in autonomous driving, building upon the notions of negative utilitarianism and prioritarianism.