Self-protective and self-sacrificing preferences of pedestrians and passengers in moral dilemmas involving autonomous vehicles

<jats:p>Upon the introduction of autonomous vehicles into daily traffic, it becomes increasingly likely that autonomous vehicles become involved in accident scenarios in which decisions have to be made about how to distribute harm among involved parties. In four experiments, participants made moral decisions from the perspective of a passenger, a pedestrian, or an observer. The results show that the preferred action of an autonomous vehicle strongly depends on perspective. Participants’ judgments reflect self-protective tendencies even when utilitarian motives clearly favor one of the available options. However, with an increasing number of lives at stake, utilitarian preferences increased. In a fifth experiment, we tested whether these results were tainted by social desirability but this was not the case. Overall, the results confirm that strong differences exist among passengers, pedestrians, and observers about the preferred course of action in critical incidents. It is therefore important that the actions of autonomous vehicles are not only oriented towards the needs of their passengers, but also take the interests of other road users into account. Even though utilitarian motives cannot fully reconcile the conflicting interests of passengers and pedestrians, there seem to be some moral preferences that a majority of the participants agree upon regardless of their perspective, including the utilitarian preference to save several other lives over one’s own.</jats:p>