Abstract
Abstract Though a mere decade ago commercially available autonomous vehicles seemed a distant possibility, today they appear to be all but inevitable. How well is our thinking keeping pace with these developments? In comparison to literature on the “trolley problem,” little work has been addressed to the question of the timing and conditions under which society should allow the widespread use of autonomous vehicles on public roads. In this paper, the author offers a schematic answer to this question, while also touching on the vexed matter of liability for crashes caused by autonomous vehicles. In the process, he develops a way of thinking about the relative safety of autonomous and nonautonomous vehicles that can add value to discussions of transportation ethics both by philosophers and by public policy experts. The author also addresses the matter of who should be liable in cases of crashes caused by autonomous vehicles.
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