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Mercedes has said its driverless cars of the future could prioritise the safety of its occupants over pedestrians in “no-win” traffic situations.
The moral question has been one of the biggest points of debate as autonomous car technology moves closer to the mainstream, but Mercedes’ safety experts told Auto Express the answer was clear.
“If you know you can save at least one person, at least save that one. Save the one in the car,” said Christoph von Hugo, the car giant’s manager of assistance systems, active safety and ratings.
However, this contradicts the findings of a survey done by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) earlier this year, which found that the majority of those surveyed felt a driverless car should sacrifice passengers if it meant avoiding an accident that would claim more lives.
However, the poll also found that few motorists would be comfortable travelling in a car designed to act that way in the event of a crash.
Psychologist Professor Joshua Greene, from Harvard University, wrote in Science Magazine – which published the survey – that the moral compass of autonomous vehicles was “one of the thorniest challenges in artificial intelligence today”.
He said: “Life-and-death trade-offs are unpleasant, and no matter which ethical principles autonomous vehicles adopt, they will be open to compelling criticisms.
“Manufacturers of utilitarian cars will be criticised for their willingness to kill their own passengers. Manufacturers of cars that privilege their own passengers will be criticised for devaluing the lives of others and their willingness to cause additional deaths.”
However, Mercedes and von Hugo argue differently.
“If all you know for sure is that one thing, one death, can be prevented then that’s your first priority,” he said.
“You could sacrifice the car, but then the people you’ve saved, you don’t know what happens to them after that in situations that are often very complex, so you save the ones you know you can save.”
Von Hugo added that Mercedes’ aim in its engineering of autonomous cars and the accompanying technology was to create cars that can prevent such dilemmas and situations from occurring at all.
Mercedes’ parent company Daimler said in a statement the quotes had been taken “out of context”.
The company said: “For us it is clear that neither programmers nor automated systems are entitled to weigh the value of human lives. Our development work focuses on completely avoiding dilemma situations by, for example, implementing a risk-avoidance operating strategy in our vehicles.
“There is no instance in which we have made a decision in favor of vehicle occupants. We continue to adhere to the principle of providing the highest possible level of safety for all road users. To make a decision in favour of one person and thus against another is not legally permissible in Germany.”
