
Germany's self-driving car solution: Kill animals,damage property,protect humans - cocoflunchy
https://thenextweb.com/cars/2017/08/24/germanys-self-driving-car-solution-kill-animals-damage-property-protect-humans/#.tnw_gEstLoIw
======
matt4077
The translations are horrible. The original is at
[http://www.bmvi.de/SharedDocs/DE/Anlage/Presse/084-dobrindt-...](http://www.bmvi.de/SharedDocs/DE/Anlage/Presse/084-dobrindt-
bericht-der-ethik-kommission.pdf?__blob=publicationFile).

Some of the less obvious thoughts:

\- If it can be shown that self-driving systems will lead to fewer accidents,
the government will have an obligation to allow them–even if some accidents
may continue to happen.

\- The focus should be on avoiding those situations where technology has to
make morally ambiguous decisions

\- Where such life-vs-life decisions do happen, it would be immoral to assign
different values to the individual lives on the basis of sex, age or other
characteristics.

\- In principle, it would be possible to allow decisions trying to minimise
the lives lost/put at risk, i. e. sacrificing one life to save two.

\- But: they also deem it immoral to sacrifices the life of people who did not
participate in the creation of the traffic risk themselves.(1) This means, for
example, that system may not "sacrifice" one pedestrian for two (or even one)
passengers of the car.

\- Liability will move from the owner/operator to the producers of cars

\- The technology, and the decisions it implements, must be communicated to
the public

\- It's unclear if traffic should be directed by some central authority. Such
centralisation would need to find a way to operate in a way that makes it
impossible to create profiles of individuals' movements

\- The car's owner must always agree to the sharing and usage of their data.
This requires not just the theoretically choice, but the real possibility to
say no, and realistic options to do so without undue consequences.

\- It must be both obvious at the moment, as well as after the fact, if the
car was being operated by its software or by the driver.

1: That's a possibly unintuitive offshoot of another principle in German law.
Say you're a drunk pedestrian who stumbles into the street. A car swerves,
hits a tree, and the car's passenger is killed. Who is at fault?

The somewhat unintuitive result is: the driver is at fault (meaning his
insurance will have to pay for damages). The reasoning: Those travelling in
cars derive all the value of car traffic. The pedestrian may have made a
mistake–but they would never have been in a situation where it was possible to
make that mistake, without others seeking the benefit of car traffic.
Therefore, the pedestrian is never liable (unless, obviously, they act
intentionally)

------
weinzierl
> Automated driving is necessary if the systems cause fewer accidents than
> human drivers.

True, but sounds like autonomous vehicles were a bitter pill to swallow for
less accidents.

> In the case of unavoidable accidents, classification of drivers is
> prohibited. This includes determining fault by age, sex, or physical and
> mental constitution.

Does that the imply that we should only be in favour of auotonomous vehicles
if they are always better than the worst drivers?

EDIT: I probably misunderstood this one. After reading the passage in the
origal report I think it means that the computer is not allowed (for example)
to prefer to save a child over an adult.

> We must be able to determine the responsible party in an accident at any
> time: human or computer.

Desirable, but good luck with that one.

> Drivers must have proper documentation.

Not sure what that means.

> The driver should be able to decide who owns his vehicle data.

Why not simply demand that the driver owns the data. If we leave the decision
to the driver we will know how it ends up. They will assign away all their
rights for a free cookie.

Most importantly the article (didn't read the report) skips one of the most
important and difficult ethical questions. How the balance the life of other
with the physical integrity of those in the car, especially in the light of
unavoidable false positives.

~~~
_up
The "proper documentation" part is about hybrid systems where the driver can
be given control/responsibility in some situations. These situations must be
clearly documented and should also be internationally standardized. They also
specifically warn and advise to prevent data collection practices currently
used by Search Engine and Social Media Companies.

Original Report (German):
[https://www.bmvi.de/SharedDocs/DE/Anlage/Presse/084-dobrindt...](https://www.bmvi.de/SharedDocs/DE/Anlage/Presse/084-dobrindt-
bericht-der-ethik-kommission.pdf)

------
damnfine
"The driver should be able to decide who owns his vehicle data."

This. This is the most important statement in the findings. We know accidents
are going to happen, judgements made. The rest makes obvious, human centric,
sense. (As a human that is. ;) )

------
jaclaz
All in all, if I may, something not entirely unlike the Asimov's Three Laws of
Robotics:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics)

------
samarvir
click bait level- 100. anyways, these laws seems sensible!

~~~
jwilk
What's clickbait about this?

