Evidence map›Paper›PMID 39387983›Full record

ArticleScience and engineering ethics2024

Ethical Decision-Making for Self-Driving Vehicles: A Proposed Model & List of Value-Laden Terms that Warrant (Technical) Specification.

Franziska Poszler, Maximilian Geisslinger, Christoph Lütge

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Science and engineering ethics, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
2citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

2 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Empowering safer socially sensitive autonomous vehicles using human-plausible cognitive encoding.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025
    Article
  2. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors.

Franziska PoszlerPeter Löscher Chair of Business Ethics, Institute for Ethics in Artificial Intelligence, Technical University of Munich (TUM), Arcisstraße 21, 80333, Munich, Germany. franziska.poszler@tum.de.ORCID 0000-0002-8135-6062
Maximilian GeisslingerInstitute of Automotive Technology, Technical University of Munich (TUM), Boltzmannstr. 15, 85748, Garching b. Munich, Germany.ORCID 0000-0002-6079-1348
Christoph LütgePeter Löscher Chair of Business Ethics, Institute for Ethics in Artificial Intelligence, Technical University of Munich (TUM), Arcisstraße 21, 80333, Munich, Germany.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Self-driving vehicles (SDVs) will need to make decisions that carry ethical dimensions and are of normative significance. For example, by choosing a specific trajectory, they determine how risks are distributed among traffic participants. Accordingly, policymakers, standardization organizations and scholars have conceptualized what (shall) constitute(s) ethical decision-making for SDVs. Eventually, these conceptualizations must be converted into specific system requirements to ensure proper technical implementation. Therefore, this article aims to translate critical requirements recently formulated in scholarly work, existing standards, regulatory drafts and guidelines into an explicit five-step ethical decision model for SDVs during hazardous situations. This model states a precise sequence of steps, indicates the guiding ethical principles that inform each step and points out a list of terms that demand further investigation and technical specification. By integrating ethical, legal and engineering considerations, we aim to contribute to the scholarly debate on computational ethics (particularly in autonomous driving) while offering practitioners in the automotive sector a decision-making process for SDVs that is technically viable, legally permissible, ethically grounded and adaptable to societal values. In the future, assessing the actual impact, effectiveness and admissibility of implementing the here sketched theories, terms and the overall decision process requires an empirical evaluation and testing of the overall decision-making model.

Indexed as

Automobile DrivingDecision MakingAccidents, TrafficAutomationAutomobilesHumansModels, TheoreticalMoralsSafetySocial ValuesAutonomous drivingComputational ethicsEthical decision-makingRisk distributionsRisk ethicsSelf-driving vehicle

Identifiers

PMID39387983
PMCPMC11466986

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.