Should Manual Driving be (Eventually) Outlawed?

Sci Eng Ethics. 2020 Jun;26(3):1549-1567. doi: 10.1007/s11948-020-00190-9. Epub 2020 Feb 5.

Abstract

In recent years, tech evangelists have made headlines predicting that in the future manual driving will be outlawed. This essay will investigate the question whether a ban of human driven cars can be defended on moral grounds in a future scenario in which autonomous cars are going to be significantly safer than manually driven cars. This article will argue that in such a future scenario manually driven cars, for moral reasons, indeed should be banned from participating in regular traffic. Since the moral argument for outlawing manually driven cars will likely be met by resistance by car-aficionados, in the final part of the paper, we are devising a proposal for reconciling the strong moral case for a ban of manually driven cars with the widespread fondness of manual driving.

Keywords: Autonomous cars; Ban; Ethics; Moral; Safety; Self-driving car.

MeSH terms

  • Accidents, Traffic* / prevention & control
  • Automation
  • Automobile Driving*
  • Automobiles
  • Humans
  • Morals