Citation

Liu P, Du M, Li T. Ethics Inf. Technol. 2021.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2021, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s10676-021-09613-y

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

A human driver and an automated driving system (ADS) might share control of automated vehicles (AVs) in the near future. This raises many concerns associated with the assignment of responsibility for negative outcomes caused by them; one is that the human driver might be required to bear the brunt of moral and legal responsibilities. The psychological consequences of responsibility misattribution have not yet been examined. We designed a hypothetical crash similar to Uber's 2018 fatal crash (which was jointly caused by its distracted driver and the malfunctioning ADS). We incorporated five legal responsibility attributions (the human driver should bear full, primary, half, secondary, and no liability, that is, the AV manufacturer should bear no, secondary, half, primary, and full liability). Participants (N = 1524) chose their preferred liability attribution and then were randomly assigned into one of the five actual liability attribution conditions. They then responded to a series of questions concerning liability assignment (fairness and reasonableness), the crash (e.g., acceptability), and AVs (e.g., intention to buy and trust). Slightly more than 50% of participants thought that the human driver should bear full or primary liability. Legal responsibility misattribution (operationalized as the difference between actual and preferred liability attributions) negatively influenced these mentioned responses, regardless of overly attributing human or manufacturer liability. Overly attributing human liability (vs. manufacturer liability) had more negative influences. Improper liability attribution might hinder the adoption of AVs. Public opinion should not be ignored in developing a legal framework for AVs.

Language: en