Automated Vehicles and Transportation Justice

Abstract

Despite numerous ethical examinations of automated vehicles, philosophers have neglected to address how these technologies will affect vulnerable people. To account for this lacuna, researchers must analyze how driverless cars could hinder or help social justice. In addition to thinking through these aspects, scholars must also pay attention to the extensive moral dimensions of automated vehicles, including how they will affect the public, nonhumans, future generations, and culturally significant artifacts. If planners and engineers undertake this task, then they will have to prioritize their efforts to avoid additional harm. The author shows how employing an approach called a "complex moral assessment" can help professionals implement these technologies into existing mobility systems in a just and moral fashion.