Every maneuver of a vehicle redistributes risks between road users. While human drivers do this intuitively, autonomous vehicles allow and require deliberative algorithmic risk management. But how should traffic risks be distributed among road users? In a global experimental study in eight countries with different cultural backgrounds and almost 11,000 participants, we compared risk distribution preferences. It turns out that risk preferences in road traffic are strikingly similar between the cultural zones. The vast majority of participants in all countries deviates from a guiding principle of minimizing accident probabilities in favor of weighing up the probability and severity of accidents. At the national level, the consideration of accident probability and severity hardly differs between countries. The social dilemma of autonomous vehicles detected in deterministic crash scenarios disappears in risk assessments of everyday traffic situations in all countries. In no country do cyclists receive a risk bonus that goes beyond their higher vulnerability. In sum, our results suggest that a global consensus on the risk ethics of autonomous driving is easier to establish than on the ethics of crashing.

本研究探讨了自动驾驶汽车在交通风险分配中的伦理挑战，揭示了不同文化背景下的风险偏好有显著相似性。通过对近11,000名参与者的全球实验研究，发现大多数参与者倾向于在交通中考虑事故的概率和严重性，而不是单纯追求最小化事故概率，这表明建立全球自动驾驶风险伦理共识的可能性大于碰撞伦理的共识。

全球自动驾驶风险管理的共识