In order to reduce the death toll of road traffic it is necessary to focus on how vehicles and roads can be improved. Like other dangerous machines, motor vehicles should be equipped with safety devices that prevent mistakes by the operator from leading to serious consequences. Speed limiters that prevent driving at illegal speeds would save many lives, and so would alcohol interlocks. Meshi Ori's proposal that most cars should be replaced by motorcycles would not lead to the moral improvement (...) that he hopes for. We need motor vehicles with better, not worse, protection of the driver and passengers than the cars presently in use. (shrink)

The paper has two goals. The first is presenting the main results of the recent report Ethics of Connected and Automated Vehicles: recommendations on road safety, privacy, fairness, explainability and responsibility written by the Horizon 2020 European Commission Expert Group to advise on specific ethical issues raised by driverless mobility, of which the author of this paper has been member and rapporteur. The second is presenting some broader ethical and philosophical implications of these recommendations, and using these to contribute to (...) the establishment of Ethics of Transportation as an independent branch of applied ethics. The recent debate on the ethics of Connected and Automated Vehicles presents a paradox and an opportunity. The paradox is the presence of a flourishing debate on the ethics of one very specific transportation technology without ethics of transportation being in itself a well-established academic discipline. The opportunity is that now that a spotlight has been switched on the ethical dimensions of CAVs it may be easier to establish a broader debate on ethics of transportation. While the 20 recommendations of the EU report are grouped in three macro-areas: road safety, data ethics, and responsibility, in this paper they will be grouped according to eight philosophical themes: Responsible Innovation, road justice, road safety, freedom, human control, privacy, data fairness, responsibility. These are proposed as the first topics for a new ethics of transportation. (shrink)

This licentiate thesis discusses moral issues associated with road safety work, with a particular emphasis on the Vision Zero goal and its interventions. The licentiate thesis contains three articles and an introduction that briefly discusses issues and arguments presented in the articles. The first article, identifies, systematically categorizes and evaluates arguments against VZ. Moral, operational, and rationality related criticisms against the adoption and implementation of VZ are identified and discussed. The second article in this thesis seeks to reconcile the methods (...) of Cost Benefit Analysis and VZ in road safety decision making. CBA has been and still is a major decision making tool in road transport and traffic safety work. However, proponents of VZ question the use of CBA in road safety and transport decision making on methodological and ethical grounds. In this paper, we locate the philosophical roots of the conflicting views promoted by proponents of CBA and VZ. Then we try to identify ways through which the two methods can be made compatible. The third and final paper uses VZ as a normative framework to explore and analyse the Addis Ababa road safety work. The aim of the paper is twofold. First, the paper seeks to examine how road safety problems are actually understood by those responsible for road safety at the local level. To this end, government policy documents, reports and other relevant sources where consulted to identify how road safety problems are framed, who is assigned responsibility for addressing road safety problems and through what interventions. Second, the paper aims to examine road safety work in the city from a normative point of view, i.e., what is the best, or most adequate, way of framing the problem, and who should be given the responsibility for addressing the problem and by what measures. It is argued that enhancing road safety in the city requires adopting a broader view of causes of road safety problems, and emphasizing the responsibility of actors that shape the design and operation of the traffic system and the safety of its components. (shrink)