How Will Autonomous Vehicles Operate in an Unlawful Environment? - The Potential of Autonomous Vehicles for Disregarding the Law

The future of urban transport environments is being reshaped by the potential introduction of autonomous vehicles within their networks. The development of such vehicles is implemented within closed and controlled testbeds that simulate the urban environment. The operation of such testbeds assumes that laws should regulate how traffic operates. Another assumption is that autonomous vehicles by design (through their coding) follow the existing regulations and act accordingly. However, there exist societies in which unlawful behavior has become the norm for most of its drivers. In such an environment, the traffic and infrastructure conditions themselves compel drivers to adapt to the current conditions disregarding the law in an effort to travel to their destination in an efficient - and safe - manner. A provision for the unlawful behavior of autonomous vehicles has three major requirements, namely that any such decisions are: a) technically possible b) legally defensible, and c) ethically justifiable. The technical capabilities of autonomous vehicles in making complex decisions have already been studied to some extent. To this end, the purpose of this paper is twofold. Initially, through a preliminary literature review, it is called to explore whether the concept of autonomous vehicles acting beyond established laws is defensible. Moreover, in an effort to explore the ethical justification of such behavior, this paper aims to answer two important questions. Firstly, it ascertains how drivers behave under shifting and unlawful conditions. Furthermore, it assesses whether the potential passengers of autonomous vehicles expect the vehicle to act in a manner similar to that with which they themselves would drive. These two questions form the basis of a questionnaire that is distributed amongst users of the Greek urban transport environment. This questionnaire identifies conditions under which Greek drivers would disregard the law and to what extent. Finally, the questionnaire juxtaposes these findings with the expectations of the aforementioned drivers for autonomous vehicles.