Autonomous vehicles

► Full reference: M. Fabre-Magnan, « La perversion des petits contes moraux : des tramways aux véhicules autonomes » (The perversion of little moral tales: from trolleys to autonomous vehicles), in S. Besson and S. Jubé (eds.), Concerter les civilisations. Mélanges en l’honneur d’Alain Supiot, Le Seuil, 2020, pp. 153-167. - ► Summary: The author seeks to discredit, in their very principle, the “trolley problems”, the small moral case studies born of a 1967 article by Philippa Foot and multiplied into “trolleyology”, which are now invoked to program autonomous vehicles. Beneath their harmless appearance, these scenarios break with the equal dignity of human beings, since they assume that five lives are worth more than one, and they discredit the prohibition of murder. They rest on errors of calculation that judges have always refused to make (The Queen v. Dudley and Stephens, 1884; German Federal Constitutional Court, 15 February 2006; the Touvier case). They confuse principles and exceptions, whereas Law is a mesh of rules and principles that interpretation adjusts without dissolving them. Finally, they blur the boundary between morality and Law and divert attention from the real liabilities, which in the case of autonomous vehicles are not so difficult to establish. Drawing on Paul-Claude Racamier, the author sees in them a technique for disqualifying one’s interlocutor, which ends up erasing all landmarks and doing away with the law. 🦉 This article is available in full text to persons enrolled in Professor Marie-Anne Frison-Roche’s courses.