Morality in motoring

Morality. We know what it is. Even those who don’t deal in it, know what it is, which is why there’s said to be honour amongst thieves.

Of course some argue that there is no such thing as universal morality, that it varies, which it does, but only to a certain degree. You can study many different penal codes throughout history, but they all seem to agree that it isn’t okay to kill someone for no reason.

Even revenge killings, a hallmark of primitive cultures, illustrate universal morality. It's twisted, but there’s still the assumption that it's not fair for someone to kill your brother and get away with it. There’s a desire for justice.

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Which begs the question of where morality comes from. I’d argue it can be traced to a God of love and justice. Certainly, the Biblical principles of the golden rule and love for your neighbour highlights that human life has intrinsic value, and that is a good basis for treating others.

But there’s others who would argue that morality – honesty, kindness, helpfulness – are all traits that have been settled upon as communities of humans learned to live with each other in a sustainable way. To me, this leaves open and undefended the fact that it often delivers more, individually, to exploit others than it does to help them. Plenty of humans have realized, to their own great advantage, that the best way to get up is not to get along, but to push down.

But leave that alone for the minute. The point is, morality infiltrates everything, and motoring is a big part of everything, so it follows that morality influences motoring.

For one thing, safe cars. You might argue that car marques only make cars safe because they have to, and because safety is a marketable good. But that doesn’t include Volvo. Volvo takes safety far more deeply than that. Their stance on the matter was a self-inconveniencing oddity back when cars were allowed to be dangerous, and nobody really cared.

Their view of safety, I’d argue, is actually rooted in the fact that human life has a value and we should try to protect it. And that’s morality.

So what?

So what?

And it’s morality that Baby on Board plates try to appeal to. Parents buy them because they think that someone who would otherwise be reckless, will think twice because there is a baby in the car whose life they could endanger. There’s an understanding that babies are helpless and dependent. Protecting such is viewed as being the right thing to do.

This has, as you’ll know, come up recently as the question arises on how autonomous cars should be programmed to react in a situation that involves human life. If an autonomous car is faced with the choice of hitting a wall and killing the driver or running over a child that ran out, what should it do? There was talk about preserving children or the plurality of people in such situations.

In the end, Volvo took the lead as they often do and said that their cars would only swerve if there was nothing there, otherwise they’d just brake.

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The thing is, though, why does it matter?  Obviously if only evolutionary thinking was involved, the natural thing should happen. Yet we know it shouldn't. Morality may have been, as many argue, the product of evolutionary development, but for all that, they don't get on that well.

PHOTO CREDIT: MIT Technology, BC Site Services, Volvo.

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