Public Acceptance of Vehicle Maneuvers in Moral Dilemmas: Comparing Autonomous and Human-Driven Vehicles

In unavoidable crash scenarios, vehicles may have to allocate harm between occupants and pedestrians, raising a central question for autonomous vehicle ethics: should they prioritize occupant protection or minimize overall casualties? This study examines public acceptance of casualty-minimizing stay and occupant-protective swerve maneuvers in moral dilemmas involving human-driven vehicles (HDVs) and autonomous vehicles (AVs), with one occupant and one to five pedestrians. Based on data from Chinese participants (N = 1,188), the results show that participants generally accepted occupant sacrifice when it spared multiple pedestrians, and that acceptance of casualty minimization increased as pedestrian numbers increased. However, the same stay maneuver received lower acceptance when performed by an AV than by an HDV, especially in the one-occupant-versus-one-pedestrian scenario. These findings extend AV ethics research beyond forced-choice preferences by showing how people evaluate concrete vehicle maneuvers, and offer empirical evidence for designing and governing ethical decision rules in unavoidable crash scenarios.