An international survey on risk distribution preferences for autonomous vehicles

Every maneuver of a vehicle redistributes risks between road users. While human drivers do this intuitively, autonomous vehicles allow and require deliberative algorithmic risk management. But how should traffic risks be distributed among road users? In a global experimental study in eight countries with different cultural backgrounds and almost 11,000 participants, we compared risk distribution preferences. It turns out that risk preferences in road traffic are strikingly similar between the cultural zones. The vast majority of participants in all countries exhibits intuitions whose pattern deviates from minimizing accident probabilities in favor of weighing up the probability and severity of accidents. At the national level, the consideration of accident probability and severity hardly differs between countries. The gap between collective and individual interests as expressed in the social dilemma of autonomous vehicles detected in deterministic crash scenarios seems to be weakened in risk assessments of everyday traffic situations. In no country do cyclists receive a risk bonus that goes beyond their higher vulnerability. In sum, our results suggest that the inclination to balance the probability and severity of accidents may be a moral judgment with cross-cultural spread.