Ethical Principles for the Design of Next‐Generation Traffic Control Technology Virginia Tech ISCE Applied Ethics Initiative Sponsored Paper September 1, 2014 Tristram McPherson, PhD Philosophy, Virginia Tech tristram@vt.edu Miloš N. Mladenović, PhD Civil and Environmental Engineering, Virginia Tech milosm@vt.edu 1. Introduction Transportation will be revolutionized in the near future by the convergence of developments in sensing, communication, and in‐vehicle computing technology (Birdsall, 2013; Özgüner, Acarman, & Redmill, 2011). Developments in sensing technology will enable real‐time collection of data that includes geographical coordinates, speeds, direction of movement, acceleration, obstacles, etc. (U. Lee & Gerla, 2010). Developments in communication technology will permit short‐range vehicle‐to‐vehicle and vehicle‐to‐ infrastructure communication (Bell, 2006). This will enable vehicles to share crucial information in real time (Misener, Dickey, VanderWerf, & Sengupta, 2009). Finally, in‐ vehicle computing capacity is growing at a rapid pace. For example, vehicles today can possess higher power reserves and can store larger amounts of data, compared to a typical mobile computer (Leen & Heffernan, 2002; Misener et al., 2009). These converging technologies are enabling the development of self‐driving vehicles, which will be able to monitor roadway and traffic conditions, and to perform all safety‐ critical driving functions ("Preliminary Statement of Policy Concerning Automated Vehicles," 2013). This emerging technology promises several potential benefits: • to improve traffic safety, by replacing less reliable human driving (Delot, Cenerario, & Ilarri, 2010; "The Safety Promise and Challenge of Automotive Electronics: Insights from Unintended Acceleration," 2012); • to improve the mobility of people unable to drive (Anderson et al., 2014); • to mitigate the environmental impacts of automotive transportation and improve energy efficiency ("Self‐driving cars: The next revolution," 2013); • to more efficiently use existing roadways, and hence reduce the need for new infrastructure (Anderson et al., 2014). The advent of self‐driving vehicle (SDV) technology also permits significant evolution in the possible structure and mechanisms of traffic control (Mladenović, Abbas, & McPherson, 2014). This paper investigates the ethical dimension of the design of the next