This article aims to introduce a degree of technological and ethical realism to the framing of autonomous vehicle perception and decisionality. The objective is to move the socioethical dialog surrounding autonomous vehicle decisionality from the dominance of “trolley framings” to more pressing ethical issues. The article argues that more realistic ethical framings of autonomous vehicle technologies should focus on the matters of HMI, machine perception, classification, and data privacy, which are some distance from the decisionality framing premise of the MIT Moral Machine experiment. To support this claim the article appeals to state-of-the-art technologies and emerging technologies concerning autonomous vehicle perception and decisionality, as a means to inform and frame ethical contexts. This is further supported by considering a context specific ethical framing for each time phase we anticipate regarding emerging autonomous vehicle technology.

The closure of borders and traditional commerce due to the COVID-19 pandemic is expected to have a lasting financial impact. We determine whether the growth in COVID-19 affected index prices by examining equity markets in five regional epicentres, along with a ‘global’ index. We also investigate the impact of COVID-19 after controlling for investor sentiment, credit risk, liquidity risk, safe-haven asset demand and the price of oil. Despite controlling for these traditional market drivers, the daily totals of COVID-19 cases nevertheless explained index price changes in Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States. Similar results were not observed in China, the origin of the virus, nor in the ‘global’ index (MSCI World). Our results suggest that early interventions (China) and the spatiotemporal nature of pandemic epicentres (World) should be considered by governments, regulators and relevant stakeholders in the event of future COVID-19 ‘waves’ or further extreme societal disruptions.

This study investigates the impact that delta-V, the relative change in vehicle velocity pre- and post-crash, has on the severity of motor vehicle collisions (MVCs). We study injury severity using two metrics for each occupant - the number of injuries suffered, and the probability of suffering a serious or worse (MAIS 3+) injury. We use a cross-sectional set of generally-representative MVC data between 2010 and 2015 as a basis for our research. Collision factors that influence the crash environment are combined with the injuries that were suffered in MVCs. The influence of delta-V is captured using a mediation analysis, whereby delta-V acts as the focal point between crash factors and injury outcome. The mediation approach adds to existing research by presenting a detailed view of the relationship between injury severity, delta-V and other collision factors. We find evidence of competitive mediation, wherein a collision factor's positive association with injury severity is offset by a negative association with delta-V. Neglecting to include delta-V in our study would have let the factor's association with injury severity go undiscovered. In addition, certain collision factors are found to be related to injury severity solely because of delta-V, while others are found to have a significant impact regardless of delta-V. Our results support the multitude of policy recommendations that promote seatbelt use and warn against alcohol-impaired driving, and support the proliferation of safety-enabled vehicles whose technology can mitigate the bodily damage associated with detrimental crash types.