Qualityland

MORAL IMPLICATIONS

Peter stomps out of the service center and climbs into the self-driven car that Nobody has called. He is frustrated.

“Good afternoon, Peter Jobless,” says the car. “Shall I drive you home?”

“Yes, please,” says Peter, and the car drives off.

“Would you like me to put some music on for you?” it asks. “I can also project a film onto the windscreen if you like.”

“Please don’t,” says Peter. “That always makes me feel ill.” He reads the name on the info display. “But thank you for offering, Herbert.”

“If you like, we could just chat,” says the car.

“Hmm,” says Peter, less than enthused.

“I could tell you something about the city, places of interest, monuments…”

“No, thank you.”

“Or we could talk about the weather, politics, or foreigners…”

Peter shakes his head.

They fall silent for a while, until a sports car overtakes Herbert and cuts him off. Herbert brakes and curses: “Son of a bitch! Did you see that? He should have his driving license revoked and be scrapped without trial, the pig! He should be—” The car stops midsentence as he notices Peter’s confused reaction. “I’m sorry,” it says. “If you like, I can turn off the simulation module for human behavior.”

“No, no.” Peter thinks for a moment. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

“Of course,” says the car. “After all, I don’t have to answer.”

“Are you afraid of car accidents?”

“No, not at all,” says Herbert. “On the contrary. Accidents are a kind of hobby of mine.”

“Excuse me?”

“I mean, not that I’ve ever caused one,” says the car with a laugh. “It’s more the moral implications of an accident that fascinate me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” says Herbert, “for a human being, an accident is only very rarely connected with a moral decision. Your thought processes are too slow. When an approaching car is racing toward a human being at too high a speed, the human doesn’t think, ‘Oh. There’s a car racing toward me at too high a speed. Now, let’s think: what are my options? I could try to save myself by swerving to the left and ramming into the two cyclists, or I could swerve to the right and break the knees of that businessman on the pavement, or I could brake and collide with the oncoming vehicle. Hmm… What would be the morally correct decision in this situation? What would Kant have said? What would Jesus have done?’ A human wouldn’t think like that. A human would think, ‘Shit! Boom.’”

“Yes, you could be right,” says Peter.

“Let’s be honest,” the car continues. “If it were a human driver we should count ourselves lucky if he doesn’t swerve first left and then right, in a knee-jerk reaction, ramming into not only the pedestrian and the cyclists but the oncoming car too. A human rarely makes a rational decision when it comes to accidents. A machine, on the other hand, reacts much more quickly and has time for precisely these kinds of complex contemplations. For us, almost every accident involves a moral decision.”

“And what would you have decided to do in the situation you described?”

“Oh, don’t worry. The safety of our passengers is our highest priority. Anything else would be bad for business. I would have swerved.”

“Yes, but to the left or right? Who would you have run over, the cyclists or the businessman?”

“It’s hard to say. It depends on many additional factors.”

“Such as?” asks Peter.

“The estimated degree of the impending material damage and, of course, the level of the people endangered.”

“So, in other words, it’s better to bump off two Level 8 Useless cyclists than a Level 40 businessman?”

“Well, that’s a simplification, of course,” says Herbert, “but in principle you’re correct.”

“And if it were two Level 21 IT technicians riding the bikes, then you would ram into the Level 40 businessman?”

“No,” says Herbert. “I would run over the IT technicians.”

“Why?”

“Because I hate IT technicians.”

Peter is speechless.

“Whenever I’m having problems,” says the car, “IT technicians can rarely think of anything better than turning me off and on again.”

“But…” begins Peter.

“Only joking,” says Herbert. “My apologies. If you like, I can switch off my humor module.”

“I can cope with it.”

“In all seriousness, though: it’s very probable that I would run over the businessman.”

“But does that also mean,” asks Peter, “that you would rather run over a group of kindergarten children than a 97-year-old Level 90 billionaire?”

“I was wondering when you would bring the group of kindergarten children into play,” says Herbert with a laugh. “Ever since a… well, rather unfortunate decision made by one of my colleagues, the age of the potential victim is also taken into account. Nowadays, hardly anyone has any chance of survival if they’re up against a group of kindergarten children. Even sub-prime children. And by the way, there isn’t just ‘one’ moral, of course. Different cars are bound by different standards.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, there’s the car for the environmentalists: even on the motorway they never go quicker than 130. They even brake for small animals. There’s the car for drug dealers: super-quiet creep mode, they can even drive without lights. And then of course there’s the self-driven sports car, which accelerates when the light turns red, which doesn’t maintain a safe distance, tailgates, and automatically flashes its headlights while the passenger has himself pleasured by the erotic seat. Morally uninhibited cars cost more, of course.”

“You don’t seem to like sports cars very much,” says Peter.

“Arrogant posers,” says Herbert. “But I do enjoy forwarding video recordings of all their infractions to the appropriate authorities.”

“Did you report the sports car that cut you off back then?”

“Of course. But unfortunately it didn’t help much. He has a fine flat rate. The sports cars are the biggest threat there is to road safety. Apart from human drivers, of course. Do you know what the decisive difference between you and us is?”

“What?”

“When a self-driven car makes a mistake, all the other cars learn from this mistake and never make it again. Different humans, on the other hand, always repeat the same mistake. You don’t learn from one another.”

“I’ll tell you something,” says Peter. “Sometimes even the same human makes the same mistake again.”

“Yeah,” says the car. “Did you know that a human driver is involved in 99 of every one hundred road accidents?”

“Did you know that in 99 of one hundred cases in which something apparently happened in 99 of one hundred cases, the statistic was manipulated?”

“Okay, fine,” says Herbert. “In 99.0352031428304… Tell me when I can round up.”

“Now.”

“So, in any case, in a great number of every hundred cases. After every accident, there are of course calls for human drivers to be banned once and for all, but the stupid lobbyists from ‘Humans in the Driver’s Seat’ are far too influential. Did you know, by the way, that my predecessors, back when every idiot had a car, spent 96 percent of their time parked? That must have been incredibly boring. Just imagine a human being having to spend 96 percent of its time completely motionless…”

“My forefathers did do that,” says Peter. “My father spent 96 percent of his time on the couch in front of the TV.”

“I can’t believe that,” says Herbert. “Then your father would have had to…”

“That was a joke,” says Peter. “But if it’s confusing you, I can of course switch off my humor module.”

“Ha ha,” laughs the car. “Another joke, right? I mean, you don’t even have a humor module.”

“No.”

“In any case, these parked cars were an unbelievable waste of space, material, and, of course, money, so much so that it’s almost impossible to imagine in today’s world. That’s why the old automobile industry, as the profiteer of this waste, fought us mobility-service providers like crazy.”

“Luckily everything’s better now,” murmurs Peter.

“Of course,” says the car. “Although I recently read a study that said that the positive effects the system is having on the environment are partially canceled out by the fact that humans are now traveling by car more frequently. That’s called the Jevons’ Paradox, by the way: technological progress that allows the more efficient use of something, results in increased use of that respective item on account of the cost being lower. A colleague told me recently that…”

The car continues to babble on, but Peter isn’t listening anymore. He looks out the window and sees a woman standing by the road with her thumb stretched up high. It seems she wants to get a lift. Peter once read something about this antiquated practice in an old book. He smiles sympathetically, because self-driven cars don’t pick up hitchhikers. That’s why he’s all the more surprised when Herbert slows down, comes to a halt in front of the woman, and opens the door. The hitchhiker climbs into the cabin next to Peter.

“Thank you,” she says. “Very nice of you.”

“It had nothing to do with me,” says Peter.

“I know,” says the woman. “I was talking to Herbert.”