自動駕駛汽車如何處理“道德路障”?

The advance of the self-driving car may be the most important technological breakthrough of the coming decades.

自動駕駛汽車領域的進展可能是未來幾十年最重要的科技突破。

Even generally well-informed people I meet regard driverless vehicles as being still pretty “out there”. And I doubt that the hundreds of millions of people who steer vehicles for a living will start giving it much thought until too late.

即使我遇到的一些消息靈通人士也認爲，無人駕駛汽車仍然是“很遙遠的事情”。我也懷疑，爲了謀生而開車的億萬人會及時開始深入考慮這一問題。

But major car companies are vying to get consumer-ready autonomous cars on the market by around 2020. Professionals, from economists to town planners to traffic engineers to legislators to insurers, are starting to grapple with the massive changes this will bring.

但各大車企正致力於在2020年左右把面向消費者的自動駕駛汽車推向市場。從經濟學家到城市規劃者，從交通工程師到立法者和保險業者，專業人士正着手應對它將帶來的巨大變化。

What, then, might a smart lawyer make of the legal implications of the coming transport revolution?

那麼，對於這場即將到來的運輸革命，一位聰明的律師會怎樣看待其潛在法律影響呢？

I have been to Cambridge to meet Stephen Hamilton, a partner in the UK law firm, Mills & Reeve, which is positioning itself as an authority on driverless vehicle law.

我到劍橋(Cambridge)拜訪了英國律所Mills & Reeve合夥人史蒂芬?漢密爾頓(Stephen Hamilton)；該律所正定位於無人駕駛車輛法律的權威。

Mr Hamilton specialises in helping companies raise funds from the capital markets, but he has spent three years researching and building expertise on autonomous vehicles.

漢密爾頓專長於幫助企業從資本市場籌集資金，但他花了三年時間研究自動駕駛汽車，積累起相關專業知識。

“The internet is all about moving text, voice and pictures around digitally,” he says, as we look out over university buildings where scientists from Isaac Newton to Charles Darwin to Stephen Hawking have worked.

他說：“互聯網的本質就是以數字方式來傳送文字、語音和圖片。”我們望着校內一棟棟建築，這裏是艾薩克?牛頓(Isaac Newton)、查爾斯?達爾文(Charles Darwin)和斯蒂芬?霍金(Stephen Hawking)曾工作過的地方。

“The disruption the internet caused was massive. But if we get there on self-driving mobility, and we’re moving people and things around a network digitally, we ain’t seen nothing yet in terms of disruption.”

“互聯網造成的顛覆是巨大的。但如果我們實現無人駕駛，利用數字手段在一個網絡內運輸人和物件，就顛覆而言，大幕纔剛拉開。”

The legal question around self-driving cars that has attracted most attention, however, is not about the great shifts in the way we might live, but the “who to kill” dilemma: a child runs out in front of an autonomous car, should it be programmed to swerve to avoid the child, even if that means hitting an oncoming car or people at a bus stop?

圍繞自動駕駛汽車的法律問題引起了極大關注，但人們關注的並不是我們的生活方式可能發生的巨大轉變，而是“該殺誰”的兩難困境：一個孩子突然出現在一輛自動駕駛汽車前方，汽車應不應該從編程上急轉彎以避開孩子，哪怕這意味着與迎面而來的汽車相撞，或撞到在公交車站等車的人？

In Mr Hamilton’s view, this ethical question has been overplayed.

在漢密爾頓看來，這個倫理問題被過度誇大了。

“The solution is that when a vehicle meets an obstruction, it can do only a limited number of things — steer left or right to overtake or get round it, or brake, or accelerate. The last is unlikely to be applicable, so it’s really a three-way choice.

“解決辦法是，當車輛遇到障礙物時，它能採取的行動是有限的：從左方或右方超車或繞過去，或者剎車，或者加速。最後一個不太可能適用，所以這實際上就是一個三項選擇題。”

“What we would suggest is that if you can’t get round it, the only choice is to brake and avoid or mitigate the damage. There’s no ethical choice in that for an algorithm or decision tree to act on. It’s an obstruction that’s moved into your path that shouldn’t have been there, just like somebody falling or jumping in front of a train.”

“我們的建議是，如果你不能繞過去，唯一的選擇就是剎車，避免或減輕傷害。這裏不存在需要算法或決策樹傷腦筋的道德選擇。你前方的路上出現了一個不該在那裏的障礙，就像有人摔倒或者跳到火車前方。”

You can “war game” anomalies, he explains, but each time, the only answer is to brake and hope for the least damage to the child. Anyway, autonomous cars will always be driving more safely than humans do, and will always react faster than even a rational, alert and sober human.

他解釋說，你可以把異常狀況搞得像“戰爭遊戲”，但每一次的答案只有一個：剎車，並希望對孩子的傷害降到最小。無論如何，自動駕駛汽車總會比人類駕駛員更安全，總會比哪怕是理性、警覺、清醒的人類駕駛員反應更快。

Another ethical issue Mr Hamilton flagged up is the potential mighty fuss over unfit drivers taking to the road again in a self-driving car. Could or should society stop a banned driver from buying a self-driving car and regaining full mobility?

漢密爾頓提出的另一個倫理問題是，已被吊銷駕照的駕駛者開着自動駕駛汽車再次駛上道路，潛在可能引起極大的爭議。社會可以（或者應該）阻止被吊銷駕照的司機購買自動駕駛汽車和重獲完全機動能力嗎？

Then there is a boring-but-important legislative issue. Road traffic law throughout the developed world is based on two international treaties, the Geneva Convention of 1949 and the Vienna Convention.

還有一個枯燥但重要的立法問題。發達國家的公路交通法律基於兩項國際公約：1949年《日內瓦道路交通公約》(Geneva Convention on Road Traffic)，以及1968年《維也納道路交通公約》(Vienna Convention on Road Traffic)。

Both specify that control of a vehicle must at all times be with the driver, so they will need to be adapted before fully self-driving cars are legal. Far from a small matter.

二者都規定任何時候車輛都必須由駕駛員控制，因此在全自動駕駛汽車合法之前，先得修改這條規定。這絕不是件小事。

China, which has signed neither convention, is in a position to put autonomous cars on its roads. Chinese manufacturers are still grappling with the technology, but rest of the world, you have been warned.

並未簽署這兩項公約的中國，可以讓自動駕駛汽車上路。中國的製造商仍在攻克無人駕駛技術，但全球其他地方應該關注這個法律問題。

Another thing. What about free will? If my car is behind an older gentleman’s ancient vehicle doing a steady 20mph, can I programme mine to overtake, possibly breaking the speed limit as it does so?

此外就是自由意志的問題。如果我的車跟在一位年長紳士的老爺車後面，該車以20英里的時速慢吞吞地行駛，我可以給自己的車編程超車嗎？哪怕它可能在超車時違反限速規定？

The answer, Mr Hamilton believes, is that there is unlikely to be an “accept moderately risky driving” option in your autonomous car’s presets.

哈密爾頓認爲，答案是，自動駕駛汽車的預設選項中不太可能出現“接受適度風險駕駛”這一選項。

“But anyway,” he adds a little drily, “I suspect that the car won’t get bored or fed up”, like human drivers do. Instead, it “will know that at the end of the journey, the overtake will have saved about seven seconds [so it] will apply ruthless logic and not do it”.

“但無論如何，”他帶着一絲冷幽默說，“我估計汽車不會（像人類駕駛員那樣）感到無聊或厭煩”。相反，它“會知道最終而言，這次超車可以節省大約7秒鐘，因此它會運用不帶感情的邏輯分析，決定不超車。”

Hacking your car’s software to do so, he added, will be illegal. The same software will also refuse to drive you anywhere but the garage if the car needs a service or a system update.

他補充說，黑進汽車軟件這麼幹是非法的。軟件將拒絕把你載到任何地方，唯獨汽車修理廠除外——如果汽車需要保養，或者進行系統更新。

It is not insignificant that last year’s registrations of new (human driven) cars in the UK hit a high of 2.69m. Neither is it to be overlooked that the CEO of the Toyota Research Institute said at the Consumer Electronics Show just last week that the car industry is “not even close” to fully autonomous cars.

值得一提的是，去年英國（人類駕駛的）新車註冊量高達269萬輛。還有一件事也不可忽視，豐田研究院(Toyota Research Institute)首席執行官近日在消費電子展(CES)上表示，汽車行業離全自動駕駛汽車的“邊兒都不挨着”。

Yet I came away from my meeting with Mr Hamilton pretty sure that not long from now, the notion of humans steering vehicles will, as he believes, seem as anachronistic and undesirable as jousting or duelling.

不過當我與漢密爾頓告別時，我十分確信一點：不久以後，就像漢密爾頓所認爲的那樣，人類駕駛汽車將像騎馬比武或決鬥一樣，成爲一個過時的、不可取的概念。