Ethical dilemmas in traffic safety work

The paper presents some well-known ethical questions regarding priority setting of safety work. Some traffic examples are applied to illustrate the dilemmas. Basic ethical principles are considered, i.e. approaches based on utility, fairness and discourse. We also discuss the various “dimensions” of utility and risk that could be taken into account. Ethical challenges related to the use of “willingness to pay” are also considered. A small-scale survey has been carried out regarding people's priority setting of traffic safety measures. The main results of this survey are summarized to provide a background for a discussion of the ethical dilemmas.