Generation and Governance of Ethical Risks in Autonomous Driving: A Perspective from Technology as Social Experimentation

The accelerated deployment of autonomous vehicles on public roads has exposed significant ethical risks, forcing society into the role of a laboratory for technological testing. This paper introduces the theoretical perspective of "technology as social experimentation" to construct an analytical framework encompassing the tripartite interaction of technology, policy, and society. By examining risk cases from the process of societal introduction of autonomous driving, it reveals the mechanisms through which risks are generated due to regulatory lag, commercial misrepresentation, and conflicts in road access authorization. And on this basis this paper points out the limitations of existing regulatory sandbox models in addressing challenges within real-world settings and the oversight of ethical concerns in adaptive governance, thereby elucidating the advantages of the technology-as-social-experimentation framework. This framework advocates for shifting the governance arena from test environments to real-world social settings, establishing an evaluation system that incorporates multidimensional factors such as technical indicator and public acceptance, transforming social friction into governance knowledge and involving multiple stakeholders to protect the rights of groups affected by technology.This theoretical framework not only provides an analytical tool for understanding the ethical risks of autonomous driving but also helps promote the responsible research and application of autonomous driving technology.