We often like to think of ethical behavior and ethical decision making in terms of black and white absolutes. Whether we appeal to Plato's cardinal qualities or the ten commandments as the starting point for these absolutes, most people find that the reality of ethics is more of a grey area in which these absolutes collide with themselves and each other. It is easy to observe the injunction "Thou Shalt Not Kill" when no one else is killing people. It becomes more difficult to observe when others are ignoring the injunction. It is easy to respect anothers person of speech so long as their speech isn't interfering with your right of assembly. It is harder to respect that right when their speech is used to restrict your right. It is, in some sense, this kind of collision that Aristotle attempts to resolve when he advises us to avoid extremes and find the just-right mean between excess and defect.
Table 1 is a systematic exploration and update of this just-right mean and the ways in which we find it. It is an exploration of speeding and the various levels at which people make ethical and legal decisions when they speed and enforce speed limits. that . and force us to find intermediate compromises that allow us to preserve as much as we can of ommonly . All laws, rules, precedents, and ethical behavior can be regarded as the outcome of negotiation. That negotiation happens at least seven levels, including laws, formal rules, formal precedents, shared ethics, informal rules, informal precedents, and personal ethics. The following table presents "speeding" and speeding tickets as a source for a set of generic "ethical cases" to illustrate the nature of these levels of ethical practice, the moral and ethical origins associated with such practice, and the role of negotiation in establishing such practice.
| Term | Relationship to Speeding | Moral and Ethical Origins of Current Practice | The Role of Negotiation in Current Practice |
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Law Most social systems have formal mechanisms for establishing, as a matter of law, constraints on individual behavior. |
Speeding is against the law. The law generally sets the Interstate highway speed limit to 65, except in densely populated areas, where the speed limit is generally 55. Most states also enforce minimum speed limits of 45 on Interstate highways. |
Speed limits reduce the frequency of accidents because everyone is moving at about the same speed, and thereby have an easier time maneuvering through traffic. Hence harm to property is reduced. Accidents ending in injury and death occur with greater frequency at higher speeds. Lower speed limits have generally been demonstrated to reduce harm to others. Neither the minimization of harm to others nor and the preservation of property are usually cited as elements of the speed limits, but both play a key role in the existence of speed limits. |
While speed limits have been shown to reduce both the frequency of accidents and their severity, they also slow people down as they travel. Lower speed limits (e.g. The old national 55 MPH speed limit) were very controversial, especially in Western States where everything is further apart. This disagreement led to civil disobedience, especially among truck drivers, a general disregard of the 55 MPH speed limit, especially in the west, and even cause some states to risk federal highway funds. The recommended national speed limit was eventually raised. |
| Formal Rule
People charged with enforcing laws make decisions about
how those laws will be enforced. These decisions, when formalized through
documentation or education, can be regarded as formal rules. |
The National Transportation Safety Board, under laws set by the congress, encourages 65 and 55 as national speed limit values, using the allocation of highway funds as incentive. | Predictable and consistent speed limits make it easier for drivers to observe the law, especially as they cross state lines. By promoting predictable national speed limits, at least on Interstate highways, the NTSB promotes the ethical principle that laws should be sensible and predictable | Under the older laws under which the National Speed Limit was set to 55, the Federal Government had tremendous leverage that could force the states to adopt its recommendations. In the loosening of the rules that allowed states to raise the speed limit, that leverage was reduced, and states given more say in the setting speed limits. |
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Formal Precedent People charged with adjudicating disagreements about laws, rules, and the harmful consequences of decisions use prior decisions as a guideline to future decisions. |
Disagreements about what values should take precedence under different conditions necessitate formal means of adjudicating disagreements about the interpretation of ethics and law. Prior decisions in these courts inform subsequent decisions Even when people substantially agree on what values matter, minor differences in the relative importance they assign to different valuesSocial systems routinely delegate the resolution of . Most judges recognize that both speedometers and radar equipment have standard deviations such that exact measurement of speed is impossible for either the driver or enforcement agents. Hence they are generally unwilling to convict when the ticketed speed is within 10% of the speed limit and the driver claims not to have been speeding. |
The constitutional principle that a person is considered innocent until proven guilty is an expression of the ethical principle of fairness. A judge who is unwilling to convict someone of speeding when the evidence of speeding is marginal (e.g. within the standard deviation of the speedometer and the radar equipment) and the person testifies, under oath, that they were not speeding, is expressing this ethical principle. | The initial arrival of radar speed detection equipment heralded a revolutionary change in speed limit enforcement. With the scientific accuracy of radar detectors, it was presumed that speeding by as little as one mile an hour over the speed limit could be accurately detected, and such tickets were, and occasionally still are, written. In time, however, alleged speeders started to effectively argue questions of speedometer standard deviation, radar detector calibration, effects of surrounding traffic, and even radar detector standard deviation. The success of these bids for a change in the rules resulted in changes in the way speed limits are enforced. |
| Shared Ethic
We are socialized into families, communities, organizations,and other social structures in ways that ensure that we share beliefs, values, ways of framing experience, and general ethical orientations with others. |
Socialization plays a major role in the development of personal ethics. Many people, including parents, friends, neighbors, teachers, and coworkers play a role both in shaping our values and beliefs and framing our experiences. Because many of us are socialized in similar ways by people who were themselves socialized in the same communities we tend to share many values and beliefs with others in the communities to which we belong. These shared values and beliefs will frequently encourage members of the same community to make similar decisions and to frame experience in ways that protect community values. Most people believe that the safest speed, on an Interstate, or any other road, is the speed everyone else is going. So long as that speed isn't excessively high, most people will prefer moving with traffic to slavishly following the speed limit. |
Safety, of self, family, community, and society, is a fundamental human value, and one we will sacrifice to attain and maintain. Conformity, although it can also be dangerous, is reassuring that our decisions are reasonable ones at least insofar as others have reached the same decision. Cooperation is also a shared ethic for desirable behavior. | Going about the same speed that everyone else is a real time negotiation of behavior that is, in many ways, a real life realization of Schopenhaueur's fable of the porquipines. We may or may not be entirely comfortable with the speed that others are going. We might feel more comfortable going faster (if there is someplace we have to be) or slower (if we prefer the speed limit), but we can minimize risk and get comfortable with traffic by fitting in. |
| Informal Rule
Many of our ethical decisions are made in the presence of others. Our interaction and relationships with others will inform our ethical decision making. |
Every relationship is framed by a set of informal relationship rules that we construct during the course of our interaction with each other. Most of the time drivers have no relationship with the drivers of the cars that surround them as they drive. Indeed, because cars surround us in a forward facing anonymity that makes our cars more recognizable than the driver is, this often true even when we do have a relationships with the drivers of the cars around us. There are, however, a variety of circumstances under which relationship rules do affect our decisions about speeding. We may not know who is in the next car, but we often know, and frequently drive with, the other people in our car, and their opinions about speeding may affect our driving behavior. Teenagers are almost certainly more likely to speed when driving with friends than they are to speed when their parents are in the car. To the extent that the occupant of the front passenger seat can see the speedometer, has an opinion about speeding, and is willing to express that opinion, their opinion may affect the behavior of the driver. When a caravan of cars travels together, keeping the caravan together will become an imperative. The group will negotiate a set of rules for how they stay together that will almost certainly include a speed that will be slower than some drivers would like and faster than others would like. Police officers interact on a regular basis with judges and other police officers. Officers know that judges won't convict on borderline speeding tickets, but are charged with enforcing the law. Over time they informally negotiate a set of guidelines for what tickets should be written based on what tickets are overturned and the circumstances under which officers are willing to argue more strongly for conviction. Many officers will readily admit to having discussed these informal guidelines with other officers. Some will be straight up in admitting that, when the speed limit is 65, they'll give you 10 miles an hour. |
We bring different goals, differing expectations, and a different history to every relationship we participate in. When teenagers act differently with the parents than they do with their friends, their divergent behavior reflects these differing goals, expecations, history, and the compromises that everyone in the relationship has made in order to maintain it. xxxxx Moral and Ethical Origins of Current Practice Officers value, much as we all do, both success and not wasting time. For an officer, success with speeding tickets is measured in convictions. Giving a ticket that is unlikely to result in conviction is a waste of time and is less likely to result in success. We value helpfulness and cooperation. Leading someone to a destination is an act of helpfulness, especially when we are helping someone we don't know. Many coordinated activities, including following in a car, cannot work without mutual cooperation. |
The rule of thumb is a product of continuing interaction between officers, who talk to each other, and the judiciary, who they may also talk with informally. The negotiation also considers context, with less or no standard deviation granted where children are present or road conditions are degraded; more standard deviation granted to emergency vehicles and situations. Finally, officers will frequently plea bargain tickets, a negotiation with the the accused, when tickets are challenged. Following is complicated by numerous factors, including differences in speedometer accuracy. The following car needs to work to keep up, assuming the best of the lead driver. The leading car needs to work to stay where they can be followed, which may mean slowing down and being aware of road conditions that might cause separation. |
| Informal Precedent
The ethical decisions we make form a set of precedents that inform subsequent ethical decisions. |
Prior experience is a powerful force in our ethical decision making. People are natural theory builders. They look for and find patterns in experience and use those patterns in making new decisions. People are particularly good at building theories that minimize their responsibility when bad things happen, that maximize their responsibility when good things that happen, and in finding situational factors that distinguish the good from the bad. Their theories may not be accurate or even terribly sensible under close inspection, but they form a collection of informal precedents that inform our decisions about, among other things, speeding. Consider, for instance, our thought process when we start to pass a truck while speeding and someone going even faster than us pulls up on our tail and starts blinking their headlights for us to move over so they can pass. If there wasn't a truck next to us we would, most of the time, pull over and let them pass. Since there is a truck next to us, however, it should be plainly obvious to the person behind us that we have no place to go, we are stuck with making sense of a bad situation. Some of us will speed up even more so we can pull over. Others of us will slow down so the person will get the ideea and get off our tail. Whatever we do, the consequences of the act will influence future decisions, including both our decisions about when and how fast we pass trucks and our decisions to pull up behind slower vehicles and blink our lights.. |
The first time we speed and get away with it sets an informal precedent that influences future decisions to speed. The first time we get pulled over for speeding also has the potential for setting an informal precedent that has a similar influence on future decisions. These and subsequent driving experiences give us ample opportunity to find patterns and build theories that both protect our self-image and guide our driving behavior. When we speed and get away with it (e.g. no tickets, accidents, or other negative experiences) we will generally credit our driving skills and good luck. When we speed and don't get away with it we will tend to push the blame away from ourselves with excuses like "I was just moving with traffic", "everybody speeds", and "the police had to fill their quota". It doesn't hurt that all of these things are sometimes true, but it generally remains that we choose how fast we drive. When we choose to speed we also choose how fast we will go. The speed we choose will reflect our personal theories of how fast we can go and get away with it based on our prior experience of both getting away with speeding and getting tickets. Similarly, our behavior when faced with a car that blinks its lights to pass will be informed by prior experience. We can't know why someone is in such a hurry that aren't noticing traffic conditions. While most of us will prefer to be accommodating, but if there is no safe way to do so, we will often assume the worst. Road rage is sometimes a consequence of such assumptions. But if we value being cooperative and giving people the benefit of the doubt, even when we doubt their motives and probably can never know them, we may speed up to let them by. If, on the other hand, we strongly value safety, and we may act to reduce the danger inherent to the situation by reducing our speed. |
The question of how fast we go when we speed is less a function of beliefs and fundamental values than it is of our experience and immediate needs. Prior experience provides a basis for deciding what speed we can drive comfortably at under various conditions (different speed limits, weather and traffic conditions). The immediate situation provides reasons why we may override that comfort level by either speeding up or slowing down. . This "negotiation" is not simply a product of our imagination, however. It reflects our interaction with the police, the speeds at which we have managed to both receive and avoid speeding tickets, and our driving communication with other drivers. When, for instance, a driver pulls up on our rear bumper and blinks the headlights, they are communicate their desire to pass. The behavior we choose in response to this request (moving over, speeding up, slowing down, or staying at the same speed, is also meaningful. If, for instance, we try to enhance the safety of the situation by starting to gradually slow down, we certainly hope that the driver will take the hint and back off, but if they don't, we will at least reduce the speed at which the collision happens. We may, however, also make the driver angry. Driving behavior is a rather low resolution langugage. |
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Personal Ethic Ethical Decision making is starts with our personal beliefs, values, experiences, and personal needs. |
While speeding is sometimes a matter of inattention to the speedometer (some would label such inattention as negligence) or inaccurate speedometers (speedometers are often a little bit inaccurate), we most often make a conscious decision either to speed or not to. People who keep their cars near the speed limit for any given road have usually made a decision to do so. People who exceed the speed limit have most often made a decision to do so. Such decisions are grounded in personal ethics (our values and our beliefs about what is right and wrong) that are applied in specific situations based on our personal experiences and immediate needs. Personal conscience is a powerful force in individual ethical decision making. |
Many people believe that they are excellent drivers and that nothing bad will happen to them if they speed. Others believe that, regardless of how good a driver they may be, that they are sufficiently unlucky that if they speed they will get caught. These beliefs may represents extremes of belief, but the former group is more likely to speed and the latter group less likely. Some people value excitement and pleasure more than beauty and security. Others would reverse those values. Other personal values (freedom, fitting in, feeling comfortable) may impact our decision to speed as well, but it remains that those who valuing excitement and pleasure are more likely to speed than those who value beauty and security. Many people either have not experienced the negative consequences of speeding (tickets, accidents, injuries, and deaths) or have attributed those consequences to other factors. Others understand those consequences and want to avoid them. The former group is more likely to speed and the latter less likely. If, for whatever reason (a health emergency, a scheduled appointment, etc), a person has to get somewhere in a hurry, they are more likely to speed. If, for whatever reason (economic, environmental, etc.) an individual is concerned about maximizing automotive fuel economy, they are less likely to speed, as lower speeds increase automotive fuel economy. | The question of whether we should speed or not is not a uniform one. While it is certainly the case that some people never or almost never speed and other people will speed whenever they can, many people make different decisions about their speed every time they drive. Such decisions are inevitably made in the intersection of situational exigencies and their beliefs, values, and experiences. We are more likely to speed on clean, straight, wide open road; less likely to speed on rain-slicked, twisty roads in heavy traffic. Even when we are speeding we are likely to slow to the speed limit in a school zone. For most of us, every decision about the speed of our vehicle is a negotiation between competing conditions, priorities, memories, beliefs, and values. |
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Table 1: Laws, Rules, Precedents, Ethics and Speeding
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All laws, rules, precedents, and ethical behaviors are the product of our values and, where those values collide with each other, the negotiation of satisfactory solutions to those collisions. As can be seen at all of the levels of Table 1, moral and ethical problems inevitably occur at the sites of these collisions. Resolution of these decisions can be seen as being "fractal": every decision contains within it the seeds of another collision which will require a finer grained decisions. There appears to be no limit to how fine grained these decisions are, and as each decision entails a more detailed case involving a collision of the same principles, the decisions tend to be self-similar,
This table originiates in a lecture first given in a class on "Communication Ethics" at Oswego State University of New York (SUNY Oswego) during September, 2001. A precis version of the table was drawn up on a blackboard at that time. The table that is the centerpiece of this article was developed over several over the course of several months with the idea of including it, as table 3, in the January, 2003 paper "Fractally Complex Decision Spaces and the Efficacy of Ethics Instruction", which was first presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Ethics Across the Curriculum. This table was not included in that presentation, but has, without any advertising, become a commonly accessed page on this web site.
Language to incorporate: "ethical cases" and "ethical decision making"