How To Judge The Moral Code Of Volkswagen

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In 2016, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that many Volkswagen cars had irregularities in their carbon emission levels. These levels were in violation of the Clean Air Act, a federal law that controls air pollution by regulating air emissions from many devices like diesel vehicles. Volkswagen engineer, James Robert Liang, pleaded guilty for “his role in a nearly 10-year conspiracy to defraud U.S. regulators and U.S. Volkswagen customers by implementing software specifically designed to cheat U.S. emissions tests in hundreds of thousands of Volkswagen ‘clean diesel’ vehicles [1].” Due to the pressure to push out efficient diesel vehicles quickly, Liang and his colleagues realized they would not be able to design a vehicle to meet U.S. standards, so they implemented a software into Volkswagen cars that could identify whether the car was under testing. If the vehicle was under testing, it would switch into a “test mode” [2] where it under-performed to cheat U.S. emission tests and regulations. The moral dimensions of this case are analyzed …show more content…
Rule utilitarians “judge the morality of individual actions by reference to general moral rules and… judge particular moral rules by seeing whether their acceptance into [their] moral code would produce more well-being than other possible rules [5].” An action is morally right if it follows a rule that will provide the most happiness compared to other rules. Since the result of lying and cheating are usually negative and prevent maximum happiness, rule utilitarians might include rules against lying and cheating in their moral code. In this case, Liang has clearly broken those rules, as talked about before. He knowingly misled and tricked consumers and the government into thinking that Volkswagen cars met the emissions standards and regulation. Doing so and breaking the rules prevented the greater good from having the maximum happiness and utility

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