Two careless drivers

Two equally careless drivers can be judged differently because a pedestrian happens to cross in front of only one. Resultant moral luck concerns this dependence of assessment on outcomes outside the agent’s control. It separates the quality of a decision from the harm that follows it.

The comparison reveals several forms of assessment that ordinary language tends to merge. We can evaluate the drivers’ decisions, assign blame, recognize responsibility for an injury, and decide what repair is owed. Those judgments need not be identical. An unlucky driver may have exactly the same degree of carelessness as a lucky driver while acquiring a relationship to an injured person that the lucky driver never acquires. Control over the original choice and responsibility afterward come apart.

Hold the drivers’ speed, attention, and knowledge fixed. First vary only whether someone crosses; then vary whether the driver knowingly took a greater risk. The first comparison concerns luck in outcomes, while the second introduces a difference in fault that must not be confused with it.

Equal carelessness need not imply identical obligations afterward. One driver may owe compensation or an apology because someone was harmed, while deserving no more blame for the original choice. The difficulty is deciding which kinds of moral assessment should track control and which should respond to the actual people affected.

Imagine that both drivers later discover how close they came to causing harm. One expresses regret and changes their habits; the other dismisses the risk because no one was injured. Their later choices now provide new grounds for assessment that were absent from the original comparison. Holding the initial fault equal does not require ignoring what happens afterward. The challenge is to explain each judgment without allowing a striking outcome to silently rewrite the earlier evidence.