- Crush the people outside to save the people inside.
- Intentionally crash into a large object or veer off road and risk crashing into a ditch.
What?
That’s not what happened here, and I struggle to imagine any situation where that’s the only two options.
I struggle to imagine any situation where that’s the only two options.
Alright, I’ll take this in good faith. Here’s how that happens:
Speeding.
As we all know here, speeding makes crashes way worse, and it makes the braking function fail proportionally.
So, imagine:
The killer road bot is speeding through a street. It’s a bit narrow, there are cars parked illegally on the sides.
The killer road bot enters an intersection and makes a left turn with speed and a there’s someone on a crosswalk.
The killer road bot controls at least these aspects of the car: brakes, acceleration, steering. The brakes can be engaged, but the speed makes them useless in preventing running over the person on the crosswalk. The acceleration is not useful. Everything is happening too fast really, and the killer road bot can’t even calculate which direction the person is walking in on the crosswalk.
The only useful control left is direction by steering. The killer road bot thus has these choices:
- Maintain course, run over person on crosswalk
- Change course
Choice 1 leads to the obvious outcome.
Choice 2 branches out:
2.1. Turn left
2.2. Turn right
If the killer road bot turns left (2.1), it flips the car over and sends it rolling into other cars, thus endangering the passenger(s).
If the killed road bot turns right (2.2), it hits a large tree.
These are the only options.
edit: typo
Oh I get now. You have a preconceived agenda that makes this discussion entirely pointless. Either that or you value the trolley problem way too much.
Yeah, my agenda is public health and equality. I don’t like it when a special class of people has impunity for roaming the land harming people, even less so when that’s automatic.
I mean a autonomous vehicle should be programmed to not speed and even not drive faster than reasonable in the present condition.
In switzerland we have a law that you are not allowed to drive faster than the speed with wich you can come to a full stop at the farthest spot on the road that you can see. (So in a curve you have to drive slowly, because there could be something on the street right in front of you.)
If a autonomous vehicle respects such rules, then it at least has eniugh time to calculate several outcomes and choose one which has the least damage potential.
The trolleyproblem is not applicable here as its not a theoretical situation but a practical one.
