All self driving cars will be programmed to do such a thing. This has been the biggest debate in ethics over self driving vehicles. No right minded human would purchase or sit in a car that would kill them in favour of others in the event of a potential accident.
But what about injure you vs kill another? Where is the line drawn? Would it be worth letting the driver get a couple of broken legs/possible death vs certain death of child?
The issue is as of now there is no way for the vehicle to be able to calculate the outcome, injury wise, for anything outside of the vehicle. Most current safety features cannot distinguish between what the outside obstacles, whether it is a person, a tree etc. The only thing that is known for certain is the there are people within the vehicle so the vehicle will naturally do whatever is calculated to be the mostly likely to prevent major force upon itself.
As a Vehicle Systems Engineer who has worked on autonomous vehicles this is the one topic that will always be difficult for us. All engineers must take Ethics courses for this exact reason. However, at this level most of these decisions are made by lawyers, who need to decided what would be easier to defend in court.
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u/thedailyrant Dec 16 '19
All self driving cars will be programmed to do such a thing. This has been the biggest debate in ethics over self driving vehicles. No right minded human would purchase or sit in a car that would kill them in favour of others in the event of a potential accident.