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The technology is new, but the moral conundrum isn't: A self-driving car identifies a group of children running into the road. There is no time to stop. To swerve around them would drive the car into a speeding truck on one side or over a cliff on the other, bringing certain death to anybody inside.
To anyone pushing for a future for autonomous cars, this question has become the elephant in the room, argued over incessantly by lawyers, regulators, and ethicists; it has even been at the center of a human study by Science. Happy to have their names kept in the background of the life-or-death drama, most carmakers have let Google take the lead while making passing reference to ongoing research, investigations, or discussions.
But not Mercedes-Benz. Not anymore.
The world's oldest car maker no longer sees the problem, similar to the question from 1967 known as the Trolley Problem, as unanswerable. Rather than tying itself into moral and ethical knots in a crisis, Mercedes-Benz simply intends to program its self-driving cars to save the people inside the car. Every time.
Is it really a decision based on morality, or because choosing to save the pedestrians is much harder to code?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by aristarchus on Wednesday October 12 2016, @05:54AM
Yes, that would be Americans! But only slightly less known is the fact that Mercedes owners are upper class pricks, and that BMW drivers should not be allowed to actually drive an automobile, let alone own one. No surprise that Mercedes would defend its occupant over a pedestrian. After all, the pedestrian is a pedestrian, and so by definition poor. Why else would they be walking, instead of cruising in air-conditioned comfort and luxury? Except, wait, that pedestrian, who my car has just decided to sacrifice to save my very important life? He is holding a .44 Magnum, the most powerful production handgun in existence. Do you feel lucky, punk? Well, do ya?
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 12 2016, @06:35AM
Depends on whether you bought the bulletproof windows.
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by aristarchus on Wednesday October 12 2016, @07:34AM
And whether said .44 caliber was packing depleted Uranium Armor-piercing 265 gr. vacuum-filled projectiles, backed by 55 grs. of the finest nitrocellulose smokeless with a muzzle velocity in excess of . . . . Damn, got runned over before I could finish the whole ammosexual routine. Don't you just hate it when that happens? At least it wasn't an auto, those are for people who cannot aim.
(Score: 2) by t-3 on Wednesday October 12 2016, @08:12AM
Since when is Mercedes-Benz not a German company?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 12 2016, @10:13AM
Mercedes-Benz is a car brand, not a company. The company making that car is called Daimler (formerly Daimler-Benz, but they dropped the Benz part when they bought Chrysler, forming Daimler-Chrysler, and did not re-add it after selling Chrysler).
However both the brand and the company are indeed German.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday October 12 2016, @01:27PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by lgw on Wednesday October 12 2016, @09:00PM
Mercedes E-Class sedans are actually reasonably popular upper-class cars - very practical, safe, and not too showy. But, as you say, that's a tiny percentage of Mercedes owners.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by aristarchus on Thursday October 13 2016, @04:38AM
I thought you were a brit?
Where on earth did you get that idea? A brit? Do you mean a member of the natus of Britannica. or their associated nations? No I am Greek, more properly an Ionian Greek, for those of you who know the difference. I am from Samos. The luxury cars came in with the Italians, or as we used to call them, the Romans. They had a thing for building roads, and those roads had very gentle curves for the most part, for some reason. Were the Romans foreseeing Lamborginis? We Greeks make sure there are a lot of tight curves on our roads, to slow down the Germans, Americans, and pedestrian devouring Mercedes-Benzes.