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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: 3, Insightful) by Entropy on Wednesday October 12 2016, @07:33AM
Everyone's argument is always going to be child porn(strike that), I mean children. This is far more likely to involve this scenario:
You're driving along, and some fine homeless gentleman awaits your car on the side of the highway. When the time is right he steps out and gets wacked by your car. He then attempts to get money from you, or sue you. Should your car swerve into a pole killing your two children in the back to avoid this idiot? No.. It should mow apply the brakes then mow him down if there isn't an alternative.
This isn't a decision to sacrifice a group of infants stacked by the side of the road, it's a decision to prioritize the driver's family over some idiot that decides they should be sitting on a highway for no apparent reason.
(Score: 2) by t-3 on Wednesday October 12 2016, @08:20AM
I think that's a good point, but this already happens, and nitpicking but he would have to be kind of stupid if he jumps out on the highway. I would rather go for one of those nice 25mph school zone places and sue the the shit of someone instead of getting smeared on the highway.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 12 2016, @09:31AM
You can find Youtube videos of people committing suicide in this way.
I have, personally, also experienced pedestrians walking right down the middle of a major arterial road (that had sidewalks, no less). Wearing dark clothing in the middle of the night, naturally.