Situations no self-driving car can avoid:
- philosophical dilemma
- physics-constrained reaction times
- actions that violate the rules of the system
Solutions:
- protected car lanes
- protected bike lanes
- protected pedestrian lanes
Reasons why these solutions are not put in place:
- cost
Until humans determine that the cost of human life is higher than the cost of upgrading infrastructure, we should accept human death as a regular part of autonomous driving, just the same as we do for non-autonomous driving. 37k dead people every year in the US due to human drivers.
Top reasons for auto accidents today include inclement weather, reckless driving, speeding, driving under the influence, and distracted driving. In theory, most of those could be solved by autonomous driving. But then the list of reasons for accidents would change to whatever new reasons cause autonomous car accidents, such as damaged sensors, programming errors, equipment failure, road hazards, etc.
Even with autonomous cars, we will still need protected lanes, and we will still never implement them, because we don't really care when people we don't know die.