I don't believe that humans take split-second (binary?) decisions based on morality, only survival. Most of the time, people's instinct tells them to get off the road if there are no alternatives. This actually seems like a reasonable decision to increase the chance of survival. Self-driving cars should probably do the same.
The Amorality of Self-Driving Cars
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Re: The Amorality of Self-Driving Cars
#22However it works out, on the whole, there will be fewer deaths and injuries with autonomous cars. So, we can try to weight the different scenarios to give one a handicap over another --but this pales in comparison to all the lives saved by having autonomous cars.
My take on driverless cars is that they should solve a few other problems first. Like our crazy insurance system. I should pay much less for driving on uncrowded rural highways than people who drive in congested cities. And pay by the number of miles driven. And fix the problem with drunken drivers and deer/car collisions. And taxes to pay for roads not on how many miles you drive on which roads using what kind of ve…
Be careful what you wish for, those urban drivers are subsidizing your uncrowded rural highways.
Re: The Amorality of Self-Driving Cars
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree. If doing so makes people more willing to adopt driverless cars, it may save more lives. However, if the person would only be injured, it should prefer that to someone else's death (as the person himself would be legally obligated to do.)
Do we actually have a model that can predict death vs. serious injury vs. minor injury in advance?
Perhaps not perfectly, but surely there are scenarios where it is predictable.
Re: The Amorality of Self-Driving Cars
#24I'm going to be extremely unpopular for saying this, but I still think the self driving car problem should be solved by having them value the people in the car more than those on the road around them. Is that immoral? Maybe, but if I'm buying a car, I like to think it's looking out for me first and someone else seven hundred and fifty sixth. Of course, this is rather less of an issue that it seems, since the article…
I actually got a rather deep insight from the article, which was "How would an autonomous car get itself into such a situation?" Such a car would not drive so close to a truck that it could not simply stop should the truck lose its cargo. It would not approach a tunnel at a rate of speed where it could not brake to avoid an obstruction. People do that because they ignore risk in favor of some perceived time advantage…
I think there's a positive feedback loop in there too...
As cars go autonomous, they'll communicate faster, drive more predictably, and generally be safer. At some point - 1%, 5%, 20%? - the network as a whole will benefit with less accidents and less of the resulting delays which means human drivers will be less likely to be late which takes away anxiety and potential distractions, making it even safer.
Therefore, I think these "Do I kill A or B?" scenarios become less frequent over time.
I just hope that "over time" part happens quickly... or the first "bad" choice by an autonomous car will delay the industry by years.
Re: The Amorality of Self-Driving Cars
#25All this hang-wringing about the decision a driverless car will make when faced with the trolley problem is pointless.
Driverless cars will result in a MASSIVE reduction in deaths of drivers and passengers, a MASSIVE reduction in harm to human pedestrians and non-drivers and to the environment.
Driverless cars do not look at their cell phones. Driverless cars do not drive drunk. Driverless cars are not in a hurry, not distracted, not upset by what their boss just said, or by the kids in the back seat. Driverless cars will not err as humans do. Driverless cars will reduce the incidence of "trolley problems" incurred in practice by 2 orders of magnitude or more.
Driverless TRUCKS will allow cargo to travel at night, when humans are less likely to be on the road. Which will reduce congestion, which will allow people to get where they're going on time when they ARE on the road. Driverless trucks will KNOW when a car is behind them; there is no "blind spot", ever. And driverless trucks will signal to the car behind them, "you are too close, back off". And it will happen, and no one will get upset about it.
Driverless cars will not accelerate pointlessly from a stoplight, only to slam on the brakes a second later, because they did not see the line of traffic ahead. Driverless cars will not engage in petty competition with other driverless cars. Driverless cars will be like Buddhist drivers - steady as she goes, no stress, no drama. That means less fuel consumption, less road wear, less environmental damage.
Driverless cars will also give mobility to those who are unable to drive - people with eyesight challenges or physical coordination challenges.
Anyone fretting about the ethics of driverless cars along the lines of this article is completely, utterly, radically missing the forest for the trees.
Driverless cars will be a huge boon for modern society.
(Don't get me started about the idiocy of the statement that "car sales are engineered to bring safety features to the expensive models". Has this author completely missed the lessons of capitalism? )
Re: The Amorality of Self-Driving Cars
#26I'm going to be extremely unpopular for saying this, but I still think the self driving car problem should be solved by having them value the people in the car more than those on the road around them. Is that immoral? Maybe, but if I'm buying a car, I like to think it's looking out for me first and someone else seven hundred and fifty sixth. Of course, this is rather less of an issue that it seems, since the article…
I actually got a rather deep insight from the article, which was "How would an autonomous car get itself into such a situation?" Such a car would not drive so close to a truck that it could not simply stop should the truck lose its cargo. It would not approach a tunnel at a rate of speed where it could not brake to avoid an obstruction. People do that because they ignore risk in favor of some perceived time advantage…
Exactly.
People sometimes need the back sides of lane markers to be red to show there driving in the wrong direction at highway speeds. That's the kind of safety issues self driving cars need to address. Highly convoluted but what if a clown and a child jump off an overpass style crap completely misses the point. Self driving cars could chose to randomly kill someone randomly once per 1,000 years on the road and still end up safer than people.
Re: The Amorality of Self-Driving Cars
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
My take on driverless cars is that they should solve a few other problems first. Like our crazy insurance system. I should pay much less for driving on uncrowded rural highways than people who drive in congested cities. And pay by the number of miles driven. And fix the problem with drunken drivers and deer/car collisions. And taxes to pay for roads not on how many miles you drive on which roads using what kind of ve…
Be careful what you wish for, those urban drivers are subsidizing your uncrowded rural highways.
The over-simplistic tax revenue argument that gets thrown around isn't useful.
The urban drivers pay tax revenue, which then "subsidizes" rural highways, which then produce... incredibly cheap food. Which is then consumed in... cities.
You could stop paying for highways, and then food gets more expensive, and it all evens out. And maybe that would make more sense. But don't trick yourself into thinking the relationship is parasitic.
Re: The Amorality of Self-Driving Cars
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
I actually got a rather deep insight from the article, which was "How would an autonomous car get itself into such a situation?" Such a car would not drive so close to a truck that it could not simply stop should the truck lose its cargo. It would not approach a tunnel at a rate of speed where it could not brake to avoid an obstruction. People do that because they ignore risk in favor of some perceived time advantage…
I think there's a positive feedback loop in there too... As cars go autonomous, they'll communicate faster, drive more predictably, and generally be safer. At some point - 1%, 5%, 20%? - the network as a whole will benefit with less accidents and less of the resulting delays which means human drivers will be less likely to be late which takes away anxiety and potential distractions, making it even safer. Therefore, I…
It's all about perspective. If 1M people a year die in auto accidents and you improve that by dropping it to 100K a year, you've done something worthwhile with technology. But, once it's 100K, taking it to 10K deaths a year is 10X as hard of a problem. Etc.
What I'm saying is that there are diminishing returns on eliminating all accidents, unless you are continuously elevating someone's life to an infinite value (your own, for example).
Is our expectation at some point that ZERO people of INFINITE value die shuttling themselves physically around this planet every a year? I'd be willing to accept a small chance of death (by contract even) if I always got to my appointments on time. Think of it as a fancy donor card.
Re: The Amorality of Self-Driving Cars
#29On another note, it could also be interesting to think about what the legal situation could be with a situation like this. If a driverless car prioritises the owner/passengers, then I can see a few court cases where the families of people killed by one would want to sue the manufacturer over it. And if it works the other way around, it could be the families of the passengers suing the company instead. At which point…
Legally, it will take awhile for most jurisdictions to catch up to the idea of driverless cars, though in the case of passenger death in the autonomous car, there will probably be some complicated legal waiver about what does and does not constitute fault in the software versus what is just an accident.
More likely that naught, there will be federal regulations the US as to how the cars must behave, and states can elect whether or not to simply allow the cars, much like how there are national emissions standards.
Re: The Amorality of Self-Driving Cars
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
I actually got a rather deep insight from the article, which was "How would an autonomous car get itself into such a situation?" Such a car would not drive so close to a truck that it could not simply stop should the truck lose its cargo. It would not approach a tunnel at a rate of speed where it could not brake to avoid an obstruction. People do that because they ignore risk in favor of some perceived time advantage…
Exactly. People sometimes need the back sides of lane markers to be red to show there driving in the wrong direction at highway speeds. That's the kind of safety issues self driving cars need to address. Highly convoluted but what if a clown and a child jump off an overpass style crap completely misses the point. Self driving cars could chose to randomly kill someone randomly once per 1,000 years on the road and stil…
Safer than what's already there is a valid point, but it's also (somewhat unfortunately) not one a lot of legal systems tend to go by. For example, it's likely that if alcohol or tobacco was invented in this decade, it would have been banned as a 'dangerous' drug. But safer alternatives aren't exactly legalised because they're safer than what's already out there.