Why Self Driving Cars Must Be Programmed to Kill
technologyreview.com
technologyreview.com
Even one kid runs out into the street. Hit the kid straight ahead or risk the occupant(s) by crashing the car or turning the car into an unknown area?
Car is about to be struck by a red light/stop light runner from the left. Swerve off the road to prevent it (into an area of "unknown contents, possibly including pedestrians") or just take the hit without evasive maneuvering?
There were multiple scenarios researched via MTurk in the story, with variable numbers of pedestrians.
As I mentioned in my previous post, how exactly is that going to kill the driver at 30mph? There isn't going to be a continuous brick wall at the side of the road, otherwise where the heck did the kids come from?!
I think the article is a little overhyped. Certainly there are cases where the car will need to take evasive action, but it's unlikely it will have to decide who to kill.
The concern would come from a break in a guardrail or a series of concrete columns/bollards with a pedestrian crossing, where the car could strike an abutment. (Think of "Jersey barriers" lined up in a construction zone through which a zebra crossing lies. That's an easy abutment scenario and striking a line of Jersey barriers end-on at 30mph provides a deceleration approximately equal to a 30 mph head-on collision with an opposite direction car of equal mass also traveling at 30 mph. That's going to be a massive shunt.)
I agree there's an overhyping in the title, "programmed to kill", but the decision of "cause a near-certain harm to a pedestrian" vs "cause the car to leave the known roadway and suffer/inflict unknown and unknowable harm" is a very legitimate concern.
(I worked as an intern for Daimler on a completely autonomous bus. Our only fallback was "mash the red E-stop button [shutting off the computer servos] and manually take over", so we literally never let the vehicle exceed what the human safety driver was comfortable with, but eventually that's going to go away for fully autonomous vehicles.)
More generally, I think the car should try to stay on the road and it its lane whenever possible, and only leave that space when it's absolutely safe to do so. People on the street have chosen to interact with cars, people on the sidewalk haven't. And the best way to avoid an accident is usually to brake, and not to swerve into someone else or into a wall.