For example, say you are driving along a road, passing a bicyclist. You'd like to give the cyclist more room, but there's an oncoming car in the lane next to you. How much room do you give? At exactly what threshold do you decide to wait to pass the cyclist? What if the cyclist is a kid?
All the time, the driver has to make decisions that trade off the safety of multiple parties, from the car's occupants to other drivers, to bicyclists and pedestrians. In reality, these will almost always be statistical tradeoffs, and usually comparing very small probabilities of accidents, but they are still real ethical decisions that have to be made.
The interesting case is in between.
If we find ourselves faced with "pulling the lever" everyone has already failed miserable.
Choosing who should be "unlucky" doesn't solve the problem. By assuming unavoidable failure you effectively give up solving the underlying problem. The solution is to avoid the failure in the first place.
Armchair scenarios do not help, we need actual research in simulators at high stress.
Did you miss the obvious problem with your statement?
Suppose if you don't swerve, you hit 30 school children, and if you do swerve, you hit one terminally ill child molester.
...That's why you don't get to abstain. You have to choose. That's the definition of the trolley problem.
As long as the computer makes a decision where we can say "that was very reasonable, even if better decisions existed" then it seems ok to me.