Not really, morality =/= legality. I don't want legal self driving cars, I want moral ones. Laws will always be an imperfect implementation of morality. Do self driving cars have to respect the laws of countries that don't respect the rights of minority groups? Should self driving cars in Saudi Arabia prefer to hit women?
Legality isn't an escape hatch that absolves you of the moral implications of your actions.
“Stupidity cannot be cured. Stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death. There is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.” -Heinlein
In actual urban cities (eg NYC, Chicago, Boston), pedestrians are quite capable of informally navigating with cars, crossing at any point of a street rather than waiting for some preposterous "walk light" (and possibly even being expected to push a filthy button to activate it!?). Streets are a shared resource for many types of users, so it is certainly not a given that a single type of traffic should be given utmost blind priority. That kind of thing is an explicit policy decision, and is currently reserved for the few "controlled access" highways.
I think it will be quite unfortunate if the west coast style of "oblivious" driving becomes calcified as code and exported to the rest of the world. Self-driving cars actually represent an opportunity to roll back this fallacious attitude that "streets are for cars", as a self-driving car is much more attentive and will not tire of being vigilant. For example, if your automatic car cannot gauge whether a crossing pedestrian intents to cross in front of or behind it and make a slight speed adjustment (as said pedestrian has already done, and as current human drivers are expected to do), then it deserves to come to a quick stop and wait there like an idiot until you upgrade it to competency.
In line with the original article, I think this whole subject is an utter red herring and an amazing illustration of how the media can manufacture its own concern over a topic just to fill pages. The thought experiment is specifically called the "trolley problem" because trolleys run on discrete tracks and stop slowly. In the real world braking and turning have basically the same avoidance distance, accelerating does not save you from accidents, and people are never expected to drive off cliffs to avoid pedestrians.
These are the same people who just walk into the street without even looking, while on their cell phones.
Obviously the bad actors are going to stand out to you. There are many more people who are attentive when they informally cross, but they blend into traffic and are forgotten about.
I don't know what to do about the recent phenomenon of people spaced out on their phones, but I'm pretty sure changing traffic laws so drivers can explicitly hit them is not a good answer.
(crosswalks aren't burdensome, but the idea that pedestrians should only ever cross in them is, by construction. Why should a pedestrian be made to walk an extra block to simply cross a regular ubiquitous street, when they do not depend on the abstraction that would necessitate it? The "highway revolts" took place for good reason, and changing every street into a controlled access road would essentially resume that damage)
A fact that should be increasingly relevant as the reigns are slowly handed over to computers.
If we're talking about metaphorical "reigns" meaning control of society, then we definitely should not be handing these over to computers. The goal should be for computers to be responsible to people [0], rather than people being controlled by computers. Otherwise, we are abdicating are own right to exist.
[0] True independent AI would function as its own agent. But I would categorize that as a new "person".
The rest of your post is a complete tangent.
My "tangent" directly addressed something you said.
Your earlier statement. Now you're saying that policy (the one you describe as a construction designed to be burdensome earlier) is one you feel I've implied? I've done no such thing. You're the one claiming that the current system is burdensome, don't try to wriggle out of that.
Your tangent meanwhile did not directly address something I said, it addressed an extension of what I said pertaining to vehicles, and expanded it to a society-wide issue. So again... tangent.
I ask, because I become immediately suspicious when someone tells me, in so many words, "To think of the children."
Are you saying that there is no such thing as an immoral law? It sounds like from your comment that you're saying: There may be immoral things you can do legally, but legality provides a "base" morality.
Women must keep their face covered in public, Jim Crow laws, etc.
> ...evidently all lawful acts are in a sense just acts...
> But since unfair and the unlawful are not the same, but are different as a part is from its whole (for all that is unfair is unlawful, but not all that is unlawful is unfair)...
–Nicomachean Ethics, Book V