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Comment by paganel | Hacker News Reader

> It's not. Most accident avoidance is pure braking.

This is false. "Accident avoidance" also means being constantly aware of your surroundings and slowing the car down before an incident (like a person suddenly getting in front of your car) might happen. This strategy was actually posed as a question on my driver's exam test: What should you do if you see a bunch of kids playing on the sidewalk close to the road? Correct answer: You should slow down, because the kids might suddenly hop in front of you. The same goes for bicyclists.

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Slowing down is braking surely? His point was that there is rarely an accident the recreates the moral dilemmas of the trolley problems and I think he is right.

> Slowing down is braking surely?

No, it's your last resort if you must slow down. Better drivers learn to coast, down-shift, or tricks such as using the slight uphill grade of a roadway to adjust speed without resorting to braking.

Next time you are driving and have good visibility far ahead in a long line of cars (such as approaching a big hill) watch for the cars with the brake lights coming on constantly. These are the less capable drivers, and once you spot them you will see them making other mistakes. For example, one trick I've learned is to watch for the driver's hand resting on the turn signal stalk in adjacent lanes as I approach. This is a tell that they are intending to cut me off. When I spot it, I can back off to anticipate them, or be more aggressive and accelerate to close the gap they were aiming for.

Semantics. All the actions you listed in your first paragraph can be considered braking maneuvers.

It's not semantics when self driving technologies rely more on superior reflexes to brake late in response to stuff suddenly appearing in the roadway to compensate for inferior ability to adjust ambient speed through better anticipation of how likely a particular mammal on the pavement is to step out into it.

Animats' point is that if you break and avoiding hitting anyone, there's no trolley problem. How you break is an important but unrelated question.

I think you're right about the original point, but the wider counter argument is that human anticipation is both important in reducing the instances of "trolley problems" (usually not hitting object vs not being rear ended rather than the sillier example from philosophy) and choosing which pedestrians to slow down for and how much (because slowing for all pedestrians is more likely to cause accidents with other vehicles as well as impairing journey progress, and slowing for no pedestrians may lead to you being unable to stop in time) is closer to a trolley problem than something that can easily be generalised.

And to respond to another of Animat's original points humans aren't trained to brake/swerve in a harder, more risky manner for obstacles which are animate and not bother risking stopping at all for the unidentified object that appears to be a piece of cloth because unlike AI, this is not something we need to learn. (I agree with his original contention that pure software error and human inability to respond to it is a bigger problem than "trolley problems" with current generation tech)

Words matter, and 'brake' or 'braking' have dictionary definitions which contradict your statement. It's an important distinction because experienced drivers know to anticipate problems and slow down before they need to brake. You probably do this already without thinking about it, especially if you drive a manual transmission. Ever drive a speedboat? Same idea, they have no brakes and you learn to look further ahead and anticipate, and allow outside forces to slow you (rather than relying on an internal braking mechanism).

That's not fair. 'Brake' also has dictionary definitions that directly support my statement:

anything that has a slowing or stopping effect.

See http://www.dictionary.com/browse/brake?s=t

The comment I replied to by tombrossman used the terms coast and down-shift, which are both commonly referred to as engine braking[1]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine_braking

> Slowing down is braking surely

Slowing down as a result of a premeditated thought (does that kid play with a ball which might become loose? is that kid accompanied by his parents? is that kid really a kid or just a small adult person?) is more than mere braking, that's what I was trying to say.

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