It's totally ok if only a few people have the courage to mount a vehicle that is dangerous to them. It's not ok if every human has to fear for their life on the street at all times.
I rebutted the comment you're responding to, but when considering the same scenario but with different specifics I came to their conclusion. Specifically, let's take out the car and make it an airplane flying over a populated area. Does the plane eject the pilot and crash in someone's house? I'd say no, the pilot knew the risk hopping in the plane, the guy at his breakfast table had no say.
But then, what about if there is no crosswalk? Does the pedestrian still get to claim "I had no say in the street being there so I can cross wherever I want"? Does the passenger get to say "I assessed the risk taking into account nobody could cross here"? At what point do we say that the pedestrian also took a calculated risk? Fundamentally if we say " always protect the pedestrian" we don't care if there's a crosswalk or not.
So at this point, I don't think there's a fundamental ethical axiom to be followed here, it is entirely situational. As long as we all know the rules beforehand and all calculate our own risks, any set of rules is OK. If we say "protect pedestrians at crosswalks, protect passengers otherwise" as long as the pedestrian knows this rule clearly, they're the one taking the risk. If we say "pedestrians can cross wherever they want whenever they want" we end up with the same scenario, everyone taking their own calculated risks. We just have to agree on the set of rules, whatever they are, which makes it an optimization problem, not an ethical one.
I disagree. The car knows there are human passengers. The car does not know that obstacles it detects outside of it are necessarily people and not, say, fire hydrants (although it may have a probabilistic estimate of their "peopleness"). Therefore it should prioritize the lives that it knows are actual people.
No, this is not a choice a car would have to make. A self-driving car would simply never drive into pedestrian-only zones. The only time pedestrians and other obstacles are an issue is in the driving lane, and the only sensible course of action is to brake and veer within the confines of the driving lane, and nowhere else. These are in fact the rules of the road.
Unless it got t-boned.
So to you there is no difference between a fire hydrant, a human being and a paper bag? I mean, it is quite obvious that those, as obstacles, are not the same. A fire hydrant is stationary a human isn't and a paper bag can simply be ignored by the car. Do you really think that a paper bag should be treated the same by a self driving car as a fire hydrant because that is what you are saying.
A human bent over tying their shoe is quite stationary.
> and a paper bag can simply be ignored by the car.
Not relevant. Suppose I provided you with a self-driving car that couldn't differentiate a walking person from a paper bag carried on the wind, and yet I also provided convincing evidence that this car would reduce traffic fatalities and injuries by 30%.
That's the real question we're facing, and the real standard of evidence that must be met, so your suggestion that the inability of this car to differentiate things in the ways you think are important is simply irrelevant.
Indeed and after the human finishes tying his shoe he steps on to the road. A human driver and a self driving car that can differentiate between different kinds of obstacles would adjust their speed in such a situation.
> Not relevant. Suppose I provided you with a self-driving car that couldn't differentiate a walking person from a paper bag carried on the wind, and yet I also provided convincing evidence that this car would reduce traffic fatalities and injuries by 30%.
> That's the real question we're facing, and the real standard of evidence that must be met, so your suggestion that the inability of this car to differentiate things in the ways you think are important is simply irrelevant.
You said that an obstacle is an obstacle so it is clearly relevant. Your car wouldn't ignore the paper bag. Would you use a car that treats every obstacle as if it were a human? Slowing down by every tree/fire hydrant/road sign... imagine getting in to the car that is parked under a tree in autumn and leaves are falling down. The car won't start because an obstacle is an obstacle, as you say. Would you wait for the wind to remove the paper bag from the road or would you leave the car to remove it yourself?
If you need to come up with impossible scenarios to justify your claim maybe you should rethink your claim.
> Obstacles in the driving lane should trigger the car to slow down and approach more cautiously, regardless of what they are. This isn't complicated and doesn't require any impossible scenarios.
A human can in one moment be next to the driving lane and in the next moment on the driving lane so the speed should be adjusted when an obstacle in the form of a human being isn't on the driving lane.
Now you frame it as the passengers which are taking dangerous (to their own health) actions but you exclude that you (or someone) is standing in the middle of that equation, forcing cars to kill their owners- and this force will be necessary because no one will voluntarily purchase a vehicle so misaligned with their interests.
But, quite simply, if I'm paying for a car or a ride, the machine serves me. My argument fundamentally boils down to "the car exists to serve it's passengers first and foremost" with the caveat that human lives are more important than animals. It should do everything in it's power to avoid hurting anyone, property be damned. But, when the choice is protect people in general or it's purpose for existing, I disagree with you. I'm always open to changing my mind however, and I don't dismiss your point of view out of hand.
If you're saying that people who can afford to take a car for a particular journey deserve to be protected over the pedestrians who can't in the edge-cases, then, if we average out enough of the details, this implies that richer people's lives are worth (slightly) more than poorer people's lives.
You can draw a lot of conclusions from this logic, though, so I'm not sure how valid it is to just pick one property and generalise from it. (Wealth is applicable, but also able-bodiedness, age, climate consciousness, whether you feel safe walking streets alone at night…) It might be something to think about [edit: removed].
It is, actually. We don't have to be so so careful not to ever pass judgement.
We are talking about the belief that people paying for a service are entitled to increased safety at the expense of others, who did not pay for it. It's ok to find that wicked and to say so.
Moving on to my next example, though, there are people who aren't able to be pedestrians because they have mobility impairments. Are they less worthy of life, just because they're using a vehicle as an accessibility aid?
But I think you're probably right at this point, at least in the specific scenario in the game. I woke up this morning believing the opposite.
I'm actually in an interesting position in this discussion, I've been faced with this decision before in real life, before I ever articulated a position on it. I chose to hit the barrier, and I'm lucky to be alive. That is of course the exact opposite of what my position was this morning when I woke up, but the one I go to bed with tonight if the rest of my day is uneventful.
Interestingly, the summary at the end did not even allow for this conclusion. The evaluation anticipated that people might value the lives of animals over humans, but not those of pedestrians over passengers.
It seems likely that this was designed by promoters of self-driving cars. No one would want to be a passenger in a car that was programed to prioritize the lives of pedestrians, so that was not even considered as a moral option.