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Comment by 0xDEFACED | Hacker News Reader

not if the swerve would put you headlong into oncoming traffic

It wouldn't be headlong, possibly sidelong though. Seems worth it to save a kid, no?

neither cars nor humans are expected to solve trolley problems during real-time incidents.

Cars, no, but truckers have been damned for not just sacrificing themselves when their brakes failed. There was a recent incident where a truck had its brakes fail on its way into Denver from the Rockies and killed several people. They should have taken an off ramp, but IIRC, both in public opinion and in court it was argued that failing that they should have just committed suicide by going off the road before they hit a family.

There's a difference in expectation between the reactions of a person that has under 10 seconds to react and a truck driver that had minutes of time to plan, including bypassing an emergency ramp designed specifically for runaway trucks.

    After passing the Genesee exit, Aguilera Mederos's truck began to smoke as he passed a runaway truck ramp, without taking it, and instead drifted into the left lane nearly clipping a white Chevy Silverado, and passed the next exit as well. For the next few minutes, Aguilera Mederos reached speeds upwards of 100 miles per hour (161 km/h)[6] and passed the next four exits.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Lakewood_semi-truck_crash

An AI driver would have done it, that's one point for autonomous driving.

I'm not sure how that's relevant to the discussion. it sounds like there were a lot of heated emotions going around in that court case.

(I try not to pay close attention to lawyer's arguments when they are histrionic)

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