I still think all the hand-wringing over "who to kill" in the autonomous car Kobiashi Maru scenario is bunk.
Indeed. I had trouble accepting the scenarios as "realistic" enough to take them seriously.
1. By the time the car has determined that it's suffered a brake failure, it'll be too late, much like with a human driver. He hits the brakes and they fail, by the time he's adjusted it's too late. Another part is that I can see hydraulic braking going away for electric eventually. Less likely to fail.
2. Program the car to seize the engine up and lock the transmission in that case!
3. Seatbelted passengers in a vehicle hitting a concrete barrier at any sort of legal speed near a red light where you expect pedestrians isn't going to be lethal in a modern car.
4. That you couldn't have the car, detecting that it's in an unsafe state for pedestrians, perform alert actions - honk the bloody horn, flash the lights, etc...]
5. Hell, throw the car in reverse and gas it. Who cares about the rest of the car's systems in such an event? I don't!
etc...
6. How about doing complete circles in the car?
In the scenarios I generally had the vehicle go straight - assuming it's honking and such, straight is predictable, and allows people to avoid it better.
I say just program the cars to try and crash with the least force possible in any "unwinnable" scenario, and as to human life and injury, let the chips fall where they may. The situation where "least force" kills more people, I expect that to be vanishingly small.
Exactly.