The Real Moral Dilemma of Self-Driving Cars

It has nothing to do with the ‘trolley problem’

Will Oremus
OneZero
Published in
6 min readNov 7, 2019

--

A photo of an Uber self driving car on display with a sign that reads “Self-Driving Car” to the left.
An Uber self driving car sits on display ahead of an Uber products launch event in San Francisco, California on September 26, 2019. Photo: Philip Pacheco/Getty Images

TThe advent of self-driving cars revived the decades-old philosophical conundrum known as the “trolley problem.” The basic setup is this: A vehicle is hurtling toward a group of five pedestrians, and the only way to save them is to swerve and run over a single pedestrian instead.

--

--