The Real Moral Dilemma of Self-Driving Cars

It has nothing to do with the ‘trolley problem’

Will Oremus
OneZero

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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.

For philosophers and psychologists, it’s pure thought experiment — a tool to tease out and scrutinize our moral intuitions. Most people will never face such a stark choice, and even if they did, studies suggest their reaction in the moment would have little to do with their views on utilitarianism or moral agency. Self-driving cars have given the problem a foothold in the real world. Autonomous vehicles can be programmed to have policies on such matters, and while any given car may never face a split-second tradeoff between greater or lesser harms, some surely will. It actually matters how their creators evaluate these situations.

Solving “the trolley problem” for self-driving cars has gotten a lot of attention. But it may actually be a distraction from a far more pressing moral dilemma. U.S. safety investigators released a report on a self-driving car crash this week that suggests the real choice at this stage of self-driving car development is not between one…

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