
Remembering When Driverless Elevators Drew Skepticism - piyushmakhija
http://www.npr.org/2015/07/31/427990392/remembering-when-driverless-elevators-drew-skepticism
======
brudgers
There's a false analogy here. Driverless elevators raised a concern in regard
to the safety of the elevator cab's occupants in what was primarily a matter
of private policy on private property. Essentially any public policy decision
was about regulating the use of private property within private spaces and any
citizen could opt out by taking the stairs.

On the other hand there are primary concerns with driverless cars in regard to
the safety of non-occupants in the public commons and therefore it is
primarily a matter of public policy regulating the use of private property in
public spaces. The notion that opting out of public spaces is healthy for
citizenship in general seems antithetical to a meaningful concept of
citizenship in a liberal polity.

There are luddite concerns over self-driving cars. But there's an auto-
industry counter tale of "Remembering when Tetra-Ethyl Lead in Gasoline was
Considered a Good Thing."

~~~
Falkon1313
Or the counter tale of "Remember when having all of the vehicles be driven
80+mph by drunk and/or sleep-deprived, distracted people filled with road-rage
while trying to eat, put on makeup, text on their cellphone, and interact with
passengers at the same time was considered a good thing?"

People were outraged over the Vietnam War, in which, 20 years of war, the U.S.
lost 58,209 dead. Since 1930, we've lost about 30,000-54,000 _each and every
year_ to vehicular deaths. Even now that cars are a bit safer and deaths are
down a bit, they're still quite high compared to an event where you expect
death, and unlike a war, it doesn't end. If we lost 100+ people per day to
plane crashes or a few thousand people a month to terrorism, (or to elevators
for that matter), it would be a huge deal.

I'm surprised there hasn't been more of a push to get humans out from behind
the wheel.

~~~
IkmoIkmo
This so hard, I mentioned this in a post just last week. There's a 9/11 every
month on US roads, yet we leave the number 1 safety improvement (computerized
traffic) we could make to probably eradicate 90% to private business: pushing
driverless cars. Now of course at the end of the day this change has to be
driven by businesses, but government can and should help: R&D and prototyping
(like a ton of big inventions, e.g. the internet) could and should be funded
to a very large extent by the government. Commercialization should be entirely
left to businesses, but even here governments can use regulation to introduce
new safety standards to inform drivers of the safest options for driving at
the very least. And you could even go so far as to employ a model akin to that
of many governments which increase taxes on fuel inefficient cars (e.g. SUVs)
and decrease them on fuel efficient cars as an environmental measure, but then
apply the same on the basis of safety (driverless cars, if they score well on
safety which they should over time, being cheaper). You can argue that such a
move is big government, you can also argue that's simply the government
forcing the market to price in externalities (purely from a financial
perspective, road death and injury increasing costs of healthcare on society,
decreasing productivity, but also things like congestion and fuel efficiency
can be priced in, which driverless cars should do better in) that currently
are ignored. It'd still be entirely market driven, but the market reflects
reality better. Once it picks up individual states could choose to make
certain sections of roads (e.g. one lane) or sections of their city, entirely
driverless car only at certain hours of the day, to accelerate the process.
And once you go driverless you'll essentially open up what 'public
transportation' really means. In a sharing economy of vehicles which need no
driver, anyone's car essentially becomes a tiny bus-service. I'd expect the
cost of transportation to drop quite significantly.

~~~
panic
_R &D and prototyping (like a ton of big inventions, e.g. the internet) could
and should be funded to a very large extent by the government._

Wasn't the DARPA challenge a big driver for autonomous car technology?

~~~
IkmoIkmo
Absolutely. I think they can do more. The Challenge was relatively (mostly
because there wasn't much else) significant 10 years ago and had relatively
small ($1m for the winner, per year) attached to them. Not quite the effort
we'd expect in relation to the size of the automotive industry, or the damage
of externalities of driving that could largely be solved or improved (loss of
life, injury, congestion, fuel efficiency, cost of transportation etc). I'm
also not aware they continued after 2007.

Of course I wouldn't be surprised in the least if all those university teams
(e.g. Carnegie Mellon who came in first, or MIT who came in 4th) are either
employed at e.g. Google or Apple working on these things right now, or
provided or are providing the research to those who are.

edit: yeah Google's driverless car project is headed by the Stanford director
whose team won the 2005 DARPA challenge.

------
codingdave
I personally am just missing one thing to give me confidence in self-driving
cars - transparency into their algorithms. I don't need to get deep into them,
but some general information on how they "think" for accident avoidance would
help me.

Just as an example, lets assume some debris on the highway. I am sure the
self-driving car can avoid it, or stop until there is a clear space to go
around it. But what if a human is tailgating? Does the car ignore that? Or
does it (facetiously anthropomorphically) think to itself, "Hey, that is a
human behind me, tailgating, at 75 mph. Swerving left to avoid this debris
would put the human-driven vehicle on a path to collide with it, because the
poor sap doesn't have my reaction time. I'd better hit the brakes instead, to
communicate the danger."

I know that is an edge case, but edge cases are where accidents happen anyway,
so I'd like to know what to expect from self-driven cars.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Edge cases are where accidents happen because humans suck at them, whereas you
can specifically train on them with a computer.

The bigger problem, that you allude to, is that the algorithms that actually
work are mostly machine learned and therefore very opaque to human inspection.

~~~
IkmoIkmo
One of the big issues with this is how consumers/government will require
algorithms to prioritize.

i.e. one can imagine that there are accidents with a certain context wherein a
driverless car could prevent x amount of people from dying, by killing its own
passenger. For example an axle breaks, you can't turn right anymore, only
left, and you're coming up on a right turn. You're supposed to turn right and
stick to your lane, you can't, you either go straight onto the other lane, or
go left. You happen to be driving an SUV and there's two small cars in the
lane. If you go straight you hit both of them, and the camera registers 2
young children in each and an adult driving. Given the difference in car
sizes, you're likely to survive but also likely to kill at least two kids,
perhaps up to 6 people, you'll definitely destroy 2 cars and injure all 6. Or
you take a sharp left and drive infront of them straight off the road, you
drop down in a cliff and die. In both cases the computer calculates to a large
degree of certainty that if either choice is made that it'd go down pretty
much like this.

Now this is a silly edge case but it's the best I could come up with right
away, more plausible ones exists. Anyway the question now becomes, is it okay
for cars to be sold that are programmed to prioritize the passenger's life,
i.e. killing the maximum amount of innocent people who are not you, estimated
between 2 and 6, injuring at least all 6, creating the biggest economic damage
and loss of life or livelihood to innocent people (particularly 'innocent' as
their car's axle was just fine, yours wasn't).

Or would a government require the algorithm to take a different priority, one
in which the car's software is programmed to sacrifice the car's
owner/passenger, for the sake of a utilitarian calculation?

I think the answer is pretty clear what's fair, and that if a computer wasn't
part of the equation that an ordinary human would likely not have had the
mental fortitude to identify the axle steering issue and all options and
choose the best one and that the outcome would be worse than a driverless car.
But I also think it's pretty clear that the 'fair' decision would still be
highly controversial and scary to imagine and something that'll see quite a
lot of debate and pockets of resistance the next few decades.

~~~
nikanj
It somewhat annoys me that we could eliminate 99.9% of accidents, yet people
still would object to a self-driving car because of contrived fictional
situations like the one described above.

A freak situation like the one described above would surely make the news -
"Hero driver saves family by giving his life" and/or "Our mom would still be
alive if that asshole wasn't so selfish". Yet I don't remember seeing a single
story like this, ever. From comment threads on self-driving vehicles, you'd
think these moral dilemmas are a daily, if not an hourly, thing in traffic.

~~~
IkmoIkmo
Don't take discussion as objection. If it was up to me we'd go driverless
asap.

------
kazinator
Elevators are enclosed and move on rails. The "driver" of an elevator does not
even consider obstacles, and couldn't see them if he or she wanted to because
the floor and ceiling aren't transparent.

Driverless trains operate in many cities around the world. They hardly raise
an eyebrow. They are on rails, of course, and those rails are on dedicated,
closed tracks out of the way of traffic. The trains just have to coordinate to
stay out of each other's way, stop if there is an alarm condition (object or
person in track area), and correctly stop at the proper spots at the stations.

Not comparable to driving a car.

~~~
IkmoIkmo
Of course it's not comparable in the sense that driving a car is different
from operating an elevator, that's not a point the article aims to address.
The point is that at one point we thought we needed to manually operate
something out of safety or convenience concerns, that we could actually
automate more safely and conveniently. Similarly, the point is, that most
people had similar notions a few years ago about cars, and we're now seeing
they're similarly untrue.

~~~
kazinator
Convenience is the main point of automation; the only thing convenient about
manual operation is that it provides a convenient job for someone, who finds
it inconvenient to be replaced.

I don't think there was ever any genuine concern about automation bringing
inconvenience (other than maybe some ineffective forms of automation:
"strawman automation").

"I mostly like the idea of a machine that lets you just throw in your dirty
clothes and punch some buttons, but won't that do away with the sheer
convenience of washing clothes by hand?"

Doesn't compute.

------
mschuster91
Automatic elevators at least have their own distinct movement areas.

Automatic cars have to share their space with (human-driven) cars, crazy
nuthead bikers and drunk-as-fuck pedestrians, not to mention cops ignoring all
the traffic rules to get a fucking burger from McD and other emergency
services.

Quite a difference I'd say, even with today's technology.

~~~
conception
Normal drivers, Nuthead bikers, drunk pedestrians and cops can all be reacted
to much swifter by a computer using radar than any driver behind the wheel.
It's just pride to think you could.

~~~
mokus
I don't think anyone doubts it can react more quickly. The real question is
whether it can react more correctly. I think the answer is "soon", for what
that's worth, but I also think that until the answer is an unmitigated "yes"
it's a valid criticism.

(edited for tone)

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
The key is that a human can _anticipate_ a dangerous situation and take
mitigating action before a quick reaction is necessary. AI still has far to go
before that sort of nuanced behavior can be replicated. Until then self
driving cars will be like teenagers learning to drive. Sure they can get
themselves from point A to B but I don't want to be near them while they do
it.

~~~
nkozyra
Disagree entirely. Anticipation is just a function of memory - of having
enough training data that you can glean potential outcomes and their
probabilities through the attributes that surround them.

That's used in AI all the time already.

~~~
refurb
You're drivng down a crowded highway and you see an obstacle. You're likely to
get rear ended if you hit your brakes and you can't change lanes. However you
recognize it's just an empty card oard box. You drive through it with no
issues.

Can you train a computer to do that?

~~~
yongjik
...and it turns out the "empty" cardboard box is half filled with metal pipes,
which your human eye had no way of knowing in the split-second before your car
collides into it in 65 mph. Your car screeches, loses control, and swerves
into the neighboring lane.

But luckily a following self-driving car already detected the presence of an
obstacle using radar. It detects your car maintaining speed. Within several
milliseconds it evaluates chance of collision as VERY HIGH, starts evasive
maneuver, scratching your car at a speed which is still uncomfortably high but
not likely to cause a fatal accident.

Several weeks later a team of automobile experts review everything recorded in
the accident, improve the algorithm to reduce the chance of accident even
further in Edge Case 783645: the preceding human-driving car plowing into a
small road obstacle at 65 mph. Firmwares are automatically upgraded during the
following months.

------
scintill76
Cool bit of history and I kind of see the analogy, but there's a difference
between pulling up and down by cables in a single shaft indoors, and powered
rolling on roads outdoors anywhere. Even if the first self-driving cars are on
fixed paths too, there are a lot more variables.

~~~
CydeWeys
But technology in general is a lot more capable now too. Self-driving cars are
safer than manual elevators were, and they're a lot more useful to boot, as
they get you to anywhere you want to go rather than just to a different floor.

------
Jedd
The story a few days ago about a bicyclist doing a track stand confusing a
google car, which in turn reverted to performing a sequence of seemingly
excessively safe manoeuvres, generated some fascinating responses.

Most particularly an observation that we seem to be stuck in a 'perfect or
nothing' mentality - whereas new technologies, even in their own niche, really
don't need to solve all problems for all people.

I guess because it feels like that attitude directly contradicts the sarcastic
adage 'there's never time to do it right, but lots of time to do it over' (and
myriad permutations) that generally encourage us to get it right on the first
go so we do not have to waste time revisiting.

Complaining about the 100% applicability of an otherwise fine analogy seems
to, again, be missing the point here. Plus, HN readers are not the target
audience for this kind of story.

Aside: on a very recent trip to India, spending some time working in a very
large, very new office (not retail) building, replete with fully functional
lifts, it was fascinating to see each lift had a uniformed attendant that
pressed buttons on request.

~~~
logicallee
Actually perfect or nothing is a nice standard. Did you know that the elevator
was quickly adopted because its inventor[1] went to shows and cut the cable
holding up the cab he was standing on? It was because he had a foolproof
locking mechanism to stop free-fall, in use ever since.

And it really is foolproof: a quick internet search reveals there has not been
a single case of an elevator falling death in the history of elevators (EDIT:
see replies[2]). (There is one exception I found, which was due to massive
structural damage to a building, like a giant explosion, which also damaged
the elevator. Check for yourself if you don't believe me.) [Almost] no
elevator has ever fallen due to a snapped cable, in the history of elevators.
(So even if you're afraid of heights you have no reason to be afraid of
elevators, but maybe stop reading this comment here in this case.)

This is why even highly sqeamish people or people afraid of heights don't mind
standing in a locked elevator cab, being held up by a cable, and with ten,
twenty, fifty or a hundred stories of empty space under them while the cable
lifts them up and down. It's just a non-issue (due to height, I guess
claustrophobia is a separate issue.)

And this happens because the safety mechanism to keep elevators from falling
is, well, perfect. The inventor of the elevator showed it, again and again,
using his life.

If it weren't the case, at least some people would feel very differently about
elevators! As this case shows, a standard of "perfect or nothing" absolutely
impacts public perception and fast adoption, and may even mold people's
opinion for centuries to come.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisha_Otis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisha_Otis)

[2] I had done a quick Internet search, see replies for a few cases.

~~~
jballanc
The difference is that no one (or nearly no one) dies taking the stairs. If
you're going to replace one perfectly safe means of travel with another, the
new one should also be perfectly safe.

But cars are anything but perfectly safe. In many parts of the world
automobile accidents are a leading cause of death. Even in parts of the world
where seatbelt laws and stringent safety requirements have reduced automobile
deaths, they're still significant. What's worse, unlike other "preventable"
causes of death such as smoking and obesity, automobile deaths
disproportionately affect the young.

For all these reasons, I think the standard for driverless cars should be
somewhat relaxed. Unfortunately, I'm guessing the "robots killing humans"
mentality may still dominate...but if we can get past that I think driverless
cars will have a larger impact on the demographics of death than almost
anything else in the last 50 years.

~~~
samatman
According to this[0] nearly a thousand people in the US died from falling down
stairs in 2000. I've injured myself on stairs, albeit not badly, but never in
an elevator.

[http://danger.mongabay.com/injury_death.htm](http://danger.mongabay.com/injury_death.htm)

------
CrLf
In tipical geek fashion, this discussion is stuck around matters of safety in
driverless cars and how can people be made to trust them. How much better they
are, how fascinating the tech is. How driverless cars can replace cars
entirely.

But do people actually _want_ driverless cars? Will they _ever_ do?

A driverless car is not a driverless elevator or train. People never drove
their own elevators or trains, they were driven by other people. A car is
another matter entirely. People enjoy driving their own cars, some because of
the control it gives them, others because of the act of driving itself. If
this weren't so, people wouldn't choose to drive their own cars in situations
where taxis or other forms of public transportation are clearly superior.

I want a self-driving car as much as I want self-drinking beer.

I'm not saying self-driving cars are useless. I can certainly see a future
with self-driving buses and taxis. However, for that to happen there are a few
human obstacles that must be overcome even if the technology becomes perfect.
The same obstacles that currently prevent self-driving trains from becoming
more widespread: if you need a human to stand watch against vandalism and to
react in emergency situations, he might as well be driving the thing, it's
cheaper.

~~~
gvurrdon
Indeed, there's still a case for car ownership even if one doesn't enjoy
driving.

One reason for preferring a car over a bus or taxi is the ability to transport
luggage. I frequently find that I have to undertake round trips of 200-300
miles with a car full of bulky and valuable equipment; the destination is
often somewhere that is not easily accessible by public transport, or requires
changes between bus, train and taxi, even if I could take the luggage via that
means.

It might be rather convenient to have the car conduct at least the motorway
portion of the driving itself, but access to my own car is pretty much
essential in order to do this sort of thing. I suspect that for anyone in
business where they must transport goods or tools it will be even more vital.

~~~
prawn
You would just get a van or truck on demand. That's a huge benefit of on
demand, self-driving cars - instead of having one car you try to fit into your
every need, you get what you need and when you need it. So, something tiny if
it's just you and your partner going to dinner. Or a van if you're taking kids
and friends to an event. Or a truck if you have to move a sofa.

I have a sedan. 90% of the time it's just me in the car. Insane.

~~~
gambiting
I am in similar situation to OP - I need a larger car during the weekends
because I drive 200 miles away for certain events where I need to take loads
of stuff with me. But during the week it's mostly me alone in the car driving
to work.

I could rent a truck during weekends - but that would be ungodly expensive,
especially since I'm under 25 so every rental company charges literally 2x or
3x for car/van rental to drivers under 25. Then I have to worry about
returning it on time, and it has to be in perfect condition or again, I have
to pay for anything that's damaged. If I scratch my own car - no biggie. If I
want to stay overnight - it won't cost me another $100 per day of rental. And
then the question is - is it really "better" for the
environment/society/traffic to make two cars rather than one?

~~~
prawn
Why would they make two cars rather than one? Most people would be sharing
cars in x years. There would be fewer on the road over all. You'll use the
truck for a couple of hours and then until you need it again, it'll return to
the pool of available cars unless you want to hold it for the day.

In the future, you won't be driving the car so I don't think U25 will be such
an issue.

~~~
gambiting
Well, even if I don't drive a car personally, I would still like to own one,
to keep it personal. Sure, you could order one and it would pick you up, but
then you are sitting in a seat that thousands of other people sat in. You
can't leave any of your things in the storage spaces, because tomorrow you
might get a different car. There's also the factor of hygiene that puts me off
buses and taxis.

And they would make two cars because I would need one vehicle to go to
work,and another to take my stuff over the weekend - rather than one vehicle
which does both.

------
kw71
Oh man, this reminds me of the time I met an elevator with an operator. It was
in one of the Smithsonian museums - perhaps appropriately the museum of
american history? It was only 22 years ago, and I rode the elevator several
times just to watch the operator work the strange controls. I wish I'd
photographed it.

~~~
joeclark77
I saw one in the Air and Space Museum just this summer. Your tax dollars at
work, America.

------
nyolfen
this reminds me of a truly excellent HOPE X presentation about elevator
hacking[0]. one of the most entertaining con panels i've seen, and interesting
information on an esoteric topic.

[0][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOzrJjdZDRQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOzrJjdZDRQ)

------
yellowapple
I'm pretty sure driverless elevators never operated on open roads. I'm also
pretty sure driverless elevators don't travel at highway speeds.

I dunno, maybe I'm wrong, and this elevator here in my office building goes
burning up asphalt and rubber when I'm not around to notice.

~~~
prawn
You've completely missed the point. See IkmoIkmo's post in this thread.

~~~
yellowapple
Even after seeing IkmoIkmo's post, I'm standing by my own. It does nothing to
prove that the drivered->driverless car transition would be anything _close_
to the drivered-driverless elevator transition. Even historical elevators
rarely (if ever) had multiple elevators per shaft or a shaft that travelled in
more than one dimension; that's a non-starter for the analogy this article
tries (and in my opinion fails) to present as if it proves anything.

------
amazing_jose
People still do not accept driverless trains or tubes yet. I remember talking
with an AI expert a few years ago. The London's underground had a fully
automated driverless prototype in the 70's. And here we are, in 2015 and only
a toy driverless system in London (DLR).

~~~
elros
I'm not sure how much that's the case. For many years now, Paris' lines 1 and
14 have been fully automated. I've been to Toulouse last year and their whole
subway system – albeit small – is automated. I'm also pretty sure that the
train one takes from Copenhagen's airport to the main train station is fully
automated, but I'm not sure about the other lines.

All in all, I think the public acceptance issue can be mitigated.

------
hyperpallium
Planes need 3D steering and trains 1D... yet we have driverless planes and not
driverless trains.

~~~
gress
We do have driverless trains.

~~~
codingdave
And we do not have driverless planes - we have driver-supervised autopilots.

EDIT: I guess we have drones, with programmed routes. But again, regulations
require supervision in those cases.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
We sure don't have any drones carrying passengers, so I think your argument
stands.

------
joeclark77
The change in elevators was from having a professional operator to allowing
passengers to push the buttons themselves. Elevators are still "driven" by
humans, not robots. The self-driving cars are a whole different ball of wax.

~~~
ultimape
Interestingly, this exists:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabbat_elevator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabbat_elevator)

------
hoodoof
Is this here to sort of suggest that "we got used to driverless elevators so
we'll get used to driverless cars".

It's perhaps true but a really bad analogy. There's minimal risk of my child
being hit and killed by an elevator as a result of a bug in the elevator
software.

~~~
IkmoIkmo
It's not a technological argument, it's one of human perception. The article
talks about how ordinary people like you and me simply didn't view an elevator
as something that's safe or convenient without a manual operator, quite like
cars today. And that this perception didn't change automatically, it took time
and new ideas which didn't have much to do with technology really.

As for safety perceptions back then, it's hard to say exactly what they were
like. The article alludes they were pretty bad, when elevator operators went
on strike the city was badly affected apparently. I can tell you in the US
like 20-30 people die each year in elevators, it's pretty minor given the
billions of trips but I think we can easily imagine elevators were not quite
as reliable 100 years ago when the automatic elevator existed, and that the
accident rate was quite a lot higher.

------
cconcepts
Strange comparison, I've never heard of an elevator, driven or otherwise, run
over kids....

Unfortunately I can't come up with a better analogy myself but comparing this
to an elevator seems weird.

~~~
__alexs
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-
order/1180240...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-
order/11802401/Girl5-dies-after-trapping-head-in-lift.html)

Fatal lift accidents are not unheard of.

------
anti-shill
doctors were also under a great deal of suspicion 200 hundred years ago or
so...the idea of the story of Frankenstein was taken from the fabric of the
society of that day...most people did not trust doctors...anything new is
under suspicion.

~~~
ghaff
While I don't really disagree with the general point, 200 years ago there was
minimal understanding of medical sterilization methods and no anesthetics so
it's certainly understandable that surgery at least was viewed with, shall we
say, suspicion. Given that you would probably die or be seriously
incapacitated in some way.

------
dogma1138
My biggest issue with driverless cars is how they'll handle extremes.

You as a driver might choose to hit some one rather than risk hitting a
barrier with your wife and baby on in the car.

In other cases you might rather drive your car into a barrier or even off a
cliff rather than hit a child.

Now this isn't about morality or legality you might be morally and legally
"wrong" for swaying out of a more dangerous obstacle for your self and the
passengers of your car while increasing the likelihood of harming some one
else, you might go to jail for that, be found liable in a civil law suit or
just feel like shit for the rest of your life but it's still your decision to
make.

With dirverless cars that's gone the car really has a choice to make and
that's in an extreme case in which it cannot avoid an accident some where
there will be a algorithm dictating should it prefer to risk the passengers of
the car or the 3rd party it might collide with.

Even if the car can do a risk calculation and choose the lowest results that
still isn't good enough since well it shouldn't be upto the car to make that
decision because it cannot count for other factors such as who is in the car
and who you might hit.

Heck if you as a driver have a choice of swaying left or right to avoid a kid
on the road and there's a 200,000 to your right and a 20,000 car to your left
you are going to go left every time.

~~~
Joeri
It takes too long for the deliberative mind to make a decision, because
thinking through the situation would take ten seconds or more. The way you
describe it is not what happens. In actuality the animal brain will make an
intuitive decision, and the rational brain will then invent an explanation for
that decision and pretend it was going to make that decision all along. By
contrast a driverless car will always make deliberative decisions, so if
anything the only morally right decision is to let the algorithm decide,
because whatever its process it will still reach the right conclusion more
often than a monkey brain evolved to avoid lions trying to decide whether to
turn the wheel of a car or not.

~~~
dogma1138
I would disagree if there's enough time to react there's enough time for a
choice now it doesn't mean you can have a lengthy internal deliberation but
your mind will take the current biases into a fact.

There's allot of stuff you are doing without realizing it people for example
drive 10-20% slower with a child in their car without doing that
intentionally, while men tend to speed up while having an attractive woman as
a passenger you will behave differently and make different choices based on
the situation you are in.

I've been involved in several accidents / near accidents in my life and in all
of them i have enough time to react and make a decision, if you can't react
and it's not some one really jumping infront of you which means you hit them
before you even notice them it means you are driving too fast or otherwise
distracted in the 1st place.

I don't care about morality i care about the best outcome for me as it see it
i don't want my car to sway into incoming traffic because it calculated that
it's a lower risk of serious injury than hitting an idiot on a motorbike that
decided to do an illegal uturn,

That situation is from experience i couldn't way left because i might hit
incoming traffic if i would say right i would hit the cars to my right if I
would emergency break i would still hit him and most likely cause a chain
accident with the car/s behind me so i went on knowing that i would most
likely hit him, I've manage to get enough speed and stick close enough to the
right to not him but even if i would've in my opinion that would've been the
best situation even if it was the 1st or 2nd highest chance for some one to be
seriously injured use case.

Now I don't remember slowing and thinking hmm can't do left, can't do right,
can't break, I remember my eyes running from left to right for a couple of
milliseconds and then speeding up instinctively but it was still a decision i
made. Now if it was a kid on a side walk I would've swayed right without a
doubt even tho i could've gotten hit by a passing car or driving some one else
of the road, and if i had my kid in the car? well if mowing down and entire
puppy orphanage was the least risky scenario for me i would've done that in a
heartbeat.

