
Self-Driving Mercedes Will Sacrifice Pedestrians to Save the Driver - kristiandupont
https://www.fastcoexist.com/3064539/self-driving-mercedes-will-be-programmed-to-sacrifice-pedestrians-to-save-the-driver
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segmondy
That will change soon enough. The probability of surviving in a car crash is
higher than getting run over by a car. These cars have seat belts, airbags,
solid frames.

It would be interesting to see what algorithm they use to determine who gets
saved. A lawsuit will change that fast enough.

I can already see a case, The speed limit is 45mph, someone overrides the car
and forces it to go faster 70mph, something happens and the car has to make a
decision, do you save the driver or the pedestrian who has the right of way?

Let's say Mercedes says the pedestrian, well, these are kids going to school,
would they still save the driver?

Perhaps they would program the car to save the pedestrian if kids, else the
driver. Maybe they would take into account the socioeconomic state of the
environment. I firmly believe that a law would be passed in the future, where
the pedestrian would be saved, but then what happens if an idiot jumps into
the street/highway, should you die or have the car run them over? As we can
see this is not simple, I think places are going to have laws and rules on who
gets saved and how. In California the driver gets saved, in NY the pedestrian.
It's going to be a mess.

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jessriedel
> One of the biggest debates about driverless cars concerns the moral choices
> made when programming a car's algorithms.

This garbage should be downvoted on HN. Even on the subject of self-driving
cars, these articles are a distraction, clickbait suitable for twitter
arguments.

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misterhtmlcss
There is not much to discuss in a practical way here, because the fear of the
incident related to Mercedes's statement is near totally superfluous.

Many are imagining a world similar to our own today, but with self-driving
cars; this kind of effort and R&D is meant to be applied graceful over
decades, which isn't what Mercedes is planning for today and shouldn't be
contextualized within out current _modernity.

What I believe is envisioned (obviously IMO) and why I feel this is a
superfluous discussion is because in the world of self-driving cars of the
Level 4 and up variety we are talking about beacon detection e.g. there are no
pack of kids walking behind parked vans, because they all carry detectable
devices such as laptops that always run Wifi, iPads, iPhones, etc. Everywhere
they go these kids are detected and reacted in a world of Level 4+ cars. This
is the same for pedestrians. Buses are also self-driving and all are
communicating with each other in real-time and in fractions of a second.

A Mercedes car in this world didn't just discover a patch of ice on the road
that went previously unnoticed. The previous 100+ cars that drove over it
detected a level of decreased and decreasing level of traction (probably on a
predictable curve I'd even assume) and communicated it to the network that
coordinates cars, traffic, pedestrian signals. It's insane to think that in a
world of Lidar systems, infrared, AI and so that these things will just
'happen' as they do today; that isn't realistic or even reasonable.

Ice? Oil spills, diesel spills, specs of glass, even a snot rocket from your
local motorcycle gang are all detected immediately and compensated for with
heat, humidity, tire traction quality deviation etc. It'll be just short of
outright freaking amazing what this technology will eventually be able to do.

For me this is just fun conversation, but ultimately totally useless beyond
the ethical dilemma (which is more of a Pandora box discussion than anything),
because it just won't really exist in any material manner in the future. Like
a chicken or the egg. ;)

_Sorry haven't had a reason to use that word in a long long time; too much fun
to pass on.

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nmstoker
These make for interesting thought experiments, but how often will the
observable data lead one to a clear cut reliable belief that action A causes X
deaths and action B causes Y deaths? And it only gets more challenging if the
injures are typically going to be non-life threatening in most cases but could
still cause death (there are plenty of cases of people receiving a punch that
normally would just bruise but thanks to a stumble or hitting a pavement edge
they end up dead?)

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mattbgates
I would hope that the logic in saving the driver would ultimately save the
pedestrian. I'd think that the "collision" of any object, including that of
the body of a human being, could potentially do damage to the driver.

~~~
Someone
In extreme corners of the state space that doesn't hold, but one would hope
self-driving cars would manage to stay far away from most of those corners.

For example, if a self-driving car is heading towards a concrete wall at
speed, the safest thing to do is decelerate just fast enough to come to a stop
touching or just after hitting the wall. If there are pedestrians between car
and wall, Mercedes' statement seems to imply they will use the pedestrians as
an additional crumple zone, rather than to decelerate really fast in order to
not hit them, even if that saves lives and only causes the passengers some
bruises.

More realistic: a pedestrian starts crossing the road between parked vans with
darkened windows; a self-driving car doesn't see him until 10 meters away.
Should the car swerve into the first van or into oncoming traffic to prevent
the collision with a pedestrian, just brake as fast as possible, or brake as
fast as is safe for the driver and the passengers? If the car knows the
passengers did not put on their seat belts and are carrying loose heavy
baggage on the rear shelf, should the car decide to decelerate very lightly,
pedestrian be damned? What if this is in a pedestrian zone, and the driver
overrode the car's intentions to keep speed below 10mph?

Another extreme example: a Mercedes is driving to pick up its owner, and has
to decide between lightly harming its owner and killing a stranger. What will
it do?

I doubt Mercedes' statement ( _" zeroeth law of robotics: A robot may not
injure its owner or, through inaction, allow its owner to come to harm"_) will
hold up in court, and also whether they will really implement it to the limit.

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onetruepretzel
Self-Driving Mercedes Will Sacrifice _mere peasants_ to Save the Driver

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strangecasts
I find it slightly concerning that the word "brake" isn't used anywhere in the
article.

