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How about preferring people outside the car over people inside the car? Every time I got the option to swerve into a barrier instead of killing a person I took
by jjj123 5y ago
How about preferring people outside the car over people inside the car?
Every time I got the option to swerve into a barrier instead of killing a person I took it. By getting in a car you’re accepting the risk that entails, especially when it’s a self driving car with experimental tech. Pedestrians made no such deal, so they shouldn’t have to take on that risk.
- mihaic 5y agoCompletely agree, you pretty much nailed it that pedestrians are the textbook example on externalities. I don't unfortunately see them getting a lobby group anytime soon though.
- zepto 5y agoThat just means nobody should ever get into a self driving car. Drivers driving their own cars have a self-preservation instinct at work. Walking in public entails risk that everyone accepts.
- oh_sigh 5y agoBy this logic, should no one ever get into a bus, or an airplane, or a taxi?
- zepto 5y agoOnly if you assume pilots and bus and taxi drivers are happy to kill themselves. I don’t.
- oh_sigh 5y agoIs that a safe assumption? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525 https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2020/07/14/bus-driver-crashes-deliberately-china-lon-orig.cnn https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2020/07/14/bus-driver-crash...
- jjj123 5y agoYou’re right that we’ve created a world where pedestrians are forced to take a non-negligible risk just to walk to work. I disagree that that is ethical or just.
- zepto 5y agoThroughout history, there has always been a non-negligible risk of dying when walking to work (or its equivalent). I don’t think there is anything ethical or just about killing drivers by default.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 5y agoIt's not about whether the risk exists. It's about what changes to the risk we're willing to impose on other people. Do you have the right to increase everyone else's chance of dying while walking in public? By how much, relative to the status quo alternative of driving yourself?
- yogrish 5y agoBut it turns out that Self driving cars must save people inside at any cost. If not,the whole purpose of selfdriving cars to reduce accidents (coz of human error) gets defeated. Because people prefer driving themselves than to buy self driving cars. https://www.technologyreview.com/2015/10/22/165469/why-self-driving-cars-must-be-programmed-to-kill/amp/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2015/10/22/165469/why-self-...
- karpierz 5y agoUnless self-driving cars are more convenient and despite prioritizing pedestrians, are still safer than a human driver.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- xyzzy123 5y agoVehicles that don't prioritise the occupants are not going to sell well versus ones that do. It's very hard to imagine that the default could be anything but "protect occupants" in a free market where cars are privately owned. Fleet operators have slightly different incentives, which are to minimise economic damage to the service, a combination of liability/damages and PR. To make anything else happen, you'd need to regulate. But the "self driving altruism act", which mandates that e.g. the car you just bought must kill your family in order to save pedestrians you don't know - I think it might be really difficult to get that law passed. You might be able to make some headway with fleets. IMHO markets, human nature and politics constrain the solution space for "self driving moral dilemmas" to a small subset of what's theoretically possible.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago> Vehicles that don't prioritise the occupants are not going to sell well versus ones that do. There are plenty of cases of people trusting the existing automated systems that specifically disavow being good enough to trust anyone's lives to. Even in light of news that other people have died in so doing.
- ineedasername 5y agoSometimes pedestrians do stupid, unsafe, or illegal things that put motorists at risk. Young child passengers also did not have a choice about the risks taken. I think there's some gray areas here.
- mihaic 5y agoMost of those stupid/illegal things are not that stupid in a world without cars, the environment for which we evolved. And it's true that young children don't have a choice, but their parent do it for them and assume responsability. I'm actually not trying to argue against you, as indeed there is a gray area. My point is that on marginal situations we should not try to judge only on morality but also on creating incentives that best improve the system in the longrun.
- ineedasername 5y agoI agree! Separately, I'm not a fan of arguments from evolutionary environments for this sort of thing. It didn't have telephone poles, but we still blame a pedestrian and not the pole or the pole installer if a pedestrian walks into it. Evolutionary arguments are almost always problematic when used in these ways.