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Your argument works both ways. Lets say a truck is driving on the wrong side of the road and is going to flatten the mercedes (not too uncommon as truck drivers

Your argument works both ways. Lets say a truck is driving on the wrong side of the road and is going to flatten the mercedes (not too uncommon as truck drivers seem to be crazy and will overtake each other). Lets say it's possible to swerve onto the footpath and squash some pedestrians in order to avoid the truck. A human driver wont be solving the trolley problem here and will probably just die. It sounds Mercedes goal is for the car to save the driver and kill the pedestrians in this situation.

rootusrootus 4y ago
Read what the Mercedes guy actually said, though. Swerving is bad, because it in no way guarantees a better result, and increases the risk substantially of making things worse. Any tire grip you use to swerve isn't being used to stop, and the best way to minimize damage to the car, and by extension risk to the occupant, is to get kinetic energy as low as possible and rely on the safety cage for the rest. The magazine writer frames it as "Mercedes is making a choice in the trolley problem, and that choice is the driver" as if that's actually a decision being made, instead of the entirely expected result of trying to slow the car enough that regular safety systems are likely to save the life of the driver. Mercedes is doing the opposite of trying to solve the trolley problem, they're declaring it pointless to try. It's much more plausible to get the car into the "driver is very unlikely to die" kinetic range than it is to get it down to "pedestrian is very unlikely to die." So, back to your hypothetical -- the Mercedes won't be swerving for the pedestrians, because that'll statistically increase the risk to the driver. The car may very well still get hit by that truck, but now it'll be on the driver side instead of the front crumple zone. And who knows what else happens after the car becomes ballistic because it collided with something.
- Dave_Rosenthal 4y ago
  I think that as car perception systems start to have understanding of the 3d scene (i.e. not just adaptive cruise longitudinal controllers) joint control of the brakes and steering will becoming standard for accident avoidance and will be a big step forwards. It probably is the case that braking ends up being the "more useful" degree of freedom (for one, braking latency is lower than swerving latency) but swerving out of the way of a car can be incredibly useful in certain cases.

rootusrootus 4y ago

Read what the Mercedes guy actually said, though. Swerving is bad, because it in no way guarantees a better result, and increases the risk substantially of making things worse. Any tire grip you use to swerve isn't being used to stop, and the best way to minimize damage to the car, and by extension risk to the occupant, is to get kinetic energy as low as possible and rely on the safety cage for the rest. The magazine writer frames it as "Mercedes is making a choice in the trolley problem, and that choice is the driver" as if that's actually a decision being made, instead of the entirely expected result of trying to slow the car enough that regular safety systems are likely to save the life of the driver. Mercedes is doing the opposite of trying to solve the trolley problem, they're declaring it pointless to try. It's much more plausible to get the car into the "driver is very unlikely to die" kinetic range than it is to get it down to "pedestrian is very unlikely to die." So, back to your hypothetical -- the Mercedes won't be swerving for the pedestrians, because that'll statistically increase the risk to the driver. The car may very well still get hit by that truck, but now it'll be on the driver side instead of the front crumple zone. And who knows what else happens after the car becomes ballistic because it collided with something.

Dave_Rosenthal 4y ago
I think that as car perception systems start to have understanding of the 3d scene (i.e. not just adaptive cruise longitudinal controllers) joint control of the brakes and steering will becoming standard for accident avoidance and will be a big step forwards. It probably is the case that braking ends up being the "more useful" degree of freedom (for one, braking latency is lower than swerving latency) but swerving out of the way of a car can be incredibly useful in certain cases.