AVs aren't doing near enough calculus to make a decision like that; they have obstacles and they avoid them. Their avoidance can allow for lane departure (that

AVs aren't doing near enough calculus to make a decision like that; they have obstacles and they avoid them. Their avoidance can allow for lane departure (that 360 situational awareness is handy), but they aren't going to solve a trolley problem in realtime if boxed in. The thing is... Neither are people. A kid darts out on front of you and you won't have time to make a conscious decision. The maneuver you make will be too fast for rational thought, and your brain will explain to itself why it did that later. ... Incidentally, this is one of the things that scares me about human drivers. Put a human on the stand to testify and most will say they never saw that kid, no matter what physical process happened to their eyes and neurons. I think most even actually believe it. In any case, I'm glad that in this incident they'll be able to do a full NHTSA workup, pull logs, and reprogram the machine to avoid an accident like this in the future. Can't do that to a human driver.