Who's To Blame If One Gets Killed In An (Uber/Tesla/Waymo) Self-Driving Car?

Too Long; Didn't Read

The most recent episode of <a href="http://www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia" target="_blank">Invisibilia (a fantastic podcast, I encourage you to subscribe)</a>, centers around a car/truck accident between a family of four (a mother, father and two girls) and a truck driver. Sudden flash rains, lost control and one person gets killed (I won’t spoil the story) and this leads to an Invisibilia team deep dive into emotions. While listening to the episode, I remembered sitting in an MBA Ethics Class and the conversation was on the ‘<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/10/trolley-problem-history-psychology-morality-driverless-cars/409732/" target="_blank">Trolley Problem</a>’. The question was, <em>if you are the driver of a Trolley with faulty brakes whom would you choose to hit between the five unsuspecting workers directly on your path or you could turn the trolley and hit one unsuspecting worker? </em>The dilemma that you have to <em>actively</em> decide to save some lives to kill one is a moral gray area with no right or wrong answer. At the point in the class when we were having the conversation, I didn’t really think too deeply about it; it was an abstract conversation about a situation I didn’t really think I would ever find myself in. It was more of an intellectual exercise than a real one to me.