A new trolley era

The autopilot will turn off just before hitting them to make you liable anyway

This reminds me of that Chinese law about being personally responsible for all medical debts of a person you run over—incentivizing killing the person, rather than injuring them.

You will be liable either way. If you don’t do anything, you broke the terms of not being attentive enough.

I’m not aware of a single jurisdiction on the planet that makes Tesla liable for what the vehicle does when autopilot is enabled. In order to activate autopilot you have to accept about 3 different disclaimers on the car’s screen that state VERY clearly how you are still responsible for the vehicle and you must intervene if it starts behaving dangerously.

I’ve been driving with autopilot for over 2 years, and while it has done some stupid stuff before (taking wrong turns, getting in the wrong lane, etc.), it has NEVER come close to hitting another vehicle or person. Any time something out of the ordinary happens, I disengage autopilot and take over.

I hope this isn't law anywhere. You're liable for your car no matter what. You have to take control if necessary

Press the brake.

Even with autopilot I feel it's unlikely that driver would not be liable. We didn't have a case yet but once this happens and goes higher to courts it'll immediatly establish a liability precedence.

Some interesting headlines:

a fatal crash where the driver claims his Tesla was on autopilot when it fatally struck a motorcyclist. (ongoing)
'Autopilot' hit-run driver sentenced to nine months (australia, claims that autopilot was on but it's unclear)

So I'm pretty sure that autopilot drivers would be found liable very fast if this developed further.

Slam on the breaks but oh no you drive a cybertruck and the break petal stops working

The cover-your-ass scenario.

In the Philosophy Crash Course there was a scenario like this. I'll paraphrase:

You're a traveler exploring a semi-devloped nation in South America. Coming out of the wilderness you come across a squad of soldiers. They are forcing twenty villagers to dig a mass grave. The officer to the soldiers tells you these villagers committed the state crime of supporting a rival to their leader, and are to be executed. But as you are a guest in their country, he will make you an offer: if you shoot one of them, yourself, he will set all the rest free, and then can hike to the border and beg for asylum. (A rough trek, but the neighboring country may take them).

Do you shoot one of the villagers?

Actually killing someone is rather hard on the psyche, and most of us cannot bear the thought (and might suffer from trauma as a result). But then, perhaps this is a small price to pay for nineteen human lives.

Thomas Aquinas and Kant were happy to let the soldiers kill the villagers so as to avoid committing the sin of murder, themselves. Aquinas and Kant even would not lie to the murderer at the door, or Nazi Jew-hunters to save the lives of fugitives hidden in their home, since lying was sin enough, and they would count on God to know His own. Both had contemporaries who disagreed, and felt it was proper to suffer the trauma and do what was necessary (assuming the officer of the soldiers seemed inclined to keep to his word and actually spare the remaining villagers.)

So, the cover your own ass response has a long history of backers, including known philosophers.

this is funny and all, but it doesn't matter what you're doing here, you're technically liable for all of them so uh.

I'll wait for a better version of this.

The funny part will be once the car doesn't have a driver and is full autonomous. If the car kills someone, who's to blame?

I'm sorry, but this is the vanilla trolley problem. Save all but one or avoid going to jail.

Immagino having a car that doesn't pretend to drive herself but it's enjoyable to drive, a car that doesn't pretend to be a fucking movie because it's just a car, a car without two thousands different policies to accept in wich you will never know what's written but a car that you will be able to drive even though you decided to wear a red shirt on a Thursday morning which in you distorted future society is a political insult to some shithead CEO, a car that you own not a subscription based loan ,a car that keeps very slowly polluting the environment instead of polluting it with heavy chemicals dig up from childrens while still managing to pollute in CO2 exactly the same as the next 20 years of the slow polluting one not to mention where the current comes from, a car that will run forever if you treat it well and with minor fixes with relative minor environment impact and doesn't need periodic battery replacement which btw is like building a new vehicle ... This are not only a critical thoughts about green washing but are meant to make you reflect on the different meanings of ownership in different time periods

And yes I will always think that all environmentalists that absolutely needs a car should drive a 1990s car, fix it, save it from the dump fields and drive it till it crashes into a wall ...

How fast am I driving down this two lane void with no guard rails

lol tesla bad

Reminds me of the Chinese issue: you run over someone, but they are likely not dead. Will you save their life but accept having to pay for whatever healthcare costs they have until they are recovered? Or will you run over them again, to make sure they die and your punishment will be a lot lighter?

Strange to assume that swerving will definitely kill one of them. What if you swerve off the road, or slam on the brakes? The reason the trolley problem works is that it's on rails and you're not operating it.