Pedal. To the. Metal.
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.
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.
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?
The company that rented it to you, because fully self-driving cars won’t be for private ownership, they’ll just replace rideshare drivers.
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 …
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.
