The perverse incentive was, if I recall correctly, if you maim someone you're responsible for their wellbeing for life. If they are killed, it's a manageable lump sum.
In India, if one has hit a pedestrian, the advice has been to never stop -- you will get beaten up just as worse... just get away from the scene if you can.
"Judges, police, and media often seem to accept rather unbelievable claims that the drivers hit the victims multiple times accidentally, or that the drivers confused the victims with inanimate objects."
In light of this, I think the whole point of the article is maximized. A couple of extremely rare fatalities every few years (hell, even every MONTH) are nothing compared to the carnage and hell we would be avoiding by removing humans as drivers. Until you can make a case that those two types of carnage are even comparable in numbers (which is unlikely), talking about trolleys and who to hit in case of an accident should indeed be reserved for freshman year ethics classes. Note, it's not even an interesting enough ethical problem to make it past Ethics 101 (sort of like, "Will you steal medicine to cure your dying family member?").
"Why drivers in China intentionally kill the pedestrians they hit." http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2...
Ugh, I started skimming the article again and I can't read it. Just gruesome.