[jaweb]

It's interesting how high profile this post-crash analysis is - name another time you read so much commentary about the details that caused a car crash?

It seems to me that this is exposing a few gaps in how we think about driverless cars currently:

  - A framework for how cars should be making "moral" decisions (the trolley problem [0])
  - A defined process for post car crash investigations - akin to the process in air crashes

Will be interesting to see if these emerge soon (or are emerging and I have missed)

[0] https://qz.com/1204395/self-driving-cars-trolley-problem-phi...

[sdrothrock]

> name another time you read so much commentary about the details that caused a car crash?

Doesn't this happen every time a Tesla is involved, too? I think this might be so high-profile because it's the first automated vehicle incident (that I'm aware of) that involves a pedestrian.

I know that one of the Tesla incidents resulted in the driver's death, but that was clearly user error. IIRC Tesla was very quick to release the data on the incident as well, so it was pretty clear versus this situation, which is mostly people guessing.

[hughes]

I really don't see how the trolley problem is relevant to this situation. The car didn't decide that killing a person was better than some less-moral alternative.

[c22]

I think that's why it's relevant. It's likely the system can't make such a decision because its developers wanted to avoid having to deal with that can of worms. If this is the case the car may have insufficient options available to it in this type of situation. With a working "trolley function" it's possible the system could have noticed the obstacle then done some "moral math" with the chances the obstacle is a pedestrian and the odds of survival for the car's occupant(s) then chosen to drive off the road and crash into a ditch. Without this feature it's likely the system's only recourse is to stop and ask for help, which it may not have time to do.