You’re rolling down the freeway in heavy, fast-moving traffic, following a truck. On your right is a shiny, new Volvo XC90 with a “Baby On Board” sticker in the window. On your left, a suburban outlaw in a $500 leather jacket blat-blat-blatting along on his Harley-Davidson. Suddenly, a large, heavy object falls off the back of the truck, right in your path. There’s no chance of stopping. What do you do? Stay in your lane and brace for the head-on hit? Swerve left and take out the motorcyclist? Or dive to the right and ram the Volvo?
Chances are you’ll simply react, stomping the brake pedal and swinging the wheel one way or the other. You’ll only think of the consequences—the dead motorcyclist or the badly injured baby—when the shock wears off and your hands stop shaking and you’re lying in bed in the dark wondering if you’ll ever sleep again.
But what if you did have the ability to analyze the situation in real time as it unfolded in front of you and logically determine a course of action? What would you do? Prioritize your own safety by aiming for the motorcyclist, minimize the danger to others at the cost of your own life by not swerving, or take the middle ground and centerpunch the Volvo, hoping its high crash safety rating gives everyone a chance of survival?
Forget bustling city streets and complex freeway interchanges: Navigating a moral maze like this is the toughest task facing autonomous vehicles.
Patrick Lin is director of the Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, and he constructs grisly thought experiments like the one above to highlight the fundamental issue facing the deployment of autonomous vehicles on our roads. Autonomous vehicles have the potential to dramatically reduce the incidences of death and injury on our roads, ease congestion, and reduce emissions. The problem is not the capability of autonomous vehicle technology. It’s deciding how that capability should be used.