A more reasonable scenario: A two lane road with a cliff to your right. Suddenly, a group of people dash out into the highway. Too late to brake. Do you:
A) Swerve left into oncoming traffic? Maybe killing yourself, your family, and the occupants of the car you hit head-on?
B) Swerve right off the cliff, definitely killing yourself and your family riding with you.
C) Plow right into the people on the highway, thereby killing them.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I would not ride in a self-driving car programmed for A or B. I want my family protected. I choose the manufacturer who programs C.
Yet, deliberately programming a car to choose C would open up the car manufacturer to all kinds of legal risk. It is because of programming issues like this...and their legal ramifications....that we will not have self-driving cars until the law catches up with the technology.
We already have self-driving vehicles - buses in Las Vegas. Right now, they have a maximum speed of 15 mph, and serve a loop around the Strip.
18-wheelers are the big market on the interstate. Trucking companies are having trouble filling jobs as older truckers retire, as young men and women don’t want to be away from Facebook/video games/family/friends. Plus many couldn’t regularly pass a drug test, even a pre-employment drug test.
C. I have a philosophy:
If you cause me to be in an accident YOU will be IN that accident.