You are always liable, In both cases.
I take it this is just a hypothetical situation. Eventually it will be case.
Right, unless it’s that new Mercedes and you’re in traffic on one of a specific set of roads under 40 MPH.
Think they’ve sold a handful.
Yup. The trolly problem is one of ethics and responsibility, not whether one person or several people die.
The death of the people is irrelevant, your responsibility for those deaths is the point.
I didn't get it either until a good friend and I were discussing it and he said: forget the trolly. How about this, you're walking down the street after eating at Subway (or some similar shop) and you have half a sandwich left, you pass by someone begging for food. You can either choose to give it to them or not. If you choose not to, and later that same day the person dies from starvation, are you responsible for their death because you didn't give them the excess food you had?
The dilemma is based on a few points, if you take action and the person dies, are you responsible for the death you caused, if you take no action are you responsible for deaths you could have avoided by taking action, when you chose not to?
In OP's post, legally, if you are the driver/operator of the vehicle, you are always, 100% responsible for anything the vehicle does, whether under autonomous control or not. This is the law. Whether you are morally at fault, is a matter of debate. You didn't direct the car to run over people, but you also did not stop the car from running over the people.
There's an argument to be made about duty of care, etc.
However, this is the root of the trolly problem.
Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.
This issue has been explored previously, and with a better example of the trolley problem that centers the ethical dilemma entirely on the autopilot.
I do agree that in most situations, the driver retains full control over the vehicle, and therefore remains fully responsible, even if there's a case to be made that the autopilot neglected the safety of others outside the car.
However, I'd also argue that this example leaves a possibility where fault cannot be assigned to them: If the driver became aware of the hazards at a reasonable time (i.e. spotting the pedestrians just around a sharp bend, rather than 200m down a straightaway), and made every reasonable effort to stop within that time but could not. There are limits to the driver's responsibility, but the most interesting cases are crashes that the autopilot is capable of preventing (even if the driver reasonably cannot), but fails to do so.
Since the fine is meaningless to Elon, this becomes an ethics problem. Swerve, killing 1 person and be charged with manslaughter—or kill 5 people and be found not guilty.
Realistically though, when incidents occur, Tesla pretends FSD wasn’t on and they’ll never pay anything.
It's level two they don't need to pretend. It's always the driver's fault. What will be interesting is Mercedes level three turning itself off right before a crash.
But your honour, the driver had a whole 873 milliseconds to react before the impact! It's clearly their fault 🧑⚖️
Nevertheless, people still want to know. Tesla apparently has a habit of turning of FSD less than a second before a crash happens. And, Tesla does publicly disavow responsibility. If FSD does something entirely ridiculous like suddenly veer off the road or brake unexpectedly, the driver may not have time to respond. Check out this article and lawsuit for instance:
Tesla’s advanced Autopilot driving system malfunctioned and caused one of the electric car maker’s Colorado employees to drive off the road and die in a fiery crash, a newly filed wrongful death lawsuit alleges.
The car was too mangled to be analyzed as to whether FSD was on. The surviving passenger said yes, the driver was using it. Musk denies it:
https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-elon-musk-clarifies-fsd-not-enabled-model-3-fatal-dui-crash/
"He was not on FSD. The software had unfortunately never been downloaded. I say “unfortunately”, because the accident probably would not have happened if FSD had been engaged."
If they were restrained in the road against their will, I'd save 4 people and take the heat. But seeing as they are just hanging out in the middle of the street of their own volition, I'ma let autopilot handle it. /s
That's some J from Man in Black level of argument, good job
In Germany nobody cares about if Autopilot was on, because you are still the driver of the car and responsible for everything it does. The Law says you need to be able to react to it, if you do not you are the only one responsible
The troll (Elon) problem
You could pretend to swerve but still clip them all except for the hot chick. Then jump and pretend to save her from your evil car. So that's how you get lai....wait what was the question?
