What moral decisions should driverless cars make? | Iyad Rahwan

Should a driverless car kill you if it means saving five pedestrians? In this primer on the social dilemmas of driverless cars, Iyad Rahwan explores how the technology will challenge our morality and explains his work collecting data from real people on the ethical trade-offs we're willing (and not willing) to make.

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[tahajameel]

I'm a simple man, I'm only here because I have an assignment on it due next week.

[Eysc]

Ok Google, put my car in rampage mode.

[JamieA]

I think that a driver-less car should never swerve and only ever brake. If the brakes are broken or there is a problem there should be a loud continuous beep alerting people about it. The car should always stay on the road no matter what and never swerve onto the path even if it will save lives. when a pedestrian is crossing the road they should be aware of the cars, a pedestrian on a side walk should be safe in knowing a car will never hit them and so will not need to be alert. If cars are designed to avoid larger groups then will people walk in groups to increase their survivability? I dont think the cars should make decisions but rather have a predicable manner that people can learn and therefore avoid. such as braking so people can hear the sound and react.

[TheLivirus]

This talk was much more thoughtful than I expected.

[Bastogne]

The real question is this going to be the end of Russian road rage videos?

[AprilSunshine]

The driver should be the one sacrificed, imo. The driver has the best chance of survival: the seatbelt and airbags and the driver holds the most blame, such as failing to upkeep maintenance on the car.

[atomicmrpelly]

I found their survey a little flawed - it asked loads of questions about different age ranges of pedestrians, and even different types of people (ie fit, athletic person vs criminal, as if the car is going to be looking at pedestrians thinking "now that looks like a criminal, I'll kill him before I kill that honest jogger"). I made the decisions I made in the survey based on a simple pair of rules:
1. Avoid hitting pedestrians if at all possible
2. If it is impossible to avoid pedestrians then take the simplest path (ie don't swerve)
And afterwards it told me that I valued old people more than young etc etc etc.

[SelfDrivingCarsNews]

Very cool lecture, we need more talks from Iyad Rahwan. Just awesome!

[carlscottamos]

1) A driverless car should realize when the brake pads are worn to the point they need replacing and take itself out of service before they are completely gone. Even driving itself to the service center. 2) If the brakes start to fade, it should pull itself over safely. 3) If the brakes completely fail, the car should flash it's headlights (left/right like a LEO car), emergency flashers and blow the horn steady to warn pedestrians and human driven cars. At the same time, it should downshift itself harshly to try and slow itself down as much as possible, then shift into reverse and then park to stop itself even if it damages the transmission. *It should also be transmitting a warning other driverless cars of it's failure.* 4) Have the tires scrub the curb or sideswipe others cars to slow itself down before hitting a solid object. - Can you program that?

[davec]

It blows my mind that people would rather drive a car themselves than be driven by one that could sacrifice them when they know the latter is categorically VASTLY safer

[Sellinglobs]

Self driving cars should always be over-rideable. And you should need someone with a license in it always, if there is a malfunction with anything be it the brakes/steering/ or even the software which makes these decisions, the car should hand over control to a driver

[joshiparth]

In case of any failure, alarms are sounded and if pedestrians move and clear out path then good, otherwise inform passengers to go into brace position and open airbags and then crash the car at an angle leading to minimum damage. If the safety systems are developed well in future, then crash might not turn out to be fatal.

[kkimuts]

Personally, I think that the human 'driver' should be given the option to program what the car should do in this scenario. That way, the driver is still given the choice, as it would be the case today, and the driver can face the consequence he/she has made

[pasty]

I feel that roads should just be considered dangerous areas. The car shouldn't drive into a pavement to avoid damage but should stay on the road. When crossing a road you should be aware of the dangers.

[Bastogne]

I can already foresee my future where my children will ask me what was it like to drive a car.

[Nieznany]

That's really interesting topic.
Right now most accidents are caused either by 1) driver or 2) car, while 2) might be prevented thanks to driver's reaction (he can stop driving if something isn't working)
with driveless cars the accidents could be caused mostly only by something not working in car, which would eliminate a great deal of accidents.
Pretty sure that situation @ 1:19 should never happen with driveless car, as it should be programmed to know where people can pass roads & slow before those places accordingly.
What we need then, is to add law that only allows to pass roads on marked places & increase number of those places.
If people would follow the law, there would be no accidents (unless of course something in car isn't working)

[JustinKrux]

I dont really think it needs to make any decisions at all, it just needs to get to its destination without any accidents and attempt to avoid the best it can if something occurs, which is not much different than a human driving, a human having to make a choice of who lives or dies in an automobile accident is rare, insanely rare, as it happens so fast there really is no time to contemplate decisions like that.

this to is also maybe a good question to ask, but not as important as it seems, as car accidents are predominantly, of coarse, human error, and that human error is usually caused by things like texting, or lack of sleep, or toxcicity. cars dont do drugs, cars dont get tired, cars dont get drunk, cars dont text or talk on the phone, cars dont look down at the radio, cars dont need glasses or hearing aids, cars dont get old doesnt mean mistakes wont happen, but it already would be FAR FAR less mistakes than humans make, saving probably millions of lives just on its own.

[aapjeaaron]

none, an autonomous car should never find itself in a situation where there is a chance for an accident. If you wider how, go and study the entire road law and you'll notice that they have thought of everything.

[aaronkahn]

If only all the TED presenters had this guy's skill... all the more impressive because English is his second language. Rock on, Iyad.

[JohnStarkD]

The major problem here is not the actual discussion. It is how hack safe it would be