Self-driving cars and the externalisation of danger (to other road users) - Thanks Mercedes Benz!

I'm looking at the OP and the first thing that comes to mind is to question why Merc are choosing this side of the trolley problem. Is is a sales thing? Maybe, a little bit. But I'm not sure that this is the big issue behind the decision.

If you're buying a Merc right now, it's safety record for occupants is not the biggest deciding factor in motivating that purchase. They know full well that they're an aspirational products company and massaging egos is their de facto marketing strategy. But behind all this is the big question that has plagued the self-driving car for years even though it hasn't properly gotten to market yet. Liability.

If I were at the head of a company like this, I would be asking a crack team of very expensive corporate lawyers to advise on who would have the better case in the event of a death through a programming determined action. IANAL so maybe some of the resident legal bods might like to weigh in but I reckon the family of someone who bought a self-driving car and died in it would have a stronger case for compensation than the family of an external victim. Not least of all because there is a far greater likelihood that an external victim or other external person would have in some way contributed to the collision. Contribution here, I'm keen to point out, doesn't equal blame. At least in a moral sense, legally your mileage may vary.

I met a man once on a flight who worked for a major car manufacturer and it was his job to calculate the cost of recalling faulty cars vs the rate of failure vs the average settlement paid to people killed or injured by the fault. If it was cheaper to settle they didn't do the recall.

Yeah, I met Ed Norton on a flight as well. The fucker just doesn't know when to shut up.

Top misconceptions of autonomous cars and self-driving vehicles

Justified type Hades

Debunking the driverless delusion

Autonomous cars are going to be great for jerks, study finds

See: http://media.wix.com/ugd/efc875_213cef837dbb42169f6061f585606b46.pdf

Following most of the qualified discussions on self-driving cars it is increasingly clear that an influx of SDCs will result in SDC-only roads. This may well result in limitations of the possible use of bicycles despite the potential for factor-x resource reduction by human power-- corporate power cloaked in efficiency demands for cars and the oversupply of solar electricity might counter any human power advocacy.

See also this challenge: https://www.innonatives.com/challenge/examples-for-factor-x-reduction-in-resource-use-in-europe/ideas

A quick personal experience....
While I have never really thought about self driving cars before, little bits of the technology have started filtering down to my level...the latest big red Lorry that I get to drive 'progressively ' at work has an additional thing added to the ABS system. It presumes that the Lorry, a Scania, is being driven by a haulage firm with an articulated trailer, laden with goods. Ours never is though, it's got between four and six people on it, with 1250 litres of water and a lot of kit on board, trying to get from A to B safely, in the least amount of time possible.
Now, when it enters a roundabout, the weight goes forward and right, onto the front offside corner, then as you make the manoeuvre, it transfers to the front near side corner, before completing the roundabout, where it moves back to the offside and shifts a bit rear wards as you accelerate out. A 'normal' big red Lorry allows this to happen, and your skill as a driver allows the manoeuvre to be completed safely. The new models, however, sense the shift in weight, assume your load will be shifting, and slam on the brakes, just enough that you lose your correct line, and either head towards oncoming traffic, or roadside furniture, neither of which you want to do.
There is another bit getting added to new appliances from April, I believe, which stops the driver from crossing the white lines ......picture the scene when that happens!

I'm looking at the OP and the first thing that comes to mind is to question why Merc are choosing this side of the trolley problem. Is is a sales thing?

I don't think they can make such a decision but I can imagine why they claim to be abe to and why they express this position. I'd say its part of their DNA: Hedonistic Consequentialism. If the driver of a Mercedes is of higher value than others-- the basic urge to define itself as a status object-- then it would be the highest utility to maximize the pleasure of that person.

"I believe that there is, from the ethical point of view, no symmetry between suffering and happiness, or between pain and pleasure. Both the greatest happiness principle of the Utilitarians and Kant’s principle “Promote other people’s happiness…” seem to me (at least in their formulations) wrong on this point which, however, is not completely decidable by rational argument (…). In my opinion human suffering makes a direct moral appeal, namely, the appeal for help, while there is no similar call to increase the happiness of a man who is doing well anyway.
A further criticism of the Utilitarian formula “Maximize pleasure” is that it assumes, in principle, a continuous pleasure-pain scale which allows us to treat degrees of pain as negative degrees of pleasure. But, from the moral point of view, pain cannot be outweighed by pleasure and especially not one man’s pain by another man’s pleasure. Instead of the greatest happiness for the greatest number, one should demand, more modestly, the least amount of avoidable suffering for all; and further, that unavoidable suffering – such as hunger in times of unavoidable shortage of food – should be distributed as equally as possible.
There is some analogy between this view of ethics and the view of scientific methodology which I have advocated in my The Logic of Scientific Discovery. It adds to clarity in the fields of ethics, if we formulate our demands negatively, i.e. if we demand the elimination of suffering rather than the promotion of happiness. Similarly, it is helpful to formulate the task of scientific method as the elimination of false theories (from the various theories tentatively preferred) rather than the attainment of established truths"-- Karl Popper