I recently attended to an echidna sitting in the middle of the other lane in on a blind corner. I reversed until I could see straight road for 60 meters, stopped with my car at an odd angle on the side of the road with the hazard lights on to give an indication to approaching vehicle something unusual was occurring ahead, namely my partner and I were on the road on a blind corner. Then we listened carefully for approaching vehicles while we got the echidna off the road.

The ethical dilemma lies not with the driver, who is otherwise driving to the conditions, but with the people who have put themselves at risk by performing a task in a dangerous environment without appropriate hazard protection.

I don't think human drivers have the reaction time to make these decisions, not sure why so many expect computers to be able to.

It will always be the case that circumstances can change faster than something with the momentum of a fast moving car could adapt. Somewhere between "you're boned" and "your car saves the day" lies room for a scenario such as this, with potential room for a large amount of thinking.

> Anyway, it will be so rare an occasion with no guaranteed outcome (it's all about probabilities), so it's not really matters as much as it's discussed.

I agree that it will be rare, and that the concern is overblown. That said, "it's all about probabilities" is no reason something can't be vitally important.

> With same kinda of attention you could ask if making and selling ladders is ethical, because people fall from them and hurt themselves.

I think there is a substantive difference between the two. We're not asking whether selling a car that has a chance of injuring the user is ethical - we're fine with that. We're not even asking whether selling a car that has a chance of hurting others is ethical (already meaningfully different than the ladder case). We're asking about the ethical ramifications of making particular tradeoffs in "chance to hurt the user" versus "chance to hurt others". It's an interesting question, so it gets a lot of attention. I don't think most of those involved see it as a reason to prevent self-driving cars - long before the dilemma is really relevant, self-driving cars are already safer than human driven.

I think it's possible that with improving AI of self driving cars, making overall safety better, there will be ≈0 occasions when car simultaneously 1) doesn't have time to react to some sudden problem and 2) has time to make informed decision (and physically perform it) on how many people to save. Especially if pedestrian airbags become popular.

Interesting as it may be, it's only shifting the problem ;).

Ascribing ethical decisions to the driver in such a situation is not rational nor ethical.

At least, they will if we don't screw it up.

Because the article was completely about people REPAIRING technology they purchased, and not at all about mods, modding or modifications.

how can you allow mechanics to fix brakes without allowing them to break brakes?

I dunno... laws maybe? Like, the same laws that can require manufacturers to allow aftermarket competition.

even more, correct me if I'm wrong here, but you can repair a gun, but it's illegal to make certain modifications to it, right?

That's correct in the US. For instance, you can repair an AR-15 back to factory specs, you can modify it in certain ways (adding different sights, etc.), but if you modify it for full-auto operation (which is quite feasible actually), you can be thrown in jail IIRC and be subject to a gigantic fine.

This system works well: people can repair and modify their property to a certain point, but making specific changes are highly illegal, and the penalties are extremely severe, so almost no one does it. The same can be done for other things if the case for public safety warrants it. So repairing your robo-car should be completely legal, but modifying it to blatantly violate emissions laws or to run cyclists off the road can be punished harshly with vehicle confiscation, $1M fines, lengthy prison sentences, etc.

Do you actually practice this? Setting aside legality concerns (many freeways have minimum as well as maximum speeds), if you truly did this at every curve and corner you'd be more likely to cause than to prevent an accident. The number of times there will be something you avoid by slowing down will be outweighed by the number of times your speed differential relative to surrounding traffic causes an accident (and it is speed differential, not speed itself, which is responsible for virtually all "speed-related" accidents).

I don't advocate slamming on the brakes seconds before the turn, there's such a thing as slowing down safely as well.

All of this is something AIs will be nearly infinitely better at doing safely than even a minimally impaired (tired, distracted) human driver.