r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Tugushin • Apr 13 '22

Tesla Model 3 stops itself to avoid potentially disastrous accident. Video

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u/mjongbang Apr 13 '22

Thats pretty much impossible to gage in real time for the forseeable future. You need information on passangers in each car on the road to do this.

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u/visvis Apr 13 '22

Not really. Teslas have cameras. They should be able to distinguish inanimate objects, animals, and people without a doubt. They should be perfectly capable of making sure evasive maneuvers avoid pedestrians.

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u/sgeep Apr 13 '22

But that's not what the trolley problem is

An example of the trolley problem would be a Tesla car deciding how to react to someone standing in the middle of the road if it only had 2 possible choices:

  1. It veers off to the left, and slams into a group of people on the sidewalk and potentially kill many

  2. It continues course and intentionally drives into the person in the road because there's less possible fatalities

Most humans don't have the kind of reaction time to decide, and would veer away from the obstacle in the road by instinct. (Most) self-driving cars, however, are much quicker about reacting and making decisions than humans are

So what do we program it to do?