the self-driving car

A human driver who swerves in a crash decides in a fraction of a second, by reflex, and is rarely blamed for which way the wheel went. A self-driving car has no reflexes. Whatever it does in an unavoidable crash was decided months earlier by the people who wrote its software, and copied into every car of the model. In 2016 three researchers, Jean-François Bonnefon, Azim Shariff and Iyad Rahwan, asked Americans what that decision should be, and found that people gave one answer for cars in general and another for the car they would buy. Four scenes put you on the committee that writes the rule, in the showroom, in the legislature and finally behind the car’s camera. Answer each before you read on; the second scene is about the first.