Webinar: Derailing the Trolley Problem

Whether they’re five, ten, or even twenty years away, autonomous vehicles are coming and they’re bringing a whole slew of debates along with them.


Whether they’re five, ten, or even twenty years away, autonomous vehicles are coming and they’re bringing a whole slew of debates along with them. Many of these are strictly matters of engineering—such as the question whether LiDAR or machine vision is the best approach for navigation—but one of the most popular controversies is based on an idea from ethics: The Trolley Problem.

If an autonomous vehicle has to decide who lives and who dies—one pedestrian vs three, or one pedestrian vs one driver—how should it arrive at its decision? Considerable ink has been spilled over this subject. Too much, according to Ian Wright, Managing Editor at engineering.com, who gave a talk at the 2018 Autonomous Driving Summit arguing that Trolley Problems aren’t really problems for autonomous vehicles at all.

For information on autonomous vehicles, check out our feature articles on their history, technology and legislation/ethics.

Your attendance at this webinar is sponsored by engineering.com. To watch, please complete the form on this page.