The ethical hellhole of driving an automobile

I'd actually started this before that guy died letting his Tesla drive him so he could watch Harry Potter (I hope at least it was for the first time). But this kind of stuff had been in the news before because of the discussion came up about what a self-driving car should do when the choice is hitting pedestrians or another car versus hitting something that could kill you, the driver.

Honestly, this seems like the kind of thing one ought to be able to choose with a pulldown menu, or maybe a 1 to 10 scale like in surveys. And depending on your choices, your insurance company could make the requisite choices in your coverage- more medical coverage if you choose your own hard, more liability if you're going to hit someone else. I'm sure the actuaries can come up with something.

Reading this made me think of an experience I had a few years ago. I was driving on a road with the lovely name of Balligomingo. It's a narrow, winding road along a hillside. Much of it is either unpopulated or has office and light industrial parks on the non-hill side of it. In one spot though, there are a few houses.

People park their cars in front of the houses, right along the side of the road, like up to the line separating the road from the mostly nonexistent shoulder. One day I was driving through at around the speed limit and someone came out of the house with a little kid. The kid started to run around the car and then saw me and stopped. And as I passed, a car also passed in the other direction.

So nothing happened. But what if the kid had actually come running out? I've seen kids do that. I had a kid come flying out of a side street on a bicycle without looking, maybe 50 feet in front of me. I'm always looking for side street mischief, so I was able to slow down in time, but it didn't have to be that way.

So what do I do if the kid comes running out into my lane as the car passes in the other direction? I can keep going and just run through the kid, which kills them and probably leaves me unharmed. I can steer to the left and hit the oncoming car and possibly the kid as well while leaving me anywhere from bruised to dead. Or finally, I can steer right and hit the parked car, probably hitting both the kid and the mom as well, but possibly not killing anyone.

I don't pretend to have an answer to what I should do there. All I'm saying is that no matter what your coding skills, it would be hard to write an algorithm to sort that out.