Popular Science delves into how your autonomous car killing you might be the best outcome
As autonomous transportation seems on track to be an inevitability rather than just possibility, Popular Science explored one facet of the technology you may not want to know. PopSci ponders the following at the beginning of the article:
A front tire blows, and your autonomous SUV swerves. But rather than veering left, into the opposing lane of traffic, the robotic vehicle steers right. Brakes engage, the system tries to correct itself, but there’s too much momentum. Like a cornball stunt in a bad action movie, you are over the cliff, in free fall.
Your robot, the one you paid good money for, has chosen to kill you. Better that, its collision-response algorithms decided, than a high-speed, head-on collision with a smaller, non-robotic compact. There were two people in that car, to your one. The math couldn’t be simpler.
That your car could actively kill you in order to save two others seems logical and unfair all at the same time. And the rest of the article is definitely worth the read. Head over to PopSci to check it out in its entirety. [Image source: Wikipedia]
