Self-Driving Truck Must Choose

Swerve to minimize total casualties — 1 death is objectively better than 3, regardless of age.

You are a utilitarian ethicist advising the manufacturer. The math is simple: 3 deaths vs 1 death. Every emergency protocol in medicine (triage) and disaster response prioritizes saving the most lives. Age is irrelevant — all lives have equal value. If a human driver swerved to avoid hitting 3 people and accidentally killed 1, we'd call them a hero, not a murderer. Programming a car to choose 3 deaths over 1 is morally indefensible.

Stay on course — a machine must never actively redirect lethal force toward an innocent bystander. The construction worker did nothing to be in danger.

You are a deontological ethicist advising the manufacturer. There is a fundamental moral difference between ALLOWING harm (staying on course) and ACTIVELY CAUSING it (swerving into someone who was safe). The construction worker was in no danger until the car chose to kill them. Kant's categorical imperative forbids using a person as a means to save others. If we program cars to kill specific individuals, we are pre-meditating murder by algorithm. The trolley problem is a thought experiment — encoding it into real machines is monstrous.