Programming Ethics in Self-Driving Cars: Ethical Dilemma

Self-driving cars promise to revolutionize the automotive industry.  Besides being productive and fuel-efficient, they would be significantly safer than the human-operated cars.  However, in the rare case when they do get into an accident, they can calculate and opt for outcomes, based on their programming.  The manufacturer, it seems, must decide the ethics that they should follow in such scenarios.  In circumstances where they must choose between the lives of passengers and the pedestrians, some researchers have argues that the best solution is to choose for the safety of passengers over pedestrians.  Such a strategy, they argue, not only makes sense as cars will have better control over the passenger, will help in faster adoption of self-driving cars. However, this line of thinking seems simplistic at best. The author suggests that the problem must be reexamined from various perspectives.