&gt;There&#x27;s an implicit decision there - choosing between you (the passenger in the autonomous vehicle) and the people on the street.<p>Does the law ever require a person to break the law? That is the decision you&#x27;ve proposed the computer make. This is a serious question, not a pithy comment. Any action outside of immeditately stopping breaks the law: swerving into another lane involves changing lanes without signaling or entering into oncoming traffic. Swerving into the sidewalk breaks the law as well.<p>I contend that we do very often say &quot;it is unfortunate this situation but you complied with your instincts as they have been developed within the confines of traffic safety law.&quot;<p>I also contend that fault is at stake and only fault can be considered at stake. We do not expect people to correct other humans&#x27; mistakes by breaking the law, correct? So why do we expect a computer to correct for all human&#x27;s mistakes? There will certainly be tragedies involving autonomous vehicles. But to count that as a mark against the technology is holding it up to a standard we have never applied to any other technology.<p>The computer merely acts in accordance with traffic laws. That there are two possible outcomes (passenger injury and pedestrian injury) does not imply that a choice has been made. In fact, those are not the only two outcomes, we&#x27;ve merely whittled it down to those for the sake of discussion.