One of the most oft-discussed questions around self-driving cars is what should happen if your car can choose between two options: 1) An action that will have a better chance of protecting the people inside the car, 2) An action that will protect people outside of the car, with a whole bunch of variations.
For example - What if someone steps out into the road and you can either hit them, or run into a wall? The former makes it far more likely the occupants of the car will be safe, the latter saves the life of a pedestrian at the expense of possible injury to people in the car.
It is kind of an interesting question, because people can't generally react quickly and rationally enough in a situation like that for it to matter, but in theory, a computer can. But it also dominates the discussion in a way that likely far overstates how frequently this will actually be a decision a computer has to make.
I think that is what the person you're replying to is asking. Given that this occurred at night and on (very likely) uncrowded streets, I feel like its far more likely the car (and backup driver) just somehow missed the pedestrian.
For example - What if someone steps out into the road and you can either hit them, or run into a wall? The former makes it far more likely the occupants of the car will be safe, the latter saves the life of a pedestrian at the expense of possible injury to people in the car.
It is kind of an interesting question, because people can't generally react quickly and rationally enough in a situation like that for it to matter, but in theory, a computer can. But it also dominates the discussion in a way that likely far overstates how frequently this will actually be a decision a computer has to make.
I think that is what the person you're replying to is asking. Given that this occurred at night and on (very likely) uncrowded streets, I feel like its far more likely the car (and backup driver) just somehow missed the pedestrian.