Self-driving car survey shows who exactly the world wants autonomous vehicles to sacrifice

Animals and the old should be sacrificed in autonomous vehicle crashes, according to a major new study. When self-driving cars arrive, they will be forced to decide who should die when they collide with members of the public. When something goes wrong, they will have to be programmed to opt for one group or another when deciding where to crash, an issue that has become a central ethical problem for those designing the cars. Researchers asked more than 2 million people in an attempt to establish who the public thinks should be sacrificed in those crashes. They were told to imagine a situation where a deadly crash was going to occur and the car had to choose between two sets of people – and asked to decide which of those groups would die.