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APRIL 2018 I PCB007 MAGAZINE 19 computer learning, that the roads will become safer and that the number of accidents will be greatly reduced. However, there will be a transition period. Let's look at a commonly discussed scenario: An autonomous car identifies children run- ning into the road. There is no time to stop. To swerve around them would cause the car to crash into a speeding truck on one side or over a cliff on the other, bringing certain death to any- body inside. To anyone advocating for autonomous cars, this question is the elephant in the room. It is argued over incessantly by lawyers, regulators, and ethicists; it has even been at the center of a human study by Science. Happy to have their names kept in the background of the life-or- death drama, most carmakers have let Google or other involved (but not auto company) tech - nologists take the lead while making pass- ing reference to ongoing research, investiga- tions, and discussions. Still, if the overall death and injury rate is greatly reduced there may be justification. An announcement by Mercedes published in Car and Driver some time ago indicates that this factor is being taken seriously: "Rather than tying itself into moral and ethical knots in a crisis, Mercedes-Benz simply intends to program its self-driving cars to save the peo- ple inside the car. Every time. All of Mercedes- Benz's future Level 4 and Level 5 autonomous Figure 7: GM self-driving concept. Figure 8: Graphic of autonomous vehicle sensing people and vehicles nearby.