Trolley Problem Experiment in Real Life- Would you sacrifice one person to save five?

The age old dilemma of killing one person and saving five by switching a lever, or not doing anything and watch 5 people get killed, what’s more logical or should i say ethical?

Would you reroute a train to run over one person to prevent it from running over five others? In the classic “Trolley Problem” survey, most people say they would. Youtube Channel Vsauce wanted to test what people would actually do in a real-life situation.

You can skip too 12:42 if you already understand the trolley problem adn just want to see the experiment.

In the world’s first realistic simulation of this controversial moral dilemma, unsuspecting subjects will be forced to make what they believe is a life-or-death decision.People were brought in as a part of a focus group to tell get their feedback about the high speed california railways.

Here is a good video by Ted-Ed going one step forward with this thought experiment and including the concept of pushing a fat person from a bridge in order to stop the train and save 5 lives but killing the fat person.

This classic problem has gained recent popularity due to the increasing autonomous and self driving cars on the roads, these cars may have to someday make moral decisions like these. If a car has no way to escape a crash then what will the car sacrifice?

To see the Trolley Problem Wikipedia article- Click Here.