Mercedes-Benz admits automated driverless cars would run over a CHILD rather than swerve and risk injuring the passengers inside.

Driverless cars would hit a child on the street if it meant saving the people inside the vehicle, Mercedes-Benz Australia says.

 

The luxury car brand's Australian branch has answered the moral dilemma of who a driverless car would save if it was faced with running over a child or swerving into a car and potentially killing the passengers.   

 

'If there is someone literally jumping in front of you, in that circumstance, there's nothing technology can do except reduce speed of impact,' Mercedes-Benz Australia spokesman David McCarthy told The Australian. 

The Mercedes-Benz F015 Luxury in Motion concept car, a self-driving, hydrogen-electric plug-in hybrid, makes its debut at the 2015 International Consumer Electronics Show.

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The Mercedes Benz F015 self-driving car is presented for the first time in Europe at the Dam square in Amsterdam

'If an impact is inevitable, it will reduce the speed, tighten seatbelts and prime the brakes.

'The safety systems and impact protections are obviously greater within the cabin than outside.

'I would say that the vehicle is designed inside to protect the people inside, and it's the assistance systems that do that,' he said.

 

 

Mr McCarthy echoed the sentiments of Mercedes manager of driver assistance systems, Christoph von Hugo, who last week said that driverless technology would put the safety of passengers before pedestrians.

'If you know you can save at least one person, at least save that one. Save the one in the car. If all you know for sure is that one death can be prevented, then that's your first priority,' Mr von Hugo told Car and Driver Magazine.

But he added that the car giant's engineers 'prevent these situations from happening at all.'

 

Australia is heavily investing in driverless technology as it trials self-driving cars with Holden at a research hub in South Australia.

Volvo and Uber recently announced they were joining forces in a $300m project to develop autonomous 'base vehicles'. 

Safety issues were thrust into the limelight when 40-year-old Ohio man Joshua Brown was killed while using the car's autopilot function.

Mr Brown and the autopilot feature failed to detect an incoming white truck due to the sun's bright glare.