Totally. But you just know the local DOT is going to get you for destruction of property since you took action!
(Kidding mostly, but not 100%)
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I only wish I’d known all this before I pulled the lever and condemned a fellow human being to trolley-death.
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I only got 98. I wonder where I messed up?
(Misanthropes unite!)
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If you choose “do nothing” every time, your kill count is 93. But if you pull the lever every time, it’s only 40
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Also, do trolleys really cost $300k each? That seems ridiculously high.
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I managed to get 52.
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I wasn’t sure either, but turns out to be a low-ball estimate!
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OK I am going full-on pedantic here. The article says that these trolley buses (which are buses that run on wheels, not rails, while collecting electricity from an overhead wire) can run 15 miles off wire – making the whole trolley problem moot. Don’t want to participate in this philosophical debate? Just turn the steering wheel!
But, I did look up how much Kansas City’s new-ish streetcars cost, and was shocked(!) to learn that they are more than $4 million each! (This is comparable to Portland, Tucson, and Cincinnati.)
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I chose to do nothing every time. A bit tired. I got in the 90’s I think and a message that I had championed philosophy- or something to that effect.
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(Kidding. I knew they weren’t the same kind, but the first thing that came up. It is shocking how pricey they are!)
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Wait, we’re allowed to argue with the premise?
Like that people reject throwing the fat guy in front of the train not just for moral reasons but because they reasonably expect it not to work?
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An electric car can set you back $100 grand. This electric vehicle carries a lot more people- every day.
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A bit of a personal memory here. Probably the last conversation I had with my father before he sank entirely into dementia was that he’d been a trolley bus driver in Little Rock, Arkansas, during the transit strike of 1955. In other words, I learned that he’d been a scab. 
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And doesn’t spontaneously burst into flames!
Priceless 
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Oh, man, now I want to see that scenario worked into the trolley problem!
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I don’t know. I’m not the president’s granddaughter.
More accurately, if you “do nothing”, your kill count is zero since you didn’t put any of those people in those situations and have no moral responsibility to act in any way.
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Interesting counterpoint!
But at the same time, one has to think of the people that the subjects may interact with throughout their lives.
If we assume these people were all going to live to 80, surely 5 people living to 70 and one to 80 allows for more chances at productive lives and relationships than 5 people living to 80 and one to 30?
That person living to 30, even if they manage to start a family, will die early, causing more grief to friends and relatives than if they’d lived to 70.
Society as a whole understands that post-70, you’re into sudden-death territory, but believes that dying at 30 is far too young.
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Yeah, yeah, save it for the judge.
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Ooo, this is brain-taffy!
You are there. You are aware that these situations are unfolding. You are not responsible for these situations unfolding in the first place. But it can be proven that if you choose not to interact, more people would die than if you got your hands dirty.
Do you become responsible because you were in a position to be able to reduce deaths?
And can’t this be said of all life-and-death situations, meaning that if we’re aware that people are dying and don’t take action when we are able to, in order to reduce the numbers that die, aren’t we responsible?
And if this is the case, why is healthcare still private in the USA?
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