The Driving Of A Trolley

The potential of a single second is lost among several people; more often than not, the general population values planning and thinking over impulsive behavior. However, a second is more than enough time for our brains to work extraordinarily fast. In Blink by Malcom Gladwell, the author uses rhetorical questions and diction throughout his anecdotes to emphasize the importance of split second decisions in the daily lives of many.

The motorcycle operator’s story (vehicle 1 POLLARD) is in conflict with the truck driver’s story (vehicle 2 SHELOR). Contact was not made between vehicles. The motorcycle operator did fail to maintain control. The motorcycle skid marks are to the right hand side of the operator’s southbound lane. The motorcycle skid mark turns to the right as the operator loses control.

The Trolley Dilemma is a scenario where a train heading straight toward five men working on the tracks, have no idea the train is heading toward them, and nowhere to go. It would appear that death is inevitable. On another track, there is another worker all working alone. He too has no idea the train is coming. You are standing next to the lever that can switch the tracks. What would you do? Would you do nothing, resulting in killing five people, who might not know what hit them, or do you pull the lever, diverting the train, killing only one which allows the five to survive?

The Trolley Dilemma is a scenario where a train heading straight toward five men working on the tracks, have no idea the train is heading toward them, and nowhere to go. It would appear that death is inevitable. On another track there is another worker all working alone. He too has no idea the train is coming. You are standing next to the lever that can switch the tracks. What would you do? Would you do nothing, resulting in killing five people, who might not know what hit them, or do you pull the lever, diverting the train, killing only one which allows the five to survive?

Everyone faces difficulties in their lives. There’s no exception to this rule, but difficulties come in all different proportions; big and small. The key to escape this type of situations is to make the error-free decision which some people do not result to. In literature we see the same thing. In the novel The Outsiders Johnny, a brave soul, sprinted into a flaming church to spare the lives of the innocent children.

Another of the orphans would grow up to become G.E.M. Anscombe, while a third would invent the pop-top can. If the brain in the vat chooses the left side of the track, the trolley will definitely hit and kill a railmano n the left side of the track, "Leftie", and will hit and destroy ten beating hearts on the track that could (and would) have been transplanted into ten patients in the local hospital that will die without donor hearts. These are the only hearts available, and the brain is aware of this, for the brain knows hearts. If the railman on the left side of the track lives, he too will kill five men, in fact the same five that the railmano n the right would kill. However, "Leftie" will kill the five as an unintended consequence of saving ten men: he will inadvertently kill the five men rushing the ten hearts to the local hospital for trans-

A set of gates weighed down the Jeep Cherokee. The driver made the mistake of leaving the vehicle to check the rear and drove forward unaware that a train would strike them. The third rail of the track

Bob decides to take a walk so he parks his Bugatti by some nearby railroad tracks. In the distance he sees an out of control train flying down the tracks toward a child. Bob has to make a critical decision. He can redirect the train away from the child by flipping a switch, but by doing so his Bugatti will be destroyed in the process. Bob decides not to flip the switch and save his Bugatti. As a consequence of his decision, the child dies.

If the trolley driver doesn’t intervene, five people will die. Most people will agree that it is morally permissible in the “Trolley Driver” case to kill the one person instead of killing the other five. Also, most people will agree that

Taking an ethical approach to the Ford Pinto case makes accepting the risk/benefit analysis performed by the Ford Motor Company difficult. In making what seems to be the correct decision based on numbers, Ford in essence adopted a policy of allowing a certain number of people to die or be injured even though they could have prevented it. Ford’s decision

1 Explain the Trolley Driver, Bystander at the Switch, Fat Man, Transplant, & Hospital scenarios discussed in the "The Trolley Problem" reading. In doing so, address what the ethical issue(s) are in each of these scenarios.

The Trolley Problem is a scenario possessing two similar versions that begs the question of whether or not it is ethical to kill a person in order to save five. In both versions of this problem, there is a trolley approaching a track with people tied down. In the first version there are two tracks; the first with five people tied down and the other with one person tied down, as the train is approaching the five people. Beside the track there is a switch

To kill or to let die – What would you choose? You are standing on a platform at a train station. An out-of-control train carriage is coming down the track past the platform, there are three workers repairing the same track further down the line. They don’t have time to get out of the way of the carriage, the only way to save them would be to push the very large person next to you down the track, the person’s body will act to halt the train thus killing him but saving the three workers. A swift decision has to be made, if I was in this situation I would choose to stand by and watch, letting the three people die, because I believe it’s better to be blamed for indirect killing rather than directly have blood on my hands. I would let nature take its course.

You are in a trolley car without a break that is going really fast, and there are 5 workers working on the track that you are about to run on. You notice a side track, which you are able to turn, but there is one worker on that track. Most people would choose to go to the side track and only kill one person because they would think killing one will be happier for other people than killing 5. However, some people would choose to not go on the side track maybe just because they don’t want to.

In this paper, I will explicate how a Utilitarian and a Kantian would understand the Trolley Problem and describe why I consider the Utilitarian approach to fare better in the case of the Trolley Problem. On one hand, a Utilitarian, a believer in the philosophy of Utilitarianism, believes that a morally admirable action is one that helps the maximum number of people. A Kantian, on the other hand, is a believer and follower of the Kantian ethics, which fundamentally preach that the correctness or wrongness of one’s actions depends on if one carries out one’s duty, and not on the consequences of one’s actions. In order to further understand the perspectives of these two philosophies, I will explain how they would comprehend the Trolley Problem, which is, essentially, a theoretical moral predicament where a trolley is speeding down a railway track and five people are tied to the track and a bystander has two options: either pull a lever, divert the train to an alternate railway track with one person on it and kill that one person and save five people, and thus intentionally commit homicide, or the bystander doesn’t pull the lever and lets five people die, therefore submissively allowing five deaths.