In "The New Trolley Problem: Driverless Cars and Deontological Distinctions" (page 9), Woollard argues that while driverless cars (DC) cannot be held solely responsible for harm caused, we cannot completely exempt them from rules against harming others. This is demonstrated through two examples. The first is a Hospital Trolley problem, where stopping the trolley would save an innocent person on the tracks but cause the patient inside the trolley to die. The second scenario features a Hospital Driverless Car on a narrow road, where stopping would prevent hitting an innocent person, but the patient inside would succumb to their injuries. Woollard mentions that in both cases, stopping should be mandatory. This is because continuing to drive would directly harm the innocent person, who possesses rights protecting them against causal impositions.

While I agree that it is harmful to the innocent person for the car to continue in the same direction, I am still unclear as to why stopping should be required/obvious in the aforementioned cases. The author has not addressed the harm caused to the patient in the car if it stops. If stopping is required because the pedestrian will be harmed, the same reasoning can be given that stopping the car will harm the passenger patient. While one can argue that letting the patient die is letting harm happen rather than actually doing it, I believe that the driverless car with a patient and a pedestrian is more nuanced. This is because the assigned responsibility of the driverless car is to take care of the patient and prevent harm from happening to it. However, choosing to let the patient die in this case is a direct way of harming them. Unlike the previous examples of driverless cars mentioned in the paper, this hospital car is intended to carry and save only the patient and is on the road solely to take it to the hospital.

An opposing viewpoint would argue that the car is responsible for preventing harm to the pedestrian since the pedestrian's presence on the road was not sudden. It highlights the car's obligation to drive safely and avoid causing harm to others. Firstly, the pedestrian is on the same road because of whatever previous incident led them there, and secondly, even if we assume the car is responsible for both the pedestrian and the patient, we don’t have enough information to ascertain what responsibility takes precedence over the other. For example, there can be multiple patients in the car with severe mortality rates where hitting the pedestrian is less damaging. The car's behavior is unresolvable here since stopping for the pedestrian is not morally better than driving.