For those unfamiliar of what the "trolley problem" is, it runs something like this:
Supposed that a runaway tram is heading down the track towards a group of five people. Now suppose that in between the runaway tram and the group of five people, is a set of points. If you pull the switch, the points move and instead of killing the group of five people, the tram moves onto a slip track where there is an unsuspecting worker who will be killed instead.
Do you pull the switch?
In this version of the problem, most people would say that they would pull the switch and move the points; thus sending the trolley onto the siding and killing the one worker, rather than the five people. This decision is mostly grounded in utility - one person dead is a better outcome this five people dead.
If you go back and read Ms Foot's original work though, she sets up the problem within a general discussion of a legal framework. As I live in New South Wales, then the relevant piece of legislation which would cover the trolley problem is the Crimes Act 1900 and it has this to say:
(a) Murder shall be taken to have been committed where the act of the accused, or thing by him or her omitted to be done, causing the death charged, was done or omitted with reckless indifference to human life, or with intent to kill or inflict grievous bodily harm upon some person, or done in an attempt to commit, or during or immediately after the commission, by the accused, or some accomplice with him or her, of a crime punishable by imprisonment for life or for 25 years.
- Section 18, Crimes Act 1900
And:
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/ca190082/s211.html
(1) A person who:
(a) does any act on or in connection with the operation of a railway, or
(b) omits to do any act on or in connection with a railway that it is the person’s duty to do,
with the intention of causing the death of, inflicting bodily injury on or endangering the safety of any person who is on the railway, or who is in or on any locomotive or other rolling stock on the railway, is liable to imprisonment for 25 years.
- Section 211-1, Crimes Act 1900
I wonder if the shadow of the law changes people's opinions about how to think about this. Before, there was only the utilitarian trade off between five people and one person but as soon as you introduce the law, then things begin to change for most people I suspect.
As I understand it, a magistrate would look at the act of pulling the switch and sending the trolley onto the siding as a deliberate act. As soon as you start talking about the deliberateness of actions and especially with reference to the Crimes Act, then pulling the switch begins to look more like outright murder. More than likely, a magistrate would see the act of pulling the switch as a violation of the Crimes Act and order a gaol sentence in accordance with the law.
I am not an ethicist or a magistrate and so I don't know whether a judge would look at what a railway employee's duty is to do. Is omitting to flip the switch and immoral act, when it would cause the deaths of five people instead of one? Does simply the act being present in what is a horrible situation, constitute a case of moral obligation or duty to act?
From a moral standpoint, is it better to actively commit murder than through inaction to cause the deaths of five people? The Crimes Act seems to think that it isn't. I think that it would be very difficult to prove negligence if someone didn't pull the switch, if they weren't even a railway employee. Probably the act of touching the switch in the first place is a violation of the law because that would mean operating railway property without authorization. On the other hand, if the person flipping the switch was a railway employee, then maybe they could argue that they had a duty of care to the public.
There is a second iteration of the trolley problem; which generally reads something like this:
As before, a trolley is hurtling down a track towards five people. You are on a bridge under which it will pass, and you can stop it by putting something very heavy in front of it. As it happens, there is a very fat man next to you – your only way to stop the trolley is to push him over the bridge and onto the track, killing him to save five. Should you proceed?
In the second scenario, saving the five people means pushing a fat man in front of the trolley. Most people when pressed would argue that pushing the fat man onto the tracks would be wrong, even if they'd argued in favour of pulling the switch in the first scenario.
Again, the Crimes Act has this to say:
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/ca190082/s211.html
(2) A person who:
(a) does any act on or in connection with the operation of a railway, or
(b) omits to do any act on or in connection with the operation of a railway that it is the person’s duty to do,
with the intention of causing any locomotive or other rolling stock on the railway to be derailed, destroyed or damaged, is liable to imprisonment for 14 years.
- Section 211-2, Crimes Act 1900
As before, a magistrate would would look at the act of pushing the fat man in front of the trolley as a deliberate act. Deliberate acts with reference to the Crimes Act look very much like murder. I've even heard variations on this where instead of a random fat man, the person who you push in front of the trolley is a villain who has tied up the five people and put them on the railway tracks. Time and time again though, I have seen in courts where magistrates have reminded offenders that it isn't for the general public to self administer justice but for the police to enforce the law and for judges to make rulings and interpret the law; so destroying a villain, isn't going to acquit you either.
I have read various studies based on the trolley problem and the results generally come out to be that, for about 80% of the time people will pull the switch to make the trolley change lines but they'll baulk at pushing the fat man in front of the trolley. What this says about the human psyche is that is probably a trade-off between the utility of happiness and personal responsibility. Speaking for myself, I probably wouldn't pull the switch because I don't want to be personally responsible for someone's death and I certainly wouldn't want to push the fat man in front of the trolley; however, if you change the stakes, I probably might have pushed a villain who tied up the five people and put them on the railway line.
This whole problem though is flawed. What people say that they will do in theory is totally different to what they will do in the real world. In some respects it is like trying to extrapolate the entire universe from a crumb of black forest cake. The other thing which I think is really weird is that anyone thinks that pushing someone in front of a trolley is remotely going to slow it down. A "runaway" trolley car is probably doing in excess of thirty miles an hour and at those speeds I don't care how massive the man is that you push in front of the trolley, if he gets hit, he's probably going to be ripped apart at the joints and the trolley would still go on its terrible journey of destruction. This is the problem with thought experiments - it's really easy to break the apparatus.
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