If you have never heard of the Trolley Problem, it is a standard moral dilemma. It was introduced by the Oxford moral philosopher Philippa Foot in 1967. The problem goes like this: A trolley is speeding down a track, too fast to stop. Just ahead, there are five people tied to the tracks. Seeing this, you notice that there is a junction, with the lever right next to you. If you pull that lever, the train will change course onto a set of tracks that has one person tied to the tracks. The trolley is coming. What do you do? Pull the lever or do nothing?
So, do you know what you would do? Statistically speaking, most people take the utilitarian approach, that is, the most good for the most people, and pull the lever, dooming one to save five. The overwhelming majority of people choose this option. As many as 90% in some studies. When things are this simple, it seems easy to make the utilitarian decision and try to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
Variations have been added to slightly skew this, like “The Fat Man Variation,” in which you are on a bridge and have a chance to push the fat man off, being told his large body would stop the train before it got to the junction. The act of pushing someone tends to turn people off; they often would still rather pull the lever, but have a slightly higher likelihood of doing nothing and dooming the 5 people.
These variations tend to root out the motivation for people’s decisions and where lines are drawn. All this is to try to gather some public consensus on what is morally right or wrong when there are no good options. For example, if someone does nothing because they want to watch more people die or if they have a bias regarding a single person, then they stand to make the “right” decision for the wrong reasons, making it also, in some ways, wrong.
The Widely Accepted Answer
To be clear, while the majority of people choose to switch the track, intentionally choosing to, in their mind, minimize the damage done, there is no stated morally superior option. The fact that a majority of people make the same choice does not make it inherently better or correct. We prove this every day in little ways, as a majority of us do illogical and sometimes downright harmful things. What it does is make our poor decisions relatable, understood, and forgiven.
If you choose to change the tracks, killing one instead of five, the headlines would likely read: “Tragic trolley accident, but one brave person saved five of six lives in danger.” You would sound a bit like a hero by the numbers.
The issue I started to take with this is that the papers could just as likely read “an unqualified bystander rerouted a trolley and killed one person.” There is no way around the reality that, even if you save five people who were about to otherwise randomly die, you consciously killed someone. The slippery slope is precisely this:
What justifies you to take a life, and what responsibility do you have to save one, when you did nothing to cause their demise?
A 2026 version of the variable may center around groups. Pick an assortment of gender, race, religion, or political leaning, and ask yourself if that changes your opinion. One brown woman with purple hair or 5 white guys in MAGA hats seems to be an easy target for an example. What combination makes face-value utilitarianism start to lose its appeal? (I will see you in the comments)
It can’t go without a mention that in one variation, you are saddled with the one or even given the option to save all six at the expense of your own life. Regardless, killing yourself to save strangers remains unpopular.
Why The Pivot?
Honestly, if you had asked me anytime before the last few years, I would have logically joined the masses and killed the one person to save five. The greatest good for the greatest number of people is a worthy goal. We should strive for more of this in the world. However, I can’t say that I longer believe that absolutely. That is the point of this thought experiment: to make you think about where your moral compass points and your obligations lie.
There is a legal responsibility. Laws are supposed to encompass the shared moral beliefs of a society. They state, as clearly as possible, what is permissible and what is not. They outline how we view harm as a collective and create a shared sense of what the rules are, so everyone is on a level playing field in our civilization. That is the goal, at least.
If you rolled your eyes at my reasoning for why we have laws in the first place, because of how it stacks up against our current reality, that is my problem. I don’t know that the laws outline clear and shared morals that serve people, even in a utilitarian fashion.
There was a large part of my adult life where I felt like, if I were to kill one and save five, even before cameras, technology, and Big Brother, that my legal system would have supported my decision through either logic or Good Samaritan laws. I cannot say that I feel the same with enough confidence to pull the lever, even with the best of intentions. I can clearly see paths and examples that would make me a martyr for my well-intentioned, utilitarian-driven action.
There is a Personal Cost. Watching five people die will cause some serious psychological damage. At least it would for me. We are becoming more attuned to this type of trauma, though. We see and hear people dying on TV so much that we are desensitized to what it actually means. We glamorize it. According to YouGov, almost 60% of Americans watch True-Crime shows. Roughly half the scripted shows on major networks a few years ago were Police related, and that doesn’t count the ER-type dramas. TV is violent, or at least is fixated on the emotional toll death takes on us, but that is at least fictional.
Most people have seen someone die, about 94% of people. More than 60% have been exposed to more violent types of death. Still, very few people have been willing participants in these deaths. Pulling the trigger (or lever) is very different. Knowing that you chose to end someone’s life and took physical action to initiate it is not something normal people are going to cope very well with.
The harsh reality is that doing nothing is simply witnessing a tragedy, but the complicity involved in making that choice carries a different weight.
Then there is the X-Factor. The world is more complex than it was in 1960, but even then, and related to this problem, there is an aspect of the unknown. If you really think about it, who is actually qualified enough to pull that lever? It is probably automated now, so who knows if that even works?
My first thought is, if the trolley is going fast enough that it can’t stop for these five people on the tracks, how do I know that I won’t derail it? I can see six people in front of it. How am I to know how many are on that trolley and what additional chaos and harm the derailment could cause?
Furthermore, by putting a trolley on other tracks, how can I know where it goes? A head-on collision with another trolley? Randomly changing a single part in a system that I don’t fully understand can have significant consequences.
If You Are Tied To Tracks in 2026
I hope you are with the one, because I don’t think I will be getting involved in any lever pulling. I choose to do nothing, not out of callousness or bias, but because I am having to accept the harsh reality that tragedies happen, and I cannot be responsible for saving strangers at the unknown cost to myself and those I have sworn to protect, which is not everyone.
No matter which choice I make, it feels like a worse choice than waiving my hands, asking for help, and trying valiantly before failing to save people from a random, but set outcome. I never said I wouldn’t try, but I won’t take on the responsibility of the decision. Whether it is the threat of legal ramifications or eternal torment, wondering if I did the right thing by choosing the one over the five, it doesn’t make sense.
Would I make the same decision to do nothing if my family were on the tracks, probably not. I have a duty and responsibility to them within reason and logic (no, for the cynics, I wouldn’t choose one family member over a hundred strangers in most cases, but gun to my head, take me.). Would I choose to do nothing if I saw a random toddler drowning? No, it is my duty to try and protect others when I can within my ability, and I know how to swim, partly for that reason.
However, in the standard Trolley Problem in 2026, I choose to do nothing. We have made and nurtured a system that necessitates this as a logical and morally sound answer. Other options may not be wrong, but they are not morally superior.
While I believe that each of us can change the world, I do not think that us average, uneventful people will do it in ways that save it singlehandedly. We change the world by the impact we make on those closest to us. We change it by expanding our circle and doing simply the best we can every day. We stop creating more problems, even if we aren’t solving many.
We are fighting a system bigger than us that thrives on our attention. It will do anything to capture it and draw us in, even if that means dastardly things, like tying people to railroad tracks. We cannot be held responsible for that, but we can choose not to participate. Throwing yourself in front of trains rarely makes a difference, but this system cannot function without participation.
Don’t buy what they are selling. Walk away from problems that you only stand to make worse by becoming complicit. It isn’t easy to do nothing, and it doesn’t mean you don’t care. It just means that you know that your energy is better spent elsewhere. It means that you have real autonomy and choice with conviction. It means that you are human and not a script. We need fewer scripts. We need more humanity.
Where do you stand on the Trolley Problem? Do you pull that lever?