Autopilot review – brain-teasing drama full of sharp turns

Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh
Playwright Ben Norris takes the ethical problems with self-driving cars as a metaphor for human uncertainty

As we freewheel into the era of the self-driving car, we also go headlong into a set of moral dilemmas. For as long as there is the possibility of an accident, whose safety should the system prioritise – pedestrian or passenger? Should it depend on the age, number and profile of those involved? Who gets to program the computers and how certain are the instructions?

Playwright Ben Norris takes this as a metaphor for uncertainty in general. All it takes is a line of code to affect the behaviour of a vehicle, just as all it takes is a momentary decision to determine how our lives pan out.

At Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 29 August.

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The car made pedestrians second-class citizens. Don’t let driverless vehicles push us off the road altogether | Adam Tranter

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