German regulators have been working on drafting a set of ethical guidelines to dictate how the artificial intelligence in autonomous vehicles will deal with worst-case scenarios. According to Reuters, an expert government committee is writing what will be the basis for software guidelines that will decide the best possible course of action to protect human life above all else in an autonomous car emergency. While this doesn’t sound very exciting and glamorous, the resulting guidelines and software could prove to be the most important (and possibly controversial) aspect of driverless cars.

“The interactions of humans and machines is throwing up new ethical questions in the age of digitalization and self-learning systems,” German transport minister Alexander Dobrindt said. “The ministry’s ethics commission has pioneered the cause and drawn up the world’s first set of guidelines for automated driving.”