Design has the potential to tackle huge ethical questions with technology. And right now, one of those conundrums is both a real, practical problem and a philosophical quandary: How should a self-driving car behave when it must choose between hurting or even killing its passenger or a pedestrian?

Co.Design reached out to some of our favorite design firms to see how they would tackle this life-or-death question–and how design might present a better solution–as part of our new conceptual design series, Provocation.

In response to the prompt, the Austin-based studio Argodesign created a product that would let us have it both ways. The studio's conceptual drone is, in essence, a flying airbag. It predicts collisions and zips to the predicted accident site, either inflating to create a layer of padding between car and person or pushing the person out of harm's way. The firm was inspired by a classic comic book cliche: A bad guy is running down a woman with a baby, but not before Superman swoops in to save the day. In this case, Superman happens to be a drone–which is why Argodesign calls them Hero Drones.

Designed specifically for urban and suburban settings where these kinds of driverless vehicle and pedestrian collisions are most likely to occur, the fleet of Hero Drones would sit atop city streetlights. From that vantage point, the drones would survey the streets, using AI to monitor the movements of people and cars on the streets. When the system predicts a collision, it will communicate with the car's AI to ensure that the software has decided to prioritize protecting the passenger at the risk of the pedestrian. Then, the drone disengages from the streetlight and propels itself to the scene, where it then pivots and inflates just before impact. These drones would have to fly fast, obviously, but Ficklin believes that the system's predictive abilities and the ubiquity of streetlights would give the drones enough time to save pedestrians.