The Passengers

In a near-future Britain where driverless cars are mandatory, eight people are shut inside their vehicles when a hacker seizes control. Their doors lock, their routes change and they are told they are likely to die in about two hours. The Hacker broadcasts everything, then announces that only one passenger can be saved and that the public will vote on who it should be.

Libby Dixon, a juror on a vehicle inquest panel deciding who was to blame for a fatal self-driving car crash, finds the Hacker has broken into her courtroom: the jury must speak to each passenger and weigh their lives against one another.

The passengers include a famous actress, a pregnant young woman on a secret mission, a woman escaping a controlling husband, a husband and wife travelling in separate cars, a disabled war veteran and an undocumented immigrant. As their private lives are exposed, the vote becomes a trial of race, gender, religion and age as much as of the people themselves.

John Marrs builds the novel around the trolley problem staged as a global spectacle, with short chapters and many points of view. It is the second book of his Dark Future series, which can be read in any order, and ends on a twist.