My take on the trolley problem is that the "return" of knowing how to act in a situation like that isn't worth the cost of doing the exercise. There are an infinite number of horrible scenarios that could be similarly devised (which of your two children would you eat first, if you were forced to eat one?) and the mental cost of thinking through each one would be enormous. Meanwhile, if you ever were in an actual situation where there were only two terrible choices and no other way out and you had to choose one of the two... then it would be completely reasonable and ethical (and human) to fail to choose anything in the hope that some other solution to appear. Or, for that matter, to panic and choose either choice at random. People could argue you didn't make the ideal choice, but no one could say you didn't make a reasonable one, under the circumstances.