Just standing by makes total sense. By participating you become part of the problem.

If you pull the lever, your direct action kills a person. Legally saving 5 people does not offset the murder of a single person. This is no special case like self defense. Congrats for saving 5 people, you still go to prison as a murderer! Train company has responsibility to save those 5 people, not some random stranger.

The person at lever would became active participant on that train disaster. All we know the train could go too fast, apderail and kill 100 people.

> Just standing by makes total sense. By participating you become part of the problem.

Consider also the variation of the problem where you're a surgeon, you have 5 patients, and one healthy person whose organs/blood/... could save all 5 if only you murdered the one... (but none by simply maiming them, i.e. one needs a heart, one a stomach, one a liver, one so much of this particular kind of blood that you'd have to kill the donor, etc).

> The person at lever would became active participant on that train disaster. All we know the train could go too fast, apderail and kill 100 people.

Standard philosophical interpretations would reject this possibility as impossible (the purpose of the question is to have a simplified environment to probe ethical beliefs - not to reflect reality). I'd also say even outside of that this is like saying you have to consider the possibility that by wearing a green sweater you might distract a driver and cause an accident - you might - but so might doing literally anything else - it's not a foreseeable outcome and has no ethical weight as a result.