This is where a lot of people misunderstand the purpose of the trolley problem as a thought experiment, and why it doesn’t apply to voting or other lesser-evil-ism decisions.
The trolley problem isn’t about whether it would be better for one person or five people to die, but rather about your moral responsibility or culpability in a situation where you have the opportunity to affect the outcome. The reason it’s a “problem” in the first place is because it’s very clear that, absent any other information, it would be better for one person to die than for five people to die, but that, again, absent other information, it’s not clear whether or not you have the right or the obligation to make the decision to pull the lever. The ambiguity and complexity around your relationship to the situation is what makes it a moral dilemma, not the outcome. The answer to whether or not you should pull the lever depends on what ethical framework you apply to the situation, and that’s where the problem lies in the trolley problem.
If you use the trolley problem as a way of saying that the person holding the lever has a clear moral imperative to make the decision to pull the lever, then you’re implying that the trolley problem has a known and obvious solution, which means that all you’re saying is that your ethical framework is the correct one. If that’s the case, then you can just say that. You don’t need the trolley problem, and in fact you’re actually muddying your own message by implying that there’s any sort of moral dilemma at all.
The ideal solution is, as you say, to figure out how to stop the trolley from killing anyone, not to assume that there’s nothing that can be done about it. It’s actually pretty funny that libs like to use the trolley problem to talk about voting. The implication that the trolley requires human sacrifice as a matter of course is a pretty damning indictment of what they’re advocating. I would probably try to argue for my position in a way that doesn’t imply that innocent people have to die in the first place, but I guess that’s not pragmatic enough for them.
I agree with your first two paragraphs especially - the issue is the trolley problem is designed as a thought experiment for exploring a single idea.
The issue with its misuse is that it gets presented almost as proof in itself that there is no third option, nor an infinite future of consequences. The trolley problem was never and could never apply to real life, because life is necessarily far more complex, culpability and obligation are just two of like a million relevant factors.
It’s as absurd as using Schrodinger’s Cat as a way to justify any actions in real life - It’s a thought experiment designed to think about one single idea in a different way; it has practically no relevance to reality.
one must imagine coupling to the runaway trolley at high speed and using your own breaks, like the CSX 8888 incident (wtyp episode 132) (the guy who tried jumping onto the train ended up being dragged 100 feet on the ground before letting go)
The Trolley Problem, an Infantile Disorder
vote
I always imagined my ass futilely trying to untie the people on the track. I’m quick to act but not great at planning my time
Or derail the trolley.
Or shoot the driver.
Y’know, hypothetically.
shooting the trolley was what police tried doing to stop CSX 8888, they tried shooting the emergency brake button and accidentally shot at the wrong button
sucks for them but I’m different 😏
You can stop the train by flipping the switch so that the front wheels are on one track and the back wheels on another
there’s a variant where instead of pulling the lever you can shove a really fat guy in front of it before the switchtrack.
Push the fat man
Yeah, it’s harder to push the big guy than pulling the lever, the more visceral interaction makes killing one person harder. If you are a big lad you could jump in front of the trolley yourself I guess.
The point is to think about the moral imperatives and why you would make one decision over another, not to display an inscrutable moral conundrum to first year Phil students, which is what the meme has become.
But what if one day I might get to drive the trolley?
I looked around on my hard drive and I found ~4 year old quote from the Chapo sub.
[Taps temple with index finger] You can’t have a moral dilemma if you have no morals.
the proles think they’ll be in charge of the lever 
You have received advance information that there will be people tied to the tracks of the trolley today, and you also know that the trolley driver has no idea about this. However, you do not have the money to purchase a ticket to ride on the trolley. Do you break the rules to board the trolley and warn the driver? If you do, you may disturb other passengers.
On those republican/Democrats trolley problems the correct answer is derail the train and kill the conductors
