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They don't have to be safer than driving is today. They can be significantly less safe while still being an improvement for society because drivers will be able

by 794CD01 11y ago

They don't have to be safer than driving is today. They can be significantly less safe while still being an improvement for society because drivers will be able to focus on other activities while travelling instead of wasting that time focusing on driving the car.

Grambo 11y ago
Actually they have to be significantly safer than driving today. People would rather be unsafe and in control than not in control and a tiny bit safer. I know personally if a self driving car could only drive as well as I could then I'd still want to be the one driving.
- oldmanjay 11y ago
  People only have the illusion of safety when in control, and are also demonstrably incapable of judging their own ability to perform tasks. Your criterion won't be taken seriously by anyone involved in policy, because this is already well understood.
  - g8oz 11y ago
    At a certain point the policy question will inevitably be: why should any regular person be even allowed to drive given the superior abilities of the machines? There are certain ideological assumptions that will then have to be debated. Making your own mistakes is a consequence of freedom. Limiting the freedom to make mistakes for the overall benefit to society is not uncontroversial - (see the gun control debate), and contributes to alienation in the Marxist sense of the term. There is more than utility involved here. Just because the trade-off doesn't matter to techno-determinists doesn't mean it it doesn't exist.
    - greenleafjacob 11y ago
      Cars are already extremely regulated. You can only drive at speeds dictated by the government in directions dictated by the government, turn in ways prescribed by the government. Your car has to be identifiable in specific ways by the government. You have a lowered expectation of privacy in a car. I hardly think the argument will be difficult to just prohibit cars.
      - tremon 11y ago
        You can only drive at speeds dictated by the government in directions dictated by the government, turn in ways prescribed by the government Sure... so you're saying that your steering wheel blocks when you're trying to make an uncharted turn? Or that your throttle has a variable hard limit, depending on the road you're on? Where do you live, if I may ask?
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    While I agree with your first sentence, I think you're ignoring the fact that when media get wind of a case like this, it's almost only the irrational opinions of masses that matter. In western democracies, politics - and thus policies - is driven by pandering to the population (and bribes^Wlobbying).
- 794CD01 11y ago
  That's a popular theory of how people behave but it doesn't play out that way. People overwhelmingly choose convenience and low price over safety all the time.
ThrustVectoring 11y ago
There's psychological and game theoretic factors that the safety has to overcome in order to be acceptable. Part of why human drivers are allowed today is because the people who bear the cost of driving decisions are directly involved in making those decisions. Once you give up control to a third party, they need to be significantly better to make it an acceptable choice on the individual level. In other words, I agree that it's better for society, but that "better for society" isn't the metric that gets used for making decisions within the system.
- amelius 11y ago
  > Part of why human drivers are allowed today is because the people who bear the cost of driving decisions are directly involved in making those decisions. This gives me weird visions of Google engineers with a necklace that explodes in the event that one of their cars causes an accident :S
  - amazon_not 11y ago
    I wonder if you've read Fallen Dragon by Peter F. Hamilton? Unremovable, remote controllable lethal necklaces are a central plot device in the mercenary invasion. They are put on randomly chosen civilians as "collateral" to ensure co-operation and disincentive insurgency.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - seanp2k2 11y ago
    The difference there is that one person's mistake driving causes one accident. One person's mistake programming might cause a thousand.
- makip 11y ago
  I see where you're going with this and I agree. A significant consideration is whether owners of self driving cars will have the right to make code modifications to their vehicles. Captured aptly here by Cory Doctrow. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/23/the-problem-with-self-driving-cars-who-controls-the-code https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/23/the-probl... Edit: salient quotes from the article: "Here’s a different way of thinking about [the trolley] problem: if you wanted to design a car that intentionally murdered its driver under certain circumstances, how would you make sure that the driver never altered its programming so that they could be assured that their property would never intentionally murder them?" "If self-driving cars can only be safe if we are sure no one can reconfigure them without manufacturer approval, then they will never be safe." "Your relationship to the car you ride in, but do not own, makes all the problems mentioned even harder."

by 794CD01 11y ago

Grambo 11y ago

Actually they have to be significantly safer than driving today. People would rather be unsafe and in control than not in control and a tiny bit safer. I know personally if a self driving car could only drive as well as I could then I'd still want to be the one driving.

oldmanjay 11y ago
People only have the illusion of safety when in control, and are also demonstrably incapable of judging their own ability to perform tasks. Your criterion won't be taken seriously by anyone involved in policy, because this is already well understood.
- g8oz 11y ago
  At a certain point the policy question will inevitably be: why should any regular person be even allowed to drive given the superior abilities of the machines? There are certain ideological assumptions that will then have to be debated. Making your own mistakes is a consequence of freedom. Limiting the freedom to make mistakes for the overall benefit to society is not uncontroversial - (see the gun control debate), and contributes to alienation in the Marxist sense of the term. There is more than utility involved here. Just because the trade-off doesn't matter to techno-determinists doesn't mean it it doesn't exist.
  - greenleafjacob 11y ago
    Cars are already extremely regulated. You can only drive at speeds dictated by the government in directions dictated by the government, turn in ways prescribed by the government. Your car has to be identifiable in specific ways by the government. You have a lowered expectation of privacy in a car. I hardly think the argument will be difficult to just prohibit cars.
    - tremon 11y ago
      You can only drive at speeds dictated by the government in directions dictated by the government, turn in ways prescribed by the government Sure... so you're saying that your steering wheel blocks when you're trying to make an uncharted turn? Or that your throttle has a variable hard limit, depending on the road you're on? Where do you live, if I may ask?
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  While I agree with your first sentence, I think you're ignoring the fact that when media get wind of a case like this, it's almost only the irrational opinions of masses that matter. In western democracies, politics - and thus policies - is driven by pandering to the population (and bribes^Wlobbying).
794CD01 11y ago
That's a popular theory of how people behave but it doesn't play out that way. People overwhelmingly choose convenience and low price over safety all the time.

ThrustVectoring 11y ago

There's psychological and game theoretic factors that the safety has to overcome in order to be acceptable. Part of why human drivers are allowed today is because the people who bear the cost of driving decisions are directly involved in making those decisions. Once you give up control to a third party, they need to be significantly better to make it an acceptable choice on the individual level. In other words, I agree that it's better for society, but that "better for society" isn't the metric that gets used for making decisions within the system.

amelius 11y ago
> Part of why human drivers are allowed today is because the people who bear the cost of driving decisions are directly involved in making those decisions. This gives me weird visions of Google engineers with a necklace that explodes in the event that one of their cars causes an accident :S
- amazon_not 11y ago
  I wonder if you've read Fallen Dragon by Peter F. Hamilton? Unremovable, remote controllable lethal necklaces are a central plot device in the mercenary invasion. They are put on randomly chosen civilians as "collateral" to ensure co-operation and disincentive insurgency.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- seanp2k2 11y ago
  The difference there is that one person's mistake driving causes one accident. One person's mistake programming might cause a thousand.
makip 11y ago
I see where you're going with this and I agree. A significant consideration is whether owners of self driving cars will have the right to make code modifications to their vehicles. Captured aptly here by Cory Doctrow. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/23/the-problem-with-self-driving-cars-who-controls-the-code https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/23/the-probl... Edit: salient quotes from the article: "Here’s a different way of thinking about [the trolley] problem: if you wanted to design a car that intentionally murdered its driver under certain circumstances, how would you make sure that the driver never altered its programming so that they could be assured that their property would never intentionally murder them?" "If self-driving cars can only be safe if we are sure no one can reconfigure them without manufacturer approval, then they will never be safe." "Your relationship to the car you ride in, but do not own, makes all the problems mentioned even harder."