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I'm very happy for self driving cars to move 30 years into the future if that means not leaving their CPUs open to known vulnerabilities.

by gnode 9y ago

LeifCarrotson 9y ago
1.25 million people die in auto-related accidents each year. That's one person every 25 seconds. If you are willing to delay the onset of self-driving cars by 30 years, that's a lot of blood. I agree there is a balance point that's not 1.25x30 million - some will still die after self-driving cars are introduced. There may even be some vulnerabilities exploited (but I strongly doubt that hacks will amount to anything approaching 1.25 million people per year - the media will hype up crashes where the self driving car or its security system was at fault as if it did, while ignoring the everyday fatal accidents with nothing except maybe an advisory to avoid that road on your morning commute). And as critical safety issues like maximum speed enforcement, drunk driving enforcement, helmets on motorcycles, seat belts, and child restraints trickle down into developing countries and older used cars, the number per year will - I hope - drop. But one or two more have died somewhere since you started reading this comment. Still want to delay it?
- perl4ever 9y ago
  Everyone dies exactly once, no matter what they do, so I question whether driving causes any deaths at all. I think the comparison might need to be put in terms of quality adjusted person-years of life lost or something. People get tunnel vision when focused on optimizing a certain metric. If nobody was driving, how much would life expectancy go up?
  - LeifCarrotson 9y ago
    That only strengthens the argument. People die from heart disease, cancer, respiratory failure, Alzheimer's, strokes etc. in old age. Reducing one of those factors would give few additional high-quality person-years of life. Auto accidents bring death to younger people who, in the absence of that catastrophe, would be expected to live many more years.

I'm very happy for self driving cars to move 30 years into the future if that means not leaving their CPUs open to known vulnerabilities.

by gnode 9y ago

I'm very happy for self driving cars to move 30 years into the future if that means not leaving their CPUs open to known vulnerabilities.

LeifCarrotson 9y ago

1.25 million people die in auto-related accidents each year. That's one person every 25 seconds. If you are willing to delay the onset of self-driving cars by 30 years, that's a lot of blood. I agree there is a balance point that's not 1.25x30 million - some will still die after self-driving cars are introduced. There may even be some vulnerabilities exploited (but I strongly doubt that hacks will amount to anything approaching 1.25 million people per year - the media will hype up crashes where the self driving car or its security system was at fault as if it did, while ignoring the everyday fatal accidents with nothing except maybe an advisory to avoid that road on your morning commute). And as critical safety issues like maximum speed enforcement, drunk driving enforcement, helmets on motorcycles, seat belts, and child restraints trickle down into developing countries and older used cars, the number per year will - I hope - drop. But one or two more have died somewhere since you started reading this comment. Still want to delay it?

perl4ever 9y ago
Everyone dies exactly once, no matter what they do, so I question whether driving causes any deaths at all. I think the comparison might need to be put in terms of quality adjusted person-years of life lost or something. People get tunnel vision when focused on optimizing a certain metric. If nobody was driving, how much would life expectancy go up?
- LeifCarrotson 9y ago
  That only strengthens the argument. People die from heart disease, cancer, respiratory failure, Alzheimer's, strokes etc. in old age. Reducing one of those factors would give few additional high-quality person-years of life. Auto accidents bring death to younger people who, in the absence of that catastrophe, would be expected to live many more years.