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Just commenting about the "one crash will kill the industry" part - I've heard this repeated many times over the last 20 years (way before self-driving cars wer
by edanm 9y ago
Just commenting about the "one crash will kill the industry" part - I've heard this repeated many times over the last 20 years (way before self-driving cars were close to viable). I've repeated it myself.
But it looks like we're wrong. First of all, there have been crashes with even Tesla's autopilot, and it didn't seem to affect anything.
For another, this same logic would've probably meant that driving itself would never have become popular in the first place, or would've been set back many decades because of car crashes. That doesn't seem to have been the case.
I'm not saying these things can't kill an industry, but I think people are pretty tolerant of even unthinkable dangers beforehand, if the incentive is high enough.
- lunchbreak 9y agoWell said. Though possibly a bigger backlash could come when a self driving car kills someone in a situation where there are only 2 bad options to choose from. Being that with a human driver nothing was pre-planned people move on. But with a self driving car where such situations have to be decided in advance the backlash could be much more significant.
- m_fayer 9y agoTo expand on your thought... I think "one crash will kill the industry" would have been true if this industry had continued to behave in a cowboy caution-to-the-wind (see early Tesla, Uber) fashion. But it really does seem like cooler heads have been prevailing. There's been (at least the appearance of) openness about various incidents, post-mortems, and plenty of lobbying of both the political and marketing varieties. I think this industry, for better or for worse, has made a nest for itself that will be able to absorb a good amount of setbacks, even of the mortal variety.