Actually, death by elevator is extremely unlikely. Comparatively staircases are death traps. Source by googling a bit (you can find many more): http://www.life

Actually, death by elevator is extremely unlikely. Comparatively staircases are death traps. Source by googling a bit (you can find many more): http://www.lifeinsurancequotes.org/additional-resources/deadly-statistics/ http://www.lifeinsurancequotes.org/additional-resources/dead... (1 in 10,440,000). That said I wouldn't trust an elevator in China or what you would consider underdeveloped countries (incorrectly called 3rd world) (I have heard various stories of cutting corners and lack of inspection). Self-driving cars don't need to be 10x better, but they are going to be. Humans introduce a delay of 1sec in best cases which is in the same order of magnitude to a car going 60 to 0. Again as mentioned above by others, self-driving cars don't experience fatigue, attention fatigue, emotions, focal vision degradation due to light conditions etc. Uber tried to cut corners from what is apparent [to me and quite a few others I guess]. I am really trying hard to imagine a scenario where the LiDAR would have missed the pedestrian. From my knowledge there are no stealth-material-dressed pedestrians out there, no matter how cool that idea would be for a movie. Try to check youtube about videos of the Uber car's behaviour in San Francisco and you would see issues a year ago. Driving conditions in Phoenix are much better (personal experience and I have witnessed self-driving cars in both cities). Uber needs to drastically improve their quality assurance and scenarios. (I am not trying to reach any conclusions and pass judgment without having all the evidence at hand. Even though my comments are extremely critical.) I think it is a good idea we Waymo, Uber, etc propose a standard for adoption with different levels and an independent committee argues and improves on it and we reach a common list of milestones. I think otherwise state governments are making decisions on a whim. Of course that path is a public relation nightmare as they will have to accept existing issues. Nobody wants to write down there is a 0.001% a pedestrian will die in this scenario, even if with a human driver behind the wheel the chance would be higher; for instance 1 or 10% or even 50%.