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> If you don't consider the second leading unnatural cause of death in the United States (only recently surpassed by suicide) killing 40,000 people a year an "i

> If you don't consider the second leading unnatural cause of death in the United States (only recently surpassed by suicide) killing 40,000 people a year an "issue", then sure. It is an issue, But not one among the "pressing issues humanity is facing right now" and definitively not worth risking the lives of unsuspecting public. Interesting that you intend to solve the issue of "40,000 people being killed an year" by putting even more dangerous things on the road, that may or may not become better drivers in a period of god knows how long... The only sure thing about SDV is that it ll save these companies a boat load of money during the time they are allowed to operate them on the roads...

stale2002 9y ago
If the "lives being risked" are less than 40k a year, then the math says that yes, it is worth it. Status quo is the risk. It is a decision to make the active choice of killing 40k people a year, to prevent something else.
- buvanshak 9y ago
  To be clear, the parent poster was arguing that we need to start testing these vehicles even before some sort of tests and legal framework can be devised to ensure them to be road worthy.. My argument was that we have no such urgency, and we can and should wait till we have such a framework in place.
  - stale2002 9y ago
    If that delays things by X years, then that mean X times 40k people will die. That's the tradeoff. Yes these rules and regulations are important, but are they worth X times 40k lives? Perhaps one could argue that they are. Just as long as you are honest about the trade off of "I am willing to sacrifice 40K times X lives, because this issue is THAT important".
    - buvanshak 9y ago
      >if that delays things by X years, then that mean X times 40k people will die. >That's the tradeoff. No. With the unknown value X (and numerous other, very relevant unknowns that you have conveniently omitted), that is not a trade off. That is speculation...No, that is worse than speculation. That is just wrong. That is like some one saying "Hey you, you are so unlucky that you might kill X number of people every year if you drive a car, so you should not drive a car. Are the lives of X people really worth risking just so that you can drive around in a car?". See? without the value of X, that is just meaningless. You just can't plug in variables and construct arguments as if they are of certain values and with no sort of quantification. That is like..fundamentally wrong....

stale2002 9y ago

If the "lives being risked" are less than 40k a year, then the math says that yes, it is worth it. Status quo is the risk. It is a decision to make the active choice of killing 40k people a year, to prevent something else.

buvanshak 9y ago
To be clear, the parent poster was arguing that we need to start testing these vehicles even before some sort of tests and legal framework can be devised to ensure them to be road worthy.. My argument was that we have no such urgency, and we can and should wait till we have such a framework in place.
- stale2002 9y ago
  If that delays things by X years, then that mean X times 40k people will die. That's the tradeoff. Yes these rules and regulations are important, but are they worth X times 40k lives? Perhaps one could argue that they are. Just as long as you are honest about the trade off of "I am willing to sacrifice 40K times X lives, because this issue is THAT important".
  - buvanshak 9y ago
    >if that delays things by X years, then that mean X times 40k people will die. >That's the tradeoff. No. With the unknown value X (and numerous other, very relevant unknowns that you have conveniently omitted), that is not a trade off. That is speculation...No, that is worse than speculation. That is just wrong. That is like some one saying "Hey you, you are so unlucky that you might kill X number of people every year if you drive a car, so you should not drive a car. Are the lives of X people really worth risking just so that you can drive around in a car?". See? without the value of X, that is just meaningless. You just can't plug in variables and construct arguments as if they are of certain values and with no sort of quantification. That is like..fundamentally wrong....