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It seems to me like as soon as you can demonstrate that the cars are safer than the average driver, they should be okayed for road use. An absolutely staggering
by ksdale 8y ago
It seems to me like as soon as you can demonstrate that the cars are safer than the average driver, they should be okayed for road use. An absolutely staggering number of people die in car crashes. People will of course die in and around autonomous vehicles as well, but the key metric is whether autonomous vehicles cause fewer deaths than the average driver.
Similarly, you could have a late stage cancer drug that kills half the people who take it and saves the other half and it provides a massive benefit if 100% if all those people were going to die otherwise. The fact that a lot of people die is not the only factor to be considered. What matters is how the ultimate outcomes are changed. It would be quite irresponsible to say that the cancer drug shouldn't be allowed solely because it kills half the people who take it.
- sorokod 8y agoThis still leaves the question of liability. In the case of cancer treatment I assume that patients are required to sign some sort of waver. Don't see how this can work in the self driving car case as some of the victims may not have signed such a waver. This leaves some sort of bulk protection for manufacturers ?
- ksdale 8y agoI don't know what will actually happen but I'm partial to strict liability for manufacturers. If the cars actually cause fewer accidents than regular cars, then even if manufacturers are liable for every accident, the total cost would be less than what people currently spend on car insurance. The cost would be initially paid by manufacturers and I'm assuming passed on to drivers through the purchase price, resulting in basically the system we have now, without the drivers of driverless cars having to carry their own insurance... Sounds good in theory, anyway