>I hope we can view these incidents in context. That is extremely unlikely and borders on impossible. AVs have some profound things working against them. The

>I hope we can view these incidents in context. That is extremely unlikely and borders on impossible. AVs have some profound things working against them. They share the problem airplanes have. Human beings are abysmal at risk estimation, and a very large factor of the estimation they do is whether they have personal control. It doesn't matter that planes are much safer than driving, the fact that people don't have direct control of the aircraft makes them feel unsafe to the point that some people are paralyzed by their fear of flying. The same will be true of AVs, and for the same (un)reasons. But I have my own doubts that it will even get far enough for that to pose a serious problem. We have a more general problem with technology in our society. It is nearly unanswerable to the law. Take the Toyota "unintended acceleration" scandal from a few years ago for example. Investigation of that issue determined firmware flaws were the cause, and led to the deaths of over a dozen people. The criminal court case against Toyota unearthed that while the automotive industry had coding practices that established 'required' and 'suggested' techniques, lists of around 100 practices. Toyota followed 4 of them. Firmware developers working for Toyota did not even have access to a bug tracker at all. They did not have access to static analysis tools. They had no role in determining scheduling. They were found 'not guilty' for criminal negligence. The reason given by the court was that because the problem involved software, criminal negligence was impossible. No standards exist governing software, and therefor no company can be held criminally responsible regardless of their practices. During the civil case, they were found guilty and responsible for the deaths, but before the jury could award damages, Toyota settled with the victims families. That legal precedent is terrifying. The first AV to market will inevitably be the one that cuts the most corners and is rushed the most in its development. When it kills someone, as is basically guaranteed to happen by simple statistics, the public will be paying more attention than they did to the Toyota case. And when the public at large hears that tech company executives are literally above the law, the outrage and consequences will likely be swift and severe. Sensing political opportunity, the legislators will descend and could very well end up dictating what language must be used, what coding standards must be followed, what tools must be used (you know the tool vendors will be lobbying hard), etc. The ACM (Association of Computing Machinery) has been discussing this issue for years, debating the potential merits and pitfalls of establishing a licensing system for software engineers. Thus far, the discussion always ends with 'companies would have to pay more for licensed developers and the cost of labor must be contained.' The looming pitfall of avoiding certification and licensing, however, is that government will step in and do it themselves which is virtually guaranteed to enact the greatest pain on the software industry.