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Thousands of people die each year because of stupid mistakes by human drivers. From a utilitarian perspective, pushing for self driving as fast as possible - in

• gambiting 6y ago
  I'm surprised people have this opinion, on HN out of all places. In my view this technology shouldn't be allowed on public roads at all. Not even a little bit. Either it's 100% safe under all circumstances or it shouldn't be allowed. And Tesla definitely shouldn't be allowed to call it autopilot or "full self driving" when it very clearly isn't. And yes, human drivers might be statistically worse - but just because this might be statistically better(and I'm not even sure that's actually the case here) it doesn't mean it should be allowed.
  • Ecstatify 6y ago
    Should everyone on HN have the same opinion, didn’t get that memo? Nothing is 100% safe. By your logic we’d have no medicine, have you ever read the side effects of some medicines.
    • foepys 6y ago
      > By your logic we’d have no medicine, have you ever read the side effects of some medicines. You picked the worst example possible. Medicine is one of the most tightly regulated fields in the world with huge upfront cost and approval processes spanning years or even decades. E.g. the research and approval process of a new antibiotic costs multiple billion dollars before it can be sold. What you see now wrt the Covid-19 vaccine is an international effort that is fast-tracking everything. Regulators are willing to overlook a lot for it to come to market as fast as possible and it's still taking a year or more before it's approved for use on everybody.
      • jcims 6y ago
        I would actually say it's a very good example. That no matter how tightly and strenuously we regulate the safety of a product, 100% safety is an unattainable goal and that given sufficient benefit there is an acceptable level of risk of grave outcomes, including death. This is from a publication on the risk/benefit evaluation of new medical devices from the FDA: Uncertainty – there is never 100% certainty when determining reasonable assurance of safety and effectiveness of a device. However, the degree of certainty of the benefits and risks of a device is a factor we consider when making benefit-risk determinations. pg 11 - https://www.fda.gov/media/99769/download https://www.fda.gov/media/99769/download
      • robertlagrant 6y ago
        Regulated doesn't mean safe. It means a little, but not a lot, compared to the internal practices of the companies under regulation. And regulation in no way - in no way - addresses the fact that medicine isn't close to 100% safe before adoption, and neither should self-driving cars be. As long as they are safer than humans, that's enough. Any other conclusion will cost lives.
  • netflixandkill 6y ago
    Industrial automation that runs the world at large in thousands of ways isn't 100% safe under normal circumstances, much less "all" and yet we have almost entirely automated elevators, high voltage relays, medical equipment, nuclear reactors, autopiloted airplanes, and gas powered furnaces, to name just a few. Most of this automation operates under certain assumptions about its environment and in some cases shuts itself down in a controlled fashion to fail safe in ways that may not be available to cars on roads, but these are not new ethical dilemmas. But to pick just one example, automated saw stops and controllers aren't 100% effective at preventing injuries, but they're still a huge safety improvement over the human population at large just winging it.
  • jojobas 6y ago
    What else not 100% safe shouldn't be allowed? Passenger planes? Cars in general? Cancer medicine? Why wouldn't a community of engineers welcome a statistical improvement over meat drivers?
  • beowulfey 6y ago
    I’m trying to think of a comparison and I can’t come up with one. Something where we’ve relinquished control to something else that we’ve designed. Maybe trusting robots to build the cars themselves or something akin to that. Either way, it’s definitely new territory for us. I am sure there will be debates on this forever but I foresee reasonable arguments by both sides.
    • ggreer 6y ago
      Elevators. Automatic doors. Fly-by-wire. Airplane autopilot. Heck, modern cars are full of things that control aspects of driving for you: Cruise control. Automatic emergency braking. Brake assist. Antilock brakes. Traction control. Many of these features are so beneficial to safety that they are mandatory for new cars.
  • bladegash 6y ago
    If technology is required to be 100% safe under all circumstances, then why aren't humans held to the same standard? For humans, we have a driving test that measures readiness for driving. It includes a margin of error for new drivers and there's also an expectation new drivers suck more than experienced ones (e.g., indirectly via higher insurance rates). I'm having a hard time understanding your position as to why the technology should not be allowed, even if it were to perform statistically better than humans. Is this more of a philosophical perspective?
  • colinmhayes 6y ago
    I'm surprised that people have this opinion, especially on HN out of all places. Seems like most people here are aware of how dangerous human drivers are and the vast possibilities of technology. Seems like you're just needlessly scared since you're arguing for killing people?
  • vlovich123 6y ago
    Isn't this position tautologically the case of letting the perfect getting in the way of the good? I'm not saying Tesla is making a good move here or maybe isn't being careful enough. I don't know yet & am not familiar with how the engineers feel about the development of the product & how bad the corners they cut during development are. That being said, the standard you've laid out is not a good world to live in. I don't know if the tech equipped in the car is sufficient. A huge statistical difference in quality should be sufficient to go with automated cars even if they don't make the same mistakes as humans or sometimes make mistakes humans don't. "Statistical difference" isn't about a coarse level analysis either but situational. If they get into fewer road accidents but kill pedestrians at a larger rate, that's a problem. The problem is the news media only reports the top-line number because analysis is hard.
  • deleted 6y ago
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  • kitsunesoba 6y ago
    If that's the standard, full self-driving won't become a thing for another 50 years at minimum if not longer, because not only is it a crazy high target, the lack of data and improvements brought by real-world usage would hamstring development — there's not but so far test tracks and single-city pilots can go. It's a lot like the "old space" approach to spacecraft engineering, spending decades and hundreds of billions of dollars to develop a rocket that would've been cutting edge half a century ago, all in pursuit of making the initial product perfect.
  • fuzxi 6y ago
    >Either it's 100% safe under all circumstances or it shouldn't be allowed. This would be a much more compelling argument if the technology in question weren't replacing an existing system that is frequently lethal. I do agree that it needs more testing and possibly regulation.
  • mlindner 6y ago
    > Either it's 100% safe under all circumstances or it shouldn't be allowed. And Tesla definitely shouldn't be allowed to call it autopilot or "full self driving" when it very clearly isn't. Then no human should be driving on the roads either or at least every vehicle should have a breathalyzer in it to check your blood alcohol level before the engine can turn on. You're being unreasonable.
• 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
  By the same logic, in march we should just have started distributing whatever attempts at covid vaccines companies thought might be promising. Sure, it might kill a lot of people, but think how many others could be saved! It's reckless to require demonstrated safety and efficacy of drugs! What's missing, using this analogy, is that it is only a net loss to slow down the vaccine that actually works, which we don't know a priori. But if you fast track something that kills a bunch of people, then it might have been a waste. You might not learn enough for it to be worth the cost. What if we push out Tesla's cars and all we learn is that vision based neural networks with the particular models tesla's using today aren't good enough? How many lives would you sacrifice to learn that when a big investment in a more careful testing strategy might say the same thing? To say nothing of the criticisms of the utilitarian perspective. If we believed in it as a society, we'd round up the poor/unskilled/uneducated for mandatory medical experimentation, but thankfully that idea is horrifying.
• tsimionescu 6y ago
  That's only true once the technology seems to be better than human driving. That doesn't seem to have happened so far, and is definitely not true of Tesla's efforts.
• jhpriestley 6y ago
  If the goal is to prevent traffic fatalities then funding self-driving research must be one of the least effective methods. Tens of billions of dollars have been spent and no lives have been saved. If we could achieve cycling usage at the level of the Netherlands, mass transit usage on the level of Japan, and road safety on the level of Norway then we would cut road deaths by 90%. These are ambitious goals but can actually happen and are not an open-ended research project.
  • robertlagrant 6y ago
    How do you know no lives have been saved? I've seen footage of Teslas autobraking to avoid collisions ahead that happen a couple of seconds later. Does that not count?
  • rtsil 6y ago
    Cycling usage and mass transit are strongly related to the culture of society. I believe funding self-driving is more cost-effective than getting Americans to get rid of their cars and use mass transit (and I say this as a non-American that doesn't have a car, and uses mass transit, bike and walking extensively).
  • fuzxi 6y ago
    >These are ambitious goals but can actually happen and are not an open-ended research project. can actually happen *if you live in an urban area
  • mlindner 6y ago
    Well the government isn't exactly funding self-driving very much. Indeed if the government actually had such goals then funding cycling paths, mass transit routes would certainly be better, but the government doesn't have such goals really. So companies develop technology that fits within the government funded systems that exist (namely the government heavily funds building highways and roads) so the systems must be built for that application. Feel free to encourage politicians to change their ways, but until that happens automated vehicle research will continue.
• 3vidence 6y ago
  This argument is silly since it assumes that self driving is somehow both the fastest and most efficient way to save people's lives, however we have working technologies we could implement today that could save lives (breathalyzers for cars, measures of visibility plus warnings, etc). Self driving efforts related to saving lives miss the opportunity costs of doing so.
  • criddell 6y ago
    There's no reason both paths couldn't be pursued.
• decker 6y ago
  Cool, would you volunteer to be one of the extra casualties in order to make self driving work? If not, then why volunteer others?
  • mlindner 6y ago
    Has anyone actually been killed by any Tesla vehicle that was driving automatically (that wasn't in the car itself)? Even on the earlier SAE level 2 "Autopilot" system? I don't remember hearing of any personally.
    • decker 6y ago
      I don't recall any incidents where a third party was killed due to autopilot, however, I don't believe it's reasonable to extrapolate the general case performance based on prior special case performance, especially when the prior special case performance did in fact result in deaths that would clearly have been avoided by a human driver.
      • mlindner 6y ago
        Indeed, but we won't have general case performance until it is acquired. And the statistics show that the prior special case performance did reduce accidents compared to without using the system even if some accidents happened that would not have otherwise happened.