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I think every discussion like this should start with each commenter counting verbally to 3,700. That's the number of people killed on roadways worldwide every s

I think every discussion like this should start with each commenter counting verbally to 3,700. That's the number of people killed on roadways worldwide every single day. [1] And that's daily. It's only every few months that we see a story like this, and this one had no fatalities. It's totally fair to criticize Tesla, Autopilot, and/or FSD, but these discussions always implicitly accept that the status quo is acceptable, and whether or not this technology should be allowed is debatable. The status quo is an unimaginable amount of human death and injury that we accept only because it's been normalized. Delaying self-driving cars by one year comes at a cost of up to 1.35 million human lives [1]. That doesn't excuse failures like these, but the context should be understood. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/injury/features/global-road-safety/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/injury/features/global-road-safety/index...

watwut 4y ago
> Delaying self-driving cars by one year comes at a cost of up to 1.35 million human lives [1]. That doesn't excuse failures like these, but the context should be understood. Citation needed. There is nothing so far proving that self driving cars currently have less crashes then humans in comparable conditions. And they disengage in difficult conditions when most crashes happen. Dont just start with assumption "self driving is currently safer" and then go on blame people for not trusting it.
- moduspol 4y ago
  > Dont just start with assumption "self driving is currently safer" and then go on blame people for not trusting it. My claim doesn't depend on that assumption. My claim depends on it being the case someday. If the US tightens regulations on ADAS today, and that results in the day self-driving cars fully replace human-driven ones being 11 years away instead of 10, it has been delayed one year, at a cost of up to 1.35 million human lives.
  - watwut 4y ago
    Delaying self driving cars does not come at the cost of human lives, if those cars are not safer then human driver. If they are less safe with current tech, delaying then saves lives. If they tighten regulation, they are saving lives. Also, mandating companies to put in more testing would force companies to test. Without that, they are economically motivated to make big claims, but to to not invest into reproducible quality.
    - moduspol 4y ago
      The current tech is irrelevant. It is not safer than a human driver, but that's not relevant. If regulation delays the day in the future that it is safer than human drivers and that human drivers are replaced, then it is costing lives. And it would. The only way it wouldn't is if the regulation saves more lives in the meantime than would have been saved by having self-driving cars ubiquitous sooner, but that's tough to argue when we're already losing 3,700 per day.
      - watwut 4y ago
        The excess people killed by self driving cars matter too. Self driving is more dangerous until it is not and it is actual task of regulators to delay it until then. And if regulators won't act, it will never be safe, because it is cheaper to produce unsafe products. It earns more to lie about safety of a product, unless you have functional regulations.

watwut 4y ago

> Delaying self-driving cars by one year comes at a cost of up to 1.35 million human lives [1]. That doesn't excuse failures like these, but the context should be understood. Citation needed. There is nothing so far proving that self driving cars currently have less crashes then humans in comparable conditions. And they disengage in difficult conditions when most crashes happen. Dont just start with assumption "self driving is currently safer" and then go on blame people for not trusting it.

moduspol 4y ago
> Dont just start with assumption "self driving is currently safer" and then go on blame people for not trusting it. My claim doesn't depend on that assumption. My claim depends on it being the case someday. If the US tightens regulations on ADAS today, and that results in the day self-driving cars fully replace human-driven ones being 11 years away instead of 10, it has been delayed one year, at a cost of up to 1.35 million human lives.
- watwut 4y ago
  Delaying self driving cars does not come at the cost of human lives, if those cars are not safer then human driver. If they are less safe with current tech, delaying then saves lives. If they tighten regulation, they are saving lives. Also, mandating companies to put in more testing would force companies to test. Without that, they are economically motivated to make big claims, but to to not invest into reproducible quality.
  - moduspol 4y ago
    The current tech is irrelevant. It is not safer than a human driver, but that's not relevant. If regulation delays the day in the future that it is safer than human drivers and that human drivers are replaced, then it is costing lives. And it would. The only way it wouldn't is if the regulation saves more lives in the meantime than would have been saved by having self-driving cars ubiquitous sooner, but that's tough to argue when we're already losing 3,700 per day.
    - watwut 4y ago
      The excess people killed by self driving cars matter too. Self driving is more dangerous until it is not and it is actual task of regulators to delay it until then. And if regulators won't act, it will never be safe, because it is cheaper to produce unsafe products. It earns more to lie about safety of a product, unless you have functional regulations.