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This is an excellent point. There are two independent causes to this person's death. 1. A human driver grievously injured a pedestrian 2. An AI driver delaye

by slg 3y ago

This is an excellent point. There are two independent causes to this person's death. 1. A human driver grievously injured a pedestrian 2. An AI driver delayed medical care for the injured pedestrian That person is potentially still alive if 2 doesn't happen. They are certainly still alive if 1 doesn't happen. Therefore, 1 deserves more of the blame here. Considering these are two independent causes, we can still be upset that 2 happened and work to stop it from happening again. But we also shouldn't get so concerned with 2 that it causes us to increase the occurrences of 1 (e.g. by overzealously legislating away a future in which AI drivers are drastically safer than humans).

spondylosaurus 3y ago
I disagree that 1 deserves more of the blame here—a blocked ambulance is blocked from attending to all medical emergencies, not just medical emergencies caused by (human-powered) car accidents. If the robotaxi had blocked the ambulance from reaching someone who'd just had a stroke, blame would rest 100% on the robotaxi. And there's no telling that this won't happen again.
- slg 3y ago
  >If the robotaxi had blocked the ambulance from reaching someone who'd just had a stroke, blame would rest 100% on the robotaxi. Yes, but that isn't what happened here. You are no longer assigning blame for a real incident. You are theorizing about the potential damage that AI drivers can cause in similar situations. But once you do that, you also have to consider the tradeoffs between human and AI drivers and all the deaths that human drivers cause. Otherwise, you aren't actually prioritizing the overall safety of our communities.
  - spondylosaurus 3y ago
    > You are no longer assigning blame for a real incident. You are theorizing about the potential damage that AI drivers can cause in similar situations. I am! Because I think that's a useful thing to do. > But once you do that, you also have to consider the tradeoffs between human and AI drivers and all the deaths that human drivers cause. Also yes—and one factor right now is that we have a robust EMS system designed to respond to medical emergencies, including road accidents. If the near-future tradeoff is that robotaxis (1) coexist alongside human-piloted cars, rather than replacing them outright, which means road accidents will continue to happen, and (2) robotaxis hinder ambulances from reaching humans in need, including (but not limited to) humans who were struck by cars piloted by other humans, I think that's a poor tradeoff. If it were possible to jump past the messy middle part and immediately get to the "all cars are autopiloted, except ambulances, which aren't hindered by autopiloted vehicles in any way," then of course that sounds great! But it's precisely the messy middle part that worries me. For better or worse, human drivers aren't going away anytime soon. And you rightfully point out that human drivers are prone to accidents. Which is all the more reason that EMS services are critical in the near-term. (But also, counterfactually speaking, it is absolutely the robotaxi's fault that the person died. Had the ambulance been unhindered, they would have had a chance at life after receiving proper medical care; since the ambulance was hindered, they didn't get that care and died as a result.)
    - slg 3y ago
      If you are talking about these in general terms about a hypothetical future, I don't think one example of medical care being delayed is very strong data compared to the 42,939 motor vehicle deaths the IIHS reported in 2021. >(But also, counterfactually speaking, it is absolutely the robotaxi's fault that the person died. Had the ambulance been unhindered, they would have had a chance at life after receiving proper medical care; since the ambulance was hindered, they didn't get that care and died as a result.) I'll take the certainty of life for that pedestrian if they weren't hit by a human driver over the "chance at life" that would have come from quicker medical care.
      - spondylosaurus 3y ago
        But they were hit by a human driver. 42,939 people were struck and killed by human drivers. So in these present circumstances, delaying ambulance care (which is the immediate, not-hypothetical question here) is inexcusable.
  - anakaine 3y ago
    The incident being discussed here is the blocking of an ambulance. The root cause for the ambulance being dispatched is immaterial to the argument. The position you have outlined creates a second argument, and its being called out as a distraction. Its akin to "Children eat less fruit when the cupboard is full of sugar" and then someone countering "I don't like pasta, why aren't we discussing that?". They seem related because they are about food preferences, but they are not because the original study was discussing the presence of sugary foods and children bearing on health, not your personal preferences as an adult. In this case the discussion is about an automatic vehicle failing to move aside for an ambulance, and it is not about why that ambulance was attending a job, or about what that job is. Changing the topic does a disservice to the issue.
- Gigachad 3y ago
  The ambulance could have been blocked by normal well behaving traffic too. Seems like the optimal solution would be for most roads to have a separate bus/bike lane which normal traffic can not ever use, then in emergencies it can be used as a fast lane around traffic.
doublerabbit 3y ago
Equal blame to both. Both of them caused death. One by causing the potential death and the other stopping the remediation of death. The difference is you can sentence a person. A robot, not such.
- slg 3y ago
  >The difference is you can sentence a person to court. A robot, not such. People generally don't end up facing much legal trouble when killing a pedestrian in an accident. It usually requires negligence. I don't know enough about this accident (or the Cruise vehicle's behavior) to say that anyone was negligent.
ryandrake 3y ago
I don't think OP is talking about assigning blame in this particular case: The point is that a huge and arguably bigger problem (to the tune of ~40K deaths per year in the US) is buried in one sentence in the middle of the article. The USA has kind of thrown up its collective hands and declared the danger of car accidents to be unsolvable. We treat it like an inevitable fact of life, now. The most the USA does, regulation-wise, are mild safety regulations on car manufacturers with tons of loopholes. There's relatively little penalty for drivers who accidentally injure or kill with their cars, and almost no liability on the car manufacturer. How does the saying go? If you want to kill someone and minimize your punishment, your best bet is to "accidentally" hit them with your car.
- slg 3y ago
  >I don't think OP is talking about assigning blame in this particular case To be clear, I'm only talking about this specific case in these terms because the coincidence of it being a human driver which caused the medical emergency makes this a great example to highlight all the points you and OP are talking about. We are in agreement on all those points.

by slg 3y ago

spondylosaurus 3y ago

I disagree that 1 deserves more of the blame here—a blocked ambulance is blocked from attending to all medical emergencies, not just medical emergencies caused by (human-powered) car accidents. If the robotaxi had blocked the ambulance from reaching someone who'd just had a stroke, blame would rest 100% on the robotaxi. And there's no telling that this won't happen again.

slg 3y ago
>If the robotaxi had blocked the ambulance from reaching someone who'd just had a stroke, blame would rest 100% on the robotaxi. Yes, but that isn't what happened here. You are no longer assigning blame for a real incident. You are theorizing about the potential damage that AI drivers can cause in similar situations. But once you do that, you also have to consider the tradeoffs between human and AI drivers and all the deaths that human drivers cause. Otherwise, you aren't actually prioritizing the overall safety of our communities.
- spondylosaurus 3y ago
  > You are no longer assigning blame for a real incident. You are theorizing about the potential damage that AI drivers can cause in similar situations. I am! Because I think that's a useful thing to do. > But once you do that, you also have to consider the tradeoffs between human and AI drivers and all the deaths that human drivers cause. Also yes—and one factor right now is that we have a robust EMS system designed to respond to medical emergencies, including road accidents. If the near-future tradeoff is that robotaxis (1) coexist alongside human-piloted cars, rather than replacing them outright, which means road accidents will continue to happen, and (2) robotaxis hinder ambulances from reaching humans in need, including (but not limited to) humans who were struck by cars piloted by other humans, I think that's a poor tradeoff. If it were possible to jump past the messy middle part and immediately get to the "all cars are autopiloted, except ambulances, which aren't hindered by autopiloted vehicles in any way," then of course that sounds great! But it's precisely the messy middle part that worries me. For better or worse, human drivers aren't going away anytime soon. And you rightfully point out that human drivers are prone to accidents. Which is all the more reason that EMS services are critical in the near-term. (But also, counterfactually speaking, it is absolutely the robotaxi's fault that the person died. Had the ambulance been unhindered, they would have had a chance at life after receiving proper medical care; since the ambulance was hindered, they didn't get that care and died as a result.)
  - slg 3y ago
    If you are talking about these in general terms about a hypothetical future, I don't think one example of medical care being delayed is very strong data compared to the 42,939 motor vehicle deaths the IIHS reported in 2021. >(But also, counterfactually speaking, it is absolutely the robotaxi's fault that the person died. Had the ambulance been unhindered, they would have had a chance at life after receiving proper medical care; since the ambulance was hindered, they didn't get that care and died as a result.) I'll take the certainty of life for that pedestrian if they weren't hit by a human driver over the "chance at life" that would have come from quicker medical care.
    - spondylosaurus 3y ago
      But they were hit by a human driver. 42,939 people were struck and killed by human drivers. So in these present circumstances, delaying ambulance care (which is the immediate, not-hypothetical question here) is inexcusable.
- anakaine 3y ago
  The incident being discussed here is the blocking of an ambulance. The root cause for the ambulance being dispatched is immaterial to the argument. The position you have outlined creates a second argument, and its being called out as a distraction. Its akin to "Children eat less fruit when the cupboard is full of sugar" and then someone countering "I don't like pasta, why aren't we discussing that?". They seem related because they are about food preferences, but they are not because the original study was discussing the presence of sugary foods and children bearing on health, not your personal preferences as an adult. In this case the discussion is about an automatic vehicle failing to move aside for an ambulance, and it is not about why that ambulance was attending a job, or about what that job is. Changing the topic does a disservice to the issue.
Gigachad 3y ago
The ambulance could have been blocked by normal well behaving traffic too. Seems like the optimal solution would be for most roads to have a separate bus/bike lane which normal traffic can not ever use, then in emergencies it can be used as a fast lane around traffic.

doublerabbit 3y ago

Equal blame to both. Both of them caused death. One by causing the potential death and the other stopping the remediation of death. The difference is you can sentence a person. A robot, not such.

slg 3y ago
>The difference is you can sentence a person to court. A robot, not such. People generally don't end up facing much legal trouble when killing a pedestrian in an accident. It usually requires negligence. I don't know enough about this accident (or the Cruise vehicle's behavior) to say that anyone was negligent.

ryandrake 3y ago

I don't think OP is talking about assigning blame in this particular case: The point is that a huge and arguably bigger problem (to the tune of ~40K deaths per year in the US) is buried in one sentence in the middle of the article. The USA has kind of thrown up its collective hands and declared the danger of car accidents to be unsolvable. We treat it like an inevitable fact of life, now. The most the USA does, regulation-wise, are mild safety regulations on car manufacturers with tons of loopholes. There's relatively little penalty for drivers who accidentally injure or kill with their cars, and almost no liability on the car manufacturer. How does the saying go? If you want to kill someone and minimize your punishment, your best bet is to "accidentally" hit them with your car.

slg 3y ago
>I don't think OP is talking about assigning blame in this particular case To be clear, I'm only talking about this specific case in these terms because the coincidence of it being a human driver which caused the medical emergency makes this a great example to highlight all the points you and OP are talking about. We are in agreement on all those points.