7 ms·

Our Self-Driving Cars Will Save Lives, but They Will Kill Some of You First

66 points by sundaeofshock 3y ago

inamberclad 3y ago
I know this article is satire, but it certainly strikes a chord. Putting big metal robots capable of moving at highway speed in close proximity to squishy humans is going to cause issues. It might be the human's fault. It might be the vehicle's fault. It might be completely unrelated. However, there are industries like aviation that take these issues seriously. They're investigated, reported, and learned from. We need to do the same for autonomous vehicles if they're actually going to be safe. This means we need an open, independent body outside of industry control, like the NTSB or NHTSA that can produce in depth, transparent, and publicly available reports that manufacturers can't bury or buy away. On the other side, we, the (future) passengers need to be conscious of these safety issues. We need to hold companies accountable for fixing flaws in autonomous vehicles. Airplane accidents can be spectacularly big, which captivates the public. I'm worried that car accidents will just be too small for enough people to care, and therefore we will continue to have a trickle of fatalities in every city and we will never be free from cars.
- JumpinJack_Cash 3y ago
  > > However, there are industries like aviation that take these issues seriously. They're investigated, reported, and learned from If everything were to be as safe as aviation the whole world would come to a screeching halt standstill. And besides they do it to protect the 200M plane not the passengers because those same passengers enter in the subway or a mall or a stadium or a train 15 mins after they disembark from the 200M plane, and they could bring (or face someone with) an assault rifle without facing any screening or x-rays or even an ID check I don’t like self driving cars but if the bar to plow ahead with deployment of a new tech is commercial aviation post 9/11 then we can call the end of technological improvement already.
  - woodruffw 3y ago
    There's a lot of speculation here: aviation manages to be simultaneously extremely safe and a cornerstone of the global economy. It's unclear why other modes of transportation can't do the same; more precisely, it's unclear why private cars get put in the "acceptably dangerous" bucket when just about everything else is astoundingly safe (trains, planes, public & private buses, etc.). (Independently: the bigger reason the FAA and airlines take security seriously is because consumers demand that they do, not just because the planes themselves are expensive. Humans are notoriously bad at estimating risk.)
    - IanCal 3y ago
      Cars are extremely safe. They're driven by barely trained humans which causes the problems. Give only a small fraction of people the ability to drive after significant training, and make driving their full time job, and you'll probably see crashes decline significantly.
    - renewiltord 3y ago
      This is why I think we should never have brought in unleaded gasoline. Flying still uses leaded gasoline because regulations are written in blood. Pretty insane that we just let car manufacturers switch to this when a properly regulated transportation system would never consider such a high risk operation. It’s probably best we return to the tried, true, and most importantly safe system: leaded gasoline.
      - woodruffw 3y ago
        This is clearly meant to be sarcasm, but I think you've got your facts wrong: commercial jet airplanes don't use leaded gasoline. They use Jet-A and similar formulations, which are essentially just kerosene[1] and contain no lead[2]. (I think you're thinking of avgas, which is used by piston-driven engines. These don't appear much in commercial aviation anymore.) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_fuel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_fuel [2]: https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/leaded-aviation-fuel-and-environment https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/leaded-aviation-fuel-and-enviro...
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  ~40k people die in the US from human caused car accidents every year (~12.9 deaths per 100,000 people, ~1.37 deaths per 100 million miles traveled), and we're getting squeamish about the robot that never gets tired, drunk, or inattentive? If you want to be free from cars, build walkable and carless cities people can afford and want to move to. We can then discuss sunsetting mass automobile infra (which is very unlikely, although infra spending can be weighted to more efficient urban development, mass transit, bicycle infra, etc vs automobile centric systems). Until then, the need for autonomous vehicles is an inconvenient truth. > This means we need an open, independent body outside of industry control, like the NTSB or NHTSA that can produce in depth, transparent, and publicly available reports that manufacturers can't bury or buy away. Strongly agree.
  - add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
    > 40k people You're jumping to a quantitative comparison because that's simpler and more obvious, but the right way to think about it is qualitatively. We have over half a century of understanding of modern human driving patterns. We know the ceiling on the number of accidents/deaths that humans will cause. We know that if it changes, it will change slowly. AI works differently. An update to code or models wipes out all expectations we've learned from prior versions. In short, the entire fleet of autonomous vehicles can change behavior overnight with a software update and become murder tanks. Nothing will ever happen to all human drivers at once. Some small percentage will be drunk at any given time. We'll never all wake up with a new drunk version of ourselves at the same time. I don't mean to say that autonomous technology could never work in principal. But we know that this SV in practice has too much hubris and too little oversight to deploy sensitive products responsibly, or with attention to any values above profit and growth.
    - ianbutler 3y ago
      That's what regulation is for, we have a good example in the FAA here, now we'll need something like the FAVA (Federal Autonomous Vehicle Administration) to design regulation for autonomous cars. We have a lot of precedent at this point on how to handle new ambiguous human advancements. Typically it goes, discovery, wild west, blood, regulation, standard part of society. Rinse and repeat.
- Buttons840 3y ago
  You say we need to investigate autonomous vehicle crashes, I agree. We haven't done this with people because there's not much to investigate; someone drinks, drives, and crashes, there's not much to gain from serious scientific investigation here. Autonomous vehicles are different and we would benefit from more focused scientific investigation of autonomous vehicle accidents.
  - bobbylarrybobby 3y ago
    The idea that there's not much to investigate after an accident — that every accident is idiosyncratic — is one of the great lies of the auto industry (and their buddies, transportation planners).
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  > We need to hold companies accountable for fixing flaws in autonomous vehicles. Don't we even just start getting a chance at doing that with autonomous vehicles? When a car crash happens and driver is found at fault, we can say "let's fix driver training to prevent this from happening again!" but humans are diverse, many don't pay attention in driver's ed, and they retain learnings at different rates, so this isn't going to work very well. With a self driving car, at least, since the software is replicated in many vehicles (while humans aren't), we have an actual chance improving on the situation over time.
SCAQTony 3y ago
Perhaps better rapid transit could be quicker and safer than driving in amy form. Perhaps designers should design cities around rapid transit rather than building rapid transit after the cities have been built.
- thereisnospork 3y ago
  It won't, at least not in the near term: Cars are on the precipice of both becoming immensely greener (electric) and immensely more practical (self-driving) than the status-quo. The transit-equilibrium is going to shortly and rapidly shift towards cars, not away from them.
  - arcticbull 3y ago
    They're better, but I'm not ready to call them immensely greener. They're the same order of magnitude of impact, all things considered. Creating an electric car battery emits as much CO2 as creating a whole new gas vehicle from scratch. Depending on the size of the battery and on the green-ness of the grid it's attached to, it takes anywhere from 20,000 to 90,000 miles of driving an EV to reach break-even against a gasoline car. Then it has to be replaced after 100-200,000 miles. Then there's the environmental impact of lithium, copper, etc, extraction. Of course you have to consider that private ownership requirements and mandating parking minimums, free parking, etc, are a massive regressive burden on the poor. Between fuel/power, maintenance, insurance, tickets, tolls, parking, interest, payments, etc, you're liable to spend a half million dollars over your life on your car. Why? Why not retire sooner, or leave more to your kids? Freedom is your ability to go anywhere you want any time you want, it shouldn't be defined by your ownership of a very expensive metal box. The environmental benefits are quite likely to be wiped out by the growth of the car market in for instance India and China.
    - thereisnospork 3y ago
      I'm not quite sure how to parse your reply - Your definition of freedom is most efficiently accomplished by owning a very expensive metal box, only to be surpased by an expensive automous metal box. Sure it's an expensive thing, but it buys utility and it's not as if they alternatives are appreciably cheaper to offset their downsides. Perhaps regrettably, most of the USA isn't Tokyo or NYC where a car is a net burden.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
patrick451 3y ago
> Our streets and highways are dangerous, and it’s clear that the current system isn’t working. In 1970, there were about 26 traffic fatalities per 100,000. Today, that number is down over 50% to 12. We are doing something right.
- paulryanrogers 3y ago
  That stat doesn't capture all the life altering injuries or financial losses. Cars are incredibly powerful and dangerous compared to lesser modes like walking, bicycling, or even scooters.
  - Aloha 3y ago
    If you did look at life altering injuries and financial losses, you'd find fewer of those too - cars today are measurably safer, from tires, to better seatbelts, to airbags, to ABS - cars in virtually every way are safer. I'm actually reasonably certain that bicycles and scooters are more dangerous than cars. The one exception to this is danger to others, modern cars are probably more dangerous to pedestrians than cars in 1976.
    - arcticbull 3y ago
      > I'm actually reasonably certain that bicycles and scooters are more dangerous than cars. They're only dangerous where they're getting hit by cars. If you're doing a handful miles an hour with a helmet on it's pretty hard to get actually hurt.
      - Aloha 3y ago
        There is a dearth of statistics here, but uhh, judging by the number of friends I've had to transport to or from a hospital from bike accidents I'm at least on the surface skeptical.
    - tomjakubowski 3y ago
      In the United States, vehicle fatality rates for pedestrians are lower now than in 1981, but they are increasing, and at a staggering rate. Likely due to a combination of more distracted driving, changes in road design, and larger vehicles with worse visibility. https://www.vox.com/23784549/pedestrian-deaths-traffic-safety-fatalities-governors-association https://www.vox.com/23784549/pedestrian-deaths-traffic-safet...
PopAlongKid 3y ago
Leaving aside the satire, over ten years ago, this article pointed out that "The Ethics of Saving Lives With Autonomous Cars Is Far Murkier Than You Think".[0] >"Let’s say that autonomous cars slash overall traffic-fatality rates by half. So instead of 32,000 drivers, passengers, and pedestrians killed every year, robotic vehicles save 16,000 lives per year and prevent many more injuries. >"But here’s the thing. Those 16,000 lives are unlikely to all be the same ones lost in an alternate world without robot cars. When we say autonomous cars can slash fatality rates by half, we really mean that they can save a net total of 16,000 lives a year: for example, saving 20,000 people but still being implicated in 4,000 new deaths." [0]https://www.wired.com/2013/07/the-surprising-ethics-of-robot https://www.wired.com/2013/07/the-surprising-ethics-of-robot...
omarforgotpwd 3y ago
Funny article, but as someone who has access to Waymo, Cruise, and Tesla Full Self-Driving Beta I have never seen any of the above have trouble differentiating between a green light and a green shirt. Again, very funny but from a technical perspective the challenges he's describing — rain, a dog running into the road, are things that I see many different companies already solving reliably.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  What about blocking ambulances[1]? [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/02/technology/driverless-cars-cruise-san-francisco.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/02/technology/driverless-car...
  - SR2Z 3y ago
    The NYT, in this article, admits to seeing a video that proves that Cruise did not block that ambulance. This is a garbage headline meant to garner clicks. The city has been complaining about these cars for a while. They've never had any data and now are trying to complain about "x incidents where an AV interfered with emergency vehicles." They're banking on the headlines, and then they'll bring up whatever number they could passably claim in the next letter/meeting they have with the DMV.
    - woodruffw 3y ago
      > The NYT, in this article, admits to seeing a video that proves that Cruise did not block that ambulance. I can't find this admission in the article. The article includes a quote from a Cruise rep saying that the ambulance "was never impeded," but this appears to be in the context of the first responders having to move one of their own vehicles so that the ambulance could leave (second graf). In other words: Cruise's argument appears to be "we didn't block you because you found another way out." That wouldn't be an acceptable argument from a human driver at an accident scene; it it's an acceptable on from a self-driving car company.
      - 3y ago
foxes 3y ago
Self driving / electric etc is just the same scam. Remove car dependence and invest more in public infrastructure.
- matthewfelgate 3y ago
  We will always need some cars. There will always be cars.
robbbed 3y ago
"Like a space monkey, ready to be shot into space. Ready to sacrifice himself for the greater good."
ryanjmo 3y ago
I really didn't like this line of the article. "This stuff isn’t easy, and before we get to a world with zero traffic deaths, we’ll—briefly, I hope—have to increase the number of traffic deaths just a little. We feel really bad about that." Reason being, while satire the rest could hold true. Mistakes will happen from cars, but mistakes happen from people anyway. Now this line quoted above is just incorrect. The average automated driver is going to cause many less deaths and the average human driver. That is the thing that is so frustrating about this type of talk putting down automated driving. Automated driving (from my understanding) is already safer than human driving, we just don't accept deaths from automated driving but we do from human driving. The line seems more correct if it was written: "This stuff isn’t easy, and before we get to a world with zero traffic deaths, we’ll—briefly, decrease the number of traffic deaths, but not to zero and mistakes will be made. We feel really bad about that." That is certainly a more true statement than the one in the article.

66 points by sundaeofshock 3y ago

I know this article is satire, but it certainly strikes a chord. Putting big metal robots capable of moving at highway speed in close proximity to squishy humans is going to cause issues. It might be the human's fault. It might be the vehicle's fault. It might be completely unrelated. However, there are industries like aviation that take these issues seriously. They're investigated, reported, and learned from. We need to do the same for autonomous vehicles if they're actually going to be safe. This means we need an open, independent body outside of industry control, like the NTSB or NHTSA that can produce in depth, transparent, and publicly available reports that manufacturers can't bury or buy away. On the other side, we, the (future) passengers need to be conscious of these safety issues. We need to hold companies accountable for fixing flaws in autonomous vehicles. Airplane accidents can be spectacularly big, which captivates the public. I'm worried that car accidents will just be too small for enough people to care, and therefore we will continue to have a trickle of fatalities in every city and we will never be free from cars.

JumpinJack_Cash 3y ago
> > However, there are industries like aviation that take these issues seriously. They're investigated, reported, and learned from If everything were to be as safe as aviation the whole world would come to a screeching halt standstill. And besides they do it to protect the 200M plane not the passengers because those same passengers enter in the subway or a mall or a stadium or a train 15 mins after they disembark from the 200M plane, and they could bring (or face someone with) an assault rifle without facing any screening or x-rays or even an ID check I don’t like self driving cars but if the bar to plow ahead with deployment of a new tech is commercial aviation post 9/11 then we can call the end of technological improvement already.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  There's a lot of speculation here: aviation manages to be simultaneously extremely safe and a cornerstone of the global economy. It's unclear why other modes of transportation can't do the same; more precisely, it's unclear why private cars get put in the "acceptably dangerous" bucket when just about everything else is astoundingly safe (trains, planes, public & private buses, etc.). (Independently: the bigger reason the FAA and airlines take security seriously is because consumers demand that they do, not just because the planes themselves are expensive. Humans are notoriously bad at estimating risk.)
  - IanCal 3y ago
    Cars are extremely safe. They're driven by barely trained humans which causes the problems. Give only a small fraction of people the ability to drive after significant training, and make driving their full time job, and you'll probably see crashes decline significantly.
  - renewiltord 3y ago
    This is why I think we should never have brought in unleaded gasoline. Flying still uses leaded gasoline because regulations are written in blood. Pretty insane that we just let car manufacturers switch to this when a properly regulated transportation system would never consider such a high risk operation. It’s probably best we return to the tried, true, and most importantly safe system: leaded gasoline.
    - woodruffw 3y ago
      This is clearly meant to be sarcasm, but I think you've got your facts wrong: commercial jet airplanes don't use leaded gasoline. They use Jet-A and similar formulations, which are essentially just kerosene[1] and contain no lead[2]. (I think you're thinking of avgas, which is used by piston-driven engines. These don't appear much in commercial aviation anymore.) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_fuel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_fuel [2]: https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/leaded-aviation-fuel-and-environment https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/leaded-aviation-fuel-and-enviro...
toomuchtodo 3y ago
~40k people die in the US from human caused car accidents every year (~12.9 deaths per 100,000 people, ~1.37 deaths per 100 million miles traveled), and we're getting squeamish about the robot that never gets tired, drunk, or inattentive? If you want to be free from cars, build walkable and carless cities people can afford and want to move to. We can then discuss sunsetting mass automobile infra (which is very unlikely, although infra spending can be weighted to more efficient urban development, mass transit, bicycle infra, etc vs automobile centric systems). Until then, the need for autonomous vehicles is an inconvenient truth. > This means we need an open, independent body outside of industry control, like the NTSB or NHTSA that can produce in depth, transparent, and publicly available reports that manufacturers can't bury or buy away. Strongly agree.
- add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
  > 40k people You're jumping to a quantitative comparison because that's simpler and more obvious, but the right way to think about it is qualitatively. We have over half a century of understanding of modern human driving patterns. We know the ceiling on the number of accidents/deaths that humans will cause. We know that if it changes, it will change slowly. AI works differently. An update to code or models wipes out all expectations we've learned from prior versions. In short, the entire fleet of autonomous vehicles can change behavior overnight with a software update and become murder tanks. Nothing will ever happen to all human drivers at once. Some small percentage will be drunk at any given time. We'll never all wake up with a new drunk version of ourselves at the same time. I don't mean to say that autonomous technology could never work in principal. But we know that this SV in practice has too much hubris and too little oversight to deploy sensitive products responsibly, or with attention to any values above profit and growth.
  - ianbutler 3y ago
    That's what regulation is for, we have a good example in the FAA here, now we'll need something like the FAVA (Federal Autonomous Vehicle Administration) to design regulation for autonomous cars. We have a lot of precedent at this point on how to handle new ambiguous human advancements. Typically it goes, discovery, wild west, blood, regulation, standard part of society. Rinse and repeat.
Buttons840 3y ago
You say we need to investigate autonomous vehicle crashes, I agree. We haven't done this with people because there's not much to investigate; someone drinks, drives, and crashes, there's not much to gain from serious scientific investigation here. Autonomous vehicles are different and we would benefit from more focused scientific investigation of autonomous vehicle accidents.
- bobbylarrybobby 3y ago
  The idea that there's not much to investigate after an accident — that every accident is idiosyncratic — is one of the great lies of the auto industry (and their buddies, transportation planners).
seanmcdirmid 3y ago
> We need to hold companies accountable for fixing flaws in autonomous vehicles. Don't we even just start getting a chance at doing that with autonomous vehicles? When a car crash happens and driver is found at fault, we can say "let's fix driver training to prevent this from happening again!" but humans are diverse, many don't pay attention in driver's ed, and they retain learnings at different rates, so this isn't going to work very well. With a self driving car, at least, since the software is replicated in many vehicles (while humans aren't), we have an actual chance improving on the situation over time.

SCAQTony 3y ago

Perhaps better rapid transit could be quicker and safer than driving in amy form. Perhaps designers should design cities around rapid transit rather than building rapid transit after the cities have been built.

thereisnospork 3y ago
It won't, at least not in the near term: Cars are on the precipice of both becoming immensely greener (electric) and immensely more practical (self-driving) than the status-quo. The transit-equilibrium is going to shortly and rapidly shift towards cars, not away from them.
- arcticbull 3y ago
  They're better, but I'm not ready to call them immensely greener. They're the same order of magnitude of impact, all things considered. Creating an electric car battery emits as much CO2 as creating a whole new gas vehicle from scratch. Depending on the size of the battery and on the green-ness of the grid it's attached to, it takes anywhere from 20,000 to 90,000 miles of driving an EV to reach break-even against a gasoline car. Then it has to be replaced after 100-200,000 miles. Then there's the environmental impact of lithium, copper, etc, extraction. Of course you have to consider that private ownership requirements and mandating parking minimums, free parking, etc, are a massive regressive burden on the poor. Between fuel/power, maintenance, insurance, tickets, tolls, parking, interest, payments, etc, you're liable to spend a half million dollars over your life on your car. Why? Why not retire sooner, or leave more to your kids? Freedom is your ability to go anywhere you want any time you want, it shouldn't be defined by your ownership of a very expensive metal box. The environmental benefits are quite likely to be wiped out by the growth of the car market in for instance India and China.
  - thereisnospork 3y ago
    I'm not quite sure how to parse your reply - Your definition of freedom is most efficiently accomplished by owning a very expensive metal box, only to be surpased by an expensive automous metal box. Sure it's an expensive thing, but it buys utility and it's not as if they alternatives are appreciably cheaper to offset their downsides. Perhaps regrettably, most of the USA isn't Tokyo or NYC where a car is a net burden.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

patrick451 3y ago

> Our streets and highways are dangerous, and it’s clear that the current system isn’t working. In 1970, there were about 26 traffic fatalities per 100,000. Today, that number is down over 50% to 12. We are doing something right.

paulryanrogers 3y ago
That stat doesn't capture all the life altering injuries or financial losses. Cars are incredibly powerful and dangerous compared to lesser modes like walking, bicycling, or even scooters.
- Aloha 3y ago
  If you did look at life altering injuries and financial losses, you'd find fewer of those too - cars today are measurably safer, from tires, to better seatbelts, to airbags, to ABS - cars in virtually every way are safer. I'm actually reasonably certain that bicycles and scooters are more dangerous than cars. The one exception to this is danger to others, modern cars are probably more dangerous to pedestrians than cars in 1976.
  - arcticbull 3y ago
    > I'm actually reasonably certain that bicycles and scooters are more dangerous than cars. They're only dangerous where they're getting hit by cars. If you're doing a handful miles an hour with a helmet on it's pretty hard to get actually hurt.
    - Aloha 3y ago
      There is a dearth of statistics here, but uhh, judging by the number of friends I've had to transport to or from a hospital from bike accidents I'm at least on the surface skeptical.
  - tomjakubowski 3y ago
    In the United States, vehicle fatality rates for pedestrians are lower now than in 1981, but they are increasing, and at a staggering rate. Likely due to a combination of more distracted driving, changes in road design, and larger vehicles with worse visibility. https://www.vox.com/23784549/pedestrian-deaths-traffic-safety-fatalities-governors-association https://www.vox.com/23784549/pedestrian-deaths-traffic-safet...

PopAlongKid 3y ago

Leaving aside the satire, over ten years ago, this article pointed out that "The Ethics of Saving Lives With Autonomous Cars Is Far Murkier Than You Think".[0] >"Let’s say that autonomous cars slash overall traffic-fatality rates by half. So instead of 32,000 drivers, passengers, and pedestrians killed every year, robotic vehicles save 16,000 lives per year and prevent many more injuries. >"But here’s the thing. Those 16,000 lives are unlikely to all be the same ones lost in an alternate world without robot cars. When we say autonomous cars can slash fatality rates by half, we really mean that they can save a net total of 16,000 lives a year: for example, saving 20,000 people but still being implicated in 4,000 new deaths." [0]https://www.wired.com/2013/07/the-surprising-ethics-of-robot https://www.wired.com/2013/07/the-surprising-ethics-of-robot...

omarforgotpwd 3y ago

Funny article, but as someone who has access to Waymo, Cruise, and Tesla Full Self-Driving Beta I have never seen any of the above have trouble differentiating between a green light and a green shirt. Again, very funny but from a technical perspective the challenges he's describing — rain, a dog running into the road, are things that I see many different companies already solving reliably.

woodruffw 3y ago
What about blocking ambulances[1]? [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/02/technology/driverless-cars-cruise-san-francisco.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/02/technology/driverless-car...
- SR2Z 3y ago
  The NYT, in this article, admits to seeing a video that proves that Cruise did not block that ambulance. This is a garbage headline meant to garner clicks. The city has been complaining about these cars for a while. They've never had any data and now are trying to complain about "x incidents where an AV interfered with emergency vehicles." They're banking on the headlines, and then they'll bring up whatever number they could passably claim in the next letter/meeting they have with the DMV.
  - woodruffw 3y ago
    > The NYT, in this article, admits to seeing a video that proves that Cruise did not block that ambulance. I can't find this admission in the article. The article includes a quote from a Cruise rep saying that the ambulance "was never impeded," but this appears to be in the context of the first responders having to move one of their own vehicles so that the ambulance could leave (second graf). In other words: Cruise's argument appears to be "we didn't block you because you found another way out." That wouldn't be an acceptable argument from a human driver at an accident scene; it it's an acceptable on from a self-driving car company.
    - 3y ago

foxes 3y ago

Self driving / electric etc is just the same scam. Remove car dependence and invest more in public infrastructure.

matthewfelgate 3y ago
We will always need some cars. There will always be cars.

robbbed 3y ago

"Like a space monkey, ready to be shot into space. Ready to sacrifice himself for the greater good."

ryanjmo 3y ago

I really didn't like this line of the article. "This stuff isn’t easy, and before we get to a world with zero traffic deaths, we’ll—briefly, I hope—have to increase the number of traffic deaths just a little. We feel really bad about that." Reason being, while satire the rest could hold true. Mistakes will happen from cars, but mistakes happen from people anyway. Now this line quoted above is just incorrect. The average automated driver is going to cause many less deaths and the average human driver. That is the thing that is so frustrating about this type of talk putting down automated driving. Automated driving (from my understanding) is already safer than human driving, we just don't accept deaths from automated driving but we do from human driving. The line seems more correct if it was written: "This stuff isn’t easy, and before we get to a world with zero traffic deaths, we’ll—briefly, decrease the number of traffic deaths, but not to zero and mistakes will be made. We feel really bad about that." That is certainly a more true statement than the one in the article.