4 ms·
Growing proof that PR for autonomous car companies has aligned on a strategy of painting you as a bad person if you want to drive your own car, and therefore yo
by n0us 25d ago
Growing proof that PR for autonomous car companies has aligned on a strategy of painting you as a bad person if you want to drive your own car, and therefore you should pay them money to continue being a good person.
- jjordan 25d agoThere should be laws put in place to ensure drivers will always be able to drive their cars, if they choose, and also prevent insurance companies from skyrocketing your rates for doing so. This is IMO past due.
- matchbok3 25d agoHow selfish. Why should I, someone who wants a safer AV, subsidize those who are riskier drivers? Extremely selfish.
- gottorf 25d agoThis happens in insurance all the time. Healthy people who eat right and exercise subsidize people with poor habits. It appears to some degree that we as a society do not want risk priced optimally to each individual.
- linkregister 25d agoIt is understandable that you think this is the case as someone who is not above the age of 50. You will see that health and life insurance premiums rise precipitously once you reach certain milestones. Once you reach 90 years old, you will find that car insurance companies will discontinue your policy based on a single traffic ticket. We replaced preexisting condition coverage with age-based tiered pricing. If you doubt me it's trivial to validate this using your state's ACA marketplace.
- uuddlrlrbaba 25d agoIs this your first introduction to an insurance pool?
- matchbok3 25d agoNot the same at all.
- jedberg 25d agoWhy? Insurance companies use detailed risk data. If they discover that letting you drive your own car is a much higher risk than an auto-drive, why should they not be allowed to account for that? Insurance companies aren't political -- they charge for whatever costs more.
- jjordan 25d agoYes, I definitely trust insurance companies to do the right thing here.
- jedberg 25d agoCar insurance companies have their problems, but pricing risk is not one of them. We saw this before -- they used to charge people who lived in high crime areas more money. They had to stop because it turned out that those high crime areas also had a lot of poor people, so the government stepped in and stopped allowing pricing by zip code. But the insurance companies weren't wrong about the risk -- those customers cost them more. So instead they had to raise everyone's rates to account for the fact that they (rightly) could not discriminate. I suspect the same would happen here. That poorer people could not afford self driving, and they same anti-discrimination rules would apply.
- tredre3 25d ago> Car insurance companies have their problems, but pricing risk is not one of them. If pricing risk was an exact science, you'd get the same quote from all providers (given similar coverage). Yet if you try that, you'll find that the quotes could vary as much as 2-3x. Therefore no, we shouldn't blindly trust "the algorithm".
- salawat 25d ago>Insurance companies aren't political -- they charge for whatever costs more. Insurance companies you are required to interact with by law are absolutely political.
- iknowstuff 25d agoNo there should not. Human drivers kill a million people every year. WW1 killed 15-22M.
- deleted 25d ago[deleted]
- intrasight 25d agoI agree with your first statement but certainly not with the second. Rates for human drivers should and will skyrocket. Individual states may try to push back with regulation but it won't succeed in the long-term
- lefra 25d agoRates for human drivers are currently at the correct level for insurance companies to pay for damage and make some profit. If autonomous cars result in less damage than humans, their insurance price will be cheaper than human drivers, but there's no reason to raise the human rate at the same time, their accident rate should stay the same.
- mossTechnician 25d agoThey have a reason: profit.
- FeloniousHam 25d agoThis is testable. The profits of car insurance companies should rise (let’s say substantially) in real dollars as accident payouts decrease as a result of the inevitable dominance of autonomous vehicles.
- intrasight 25d agoI don't think you're seeing the future trajectory. Autonomous cars and trucks will be able to do their thing with a much smaller margin for error - because they don't make errors. So for example instead of two seconds distance to the car in front of you it will be 0.1 second. The vast majority of humans would have an accident as soon as they got on the road. We need that increase volume and reduced accident count in order to grow without having to build more roads.
- structural 25d agoGreat, so when a deer jumps into the middle of the highway the size of the ensuing pileup is twenty times larger. I don't particularly think we should use technology to push efficiency to the point where a mechanical failure, a material failure, or an unexpected object cause much larger scale catastrophes than exist today. Why not aim for the same distance between cars and twenty times more safety instead?
- linkregister 25d agoIncumbent rent-seekers want regulatory capture to insulate them from externalities. Dog bites man.
- pessimizer 25d agoThe law put into place would be that the people who put autonomous cars on the road would risk their freedom and safety just as much as a driver if that car causes an accident through their neglect. This will never happen, because the entire purpose of the corporate structure is to avoid responsibility.
- raincole 25d agoThere should be laws taxing people who insist on driving themselves. And the money should be used to subsidize people who switch to self-driving or install automatic assisted systems on their old cars. That'd partially mitigate the externality generated by human drivers.
- bluGill 25d agoHow about prison for attempted murder? I've lost enough friends to drivers who made a mistake. If self driving is better in just that, but worse every other way: I'm for it. That might be a big if above, but of true them I support it. Drive on a private track or a video game if you must. Leave the real world to safe.
- matchbok3 25d agoThe knee-jerk conspiratorial reactions to new technology is depressing to see on HN. Do better.
- nancyminusone 25d agoIf your knee is just now jerking, you've got a problem with your reflexes. Discussions like this have been happened for 15+ years.
- BoingBoomTschak 25d agoYeah, it's just "new technology". Like those Flock cameras, I guess.
- devilsdata 25d agoThe promise of tech has been that if we let it rip, we'll have a better democracy and living conditions for all. That promise has failed to materialise, for a variety of reasons. There is increased surveillance, enshittification, huge subscription fees, and upward pressure on climate change (directly linked to bitcoin mining then AI data centres). Then you get Musk lobbying against a city's plans to build a public transport network, so he can build an unsafe single-car tunnel for the rich. I think people are quite justified in being skeptical of new technology, especially when the track record has shown that the promised societal benefits often never actually materialise. Worse, still, the money earned from selling the new technology is used to make conditions worse for most people. Big tech has a lot to answer for. I'd be less skeptical if the values of tech capitalism shifted to become more pro-human. They really haven't, and they probably won't. So for now, consider me bearish on new tech.
- bko 25d agoGrowing proof that comment sections from tech forums have been overrun with unhelpful negativity unrelated to the actual posts they're commenting on.
- deleted 25d ago[deleted]
- ThrowawayTestr 25d ago[flagged]
- anonymars 25d agoAlways has been https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#:~:text=Please%20don%27t%20post%20comments%20saying%20that%20HN%20is%20turning%20into%20Reddit.%20It%27s%20a%20semi%2Dnoob%20illusion%2C%20as%20old%20as%20the%20hills. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#:~:text=Ple...
- ThrowawayTestr 25d agoYes but it got way worse when reddit made the mobile site inoperable without an account.
- entropi 25d agoYou are dismissing this as "unhelpful negativity", but are not addressing in any way the obvious (and rather malicious, I would say) PR play that parent comment points out. This is exactly the message, and I for one welcome the anti-cool-aid sentiments being very visible in public spaces.
- SR2Z 25d agoCan you actually define what the kool-aid is here? Because AV companies are saying "look at this new product, it objectively drives better and safer than a human, you don't have to deal with a human driver, it works 24/7, and in our experience most people prefer it to driving." I have NEVER seen a single person accuse anyone of being a bad person for still preferring to drive a car manually. Not once, not even the usual one or two crazy people you can find to support almost any other crazy statement. Where is the kool-aid from the robotaxi side that's so visible? Keep in mind that "kool-aid" implies that something is factually incorrect.
- parapsychic 25d agoReminds me of that scene from I Robot where Will Smith was not supposed to drive his car himself.
- 4d4m 25d agoDidn't this just happen in an internet company's self driving car with couple kidnappings in the past month? (They were done according to the companies terms of service is what the internet company says if I remember reading correctly)
- vagrantJin 25d agoThats too much of an honest assessment. An age old playbook. I'd like the tech do actually do things that are hard for me, like taking control of the car in a high stress situation. Sub-milisecond reactions to correct for a mistake. Something, anything more useful than a fancier cruise control.
- dmurray 25d agoYour car does that already. It has a superhuman braking system that saves a lot more lives than cruise control, though not quite sub-millisecond in its reaction time.
- CM30 25d agoYeah, and it should not be understated how bad only having autonomous cars would be for privacy and security conscious folk. A lot of the time you don't own them, so they're operating on the terms provided by the companies and government, even when it's directly against your own interests. The idea of a car that can't drive certain places, be used at a certain time or be used by certain people feels like a terrifying inevitability, and one which society should refuse at all costs. If you drive your own vehicle, it goes where you want it to go. If you don't drive your own vehicle, it goes where a company or government wants it to go.
- SR2Z 25d agoSo you mean to tell me that when I called a Waymo a few weeks ago at 1AM because I was drunk at a bar and wanted to go home, it was actually because my government and Google wanted me to go home? Woah! This conspiracy goes deeper than I thought! Next you'll tell me that a taxi ride requires mutual consent between me, the taxi driver, and the dispatch company!
- tqi 25d ago"If you drive your own vehicle, it goes where you want it to go" I think privacy conscious folks like yourself consistently overrate how much purchase this argument has. I am perfectly happy to forgo this in exchange for a sufficient increase in convenience / safety (for myself and others). This is not because I have been brainwashed by autonomous vehicle company propaganda, it is because I have different values and concerns.
- nwah1 25d agoGiven the state of cybersecurity, the car goes wherever anyone with sufficient motivation wants it to go. Including into pedestrians. And, such a scenario could happen at the scale of a botnet swarm. In other words, hundreds of thousands of vehicles could be simultaneously hijacked.
- foobarian 25d agoBut.. what if it's true? It's like not wearing a seat belt, or smoking, or drinking while driving. If AV are widely available it becomes similarly opt-in high risk behavior.
- entropi 25d agoUsing SUVs are definitely worse for safety as well, and it does not require a huge overhaul of the transportation infrastructure, a few new technologies to be invented, replacing ~all the existing cars, etc. etc. But no-one takes the comparatively basically free steps to remove/reduce SUVs. Lets not forget that its all about the profits, and if we truly want to save lives there are more cost-efficient ways than what some tech sales-people peddle.
- WillPostForFood 25d ago<posted from phone while driving through red light>
- atleastoptimal 25d agoYou cannot deny the evidence though, driverless cars are safer per-mile than human drivers on average. 1/100 deaths in the United States are due to car accidents, even shaving off 10% of those would save ~4000 people per year.
- 4d4m 25d agoThanks for clearly stating the danger - your point is reasonable
- tikhonj 25d agoIf driving is dangerous and carries a bunch of negative externalities, shouldn't we expect "good people" to look for alternatives? Not self-driving cars, necessarily, but maybe transit and walking and biking. And, of course, to support the policy choices that reduce how much we subsidize driving and improve infrastructure for those alternatives.
- dzhiurgis 25d agoTesla did something sneaky just few days ago. They added crash avoidance even when FSD is not enabled, but purchased. So in future if they add pay-per-mile option (great for road trips) you'll likely still keep paying for monthly since it offers additional protection even if you prefer driving yourself (which is lol).
- Kiro 25d agoYour us vs them mentality regarding cars is really strange. You've previously said you think bicyclists are the "worst people".
- sp1nningaway 25d agoI hadn't thought about it like this, but I think I want the grassroots version of the PR campaign. Society was finally able to rein in smoking when we collectively realized how dangerous secondhand smoke is. People who smoked indoors and exposed loved ones to an early death weren't bad people, but creating societal pressure to feel bad about doing that has saved a lot of lives. You are more likely to kill someone driving your huge SUV than you are taking a Waymo. Driving your own car certainly doesn't make you a bad person, but I hope self-driving cars will be ubiquitous and safe in the future. When that happens, choosing to drive yourself will be a selfish act, just like exposing people to secondhand smoke is now.
- structural 25d agoAt a systems level, transportation is something we have to be very, very careful about, because if you get it wrong, you start excluding entire groups of people from being a functional part of your society just because they are different from you in where and how they live. "When that happens, choosing to drive yourself will be a selfish act, just like exposing people to secondhand smoke is now." Really? I drive on logging roads a few times a month to get to some property. This is pretty sketchy even in good conditions and there's always the chance of getting stuck and having to hike a mile or two the rest of the way up to go get the tractor and sort it out. I'm probably not buying a self-driving car any time soon, if ever. Now, is having self driving taxis a fantastic idea in a very dense city? Of course. There's huge benefits in keeping the average car as safe, efficient in both energy and pollution, and highly utilized as possible. Are these also a good retrofit to dense-ish suburbs where a bus/rail network isn't quite enough (and the costs to build it in already-developed land are unpalatable)? Also yes. But that's not ubiquitous, that's just part of a larger system that needs to be able to serve all users. And if your point is that "move out of the mountains and into a city because that's the less-selfish option"... that's a certain kind of political statement, I guess.
- twobitshifter 25d agoMany boomers hated antilock brakes, but insurers gave discounts for having them on your car anyway. I think it’s likely going to be a similar thing with self driving. Even today, I don’t like the intrusiveness of the insurance monitors you can install on your car today and I am willing to forgo that discount to keep my privacy.