> " ... but the assertion that the pilots always are able to do something if they had just been more aware and given control of the dozens of subsystems that a

> " ... but the assertion that the pilots always are able to do something if they had just been more aware and given control of the dozens of subsystems that a commercial jet controls behind the scenes is rather ridiculous" That's not his assertion. His assertion is that the pilots had no idea that anything was wrong (or being compensated for) up until the plane basically said 'fuck it, you deal with it'. > "Or the idea that human beings can react faster than a computer can in the one or two seconds of a car accident" Where is this claim being made? Certainly not in the article. As for the rest of your paragraph, those seem like individual, single-purpose systems (for the most part). When you're talking about larger systems where things within the car must communicate with each-other a lot more (probably written by different groups), I expect the scope for bugs is greater. > "People will die driving in self-driving cars ... it's an inevitability" I completely agree. The really interesting thing will be who is considered (legally) liable at that point. The manufacturer? The software authors? The driver? It's not really that clear cut and I bet the insurance companies are already thinking about this. > "Yes, progress in technology is a horrible, horrible thing. Let's just put our heads back into the dirt and pretend it isn't happening." Where did this negativity/sarcasm come from? The author of the piece isn't claiming progress is horrible so why put these words in his mouth? I read his basic point to be "design better stuff, there's plenty of research you can already draw on". That sounds pretty reasonable to me.