71–77 of 77 posts
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How about this factor - 31% of all traffic-related deaths involve alcohol-impaired driving.
SO, a car breathalyzer that allowed only automatic driving if too high, would definitely be an improvement we could all get on board with?
While I agree some of the early arguments are a bit weak, I liked the author's discussion of the parallels to medical research---I think it gets across why some (including myself) think its worth approaching this exciting new technology with a slightly less cavalier attitude: In developing cancer drugs that could save millions of lives—just like robot cars are promised to do—we understand we can’t ignore problems in…
> its worth approaching this exciting new technology with a slightly less cavalier attitude While I'm a huge fan of vehicle automation, I have plenty of concern that it not be commonly used until it is in fact safer overall (I allow that come circumstances become less safe while others become more). I'm not sure what "cavalier" attitude you refer to? Where, exactly, are people claiming there is no concern for safety?…
I get the sense that a lot of people feel like since the intent is good and driver's are opting in that basically anything goes---which seems pretty cavalier to me.
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The article is arguing for inaction in the Trolley Problem [1]. In short: You have a choice between saving five people and letting one other person die, or doing nothing and letting five people die. Which is a controversial position, but not stupid exactly. I would call it misguided, and certainly not a very utilitarian position. And given the options I personally would vote for the utilitarian answer: Save five peop…
This sounds ridiculous. The car's job should always be to protect the occupant of the vehicle. Can you imagine what would happen to a car company if it was known that the car willfully choose to kill the customer if it meant that multiple other lives would be saved? Another scenario, imagine you are driving on a freeway but a couple people decide to hop onto the freeway and cross it on foot. Would you rather just run…
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Are you saying there hasn't already been a 100-car freeway pileup caused by (now-standard) cruise control? Or that human-driven cars don't drive into the side of a trailer because the driver didn't see it?
>Or that human-driven cars don't drive into the side of a trailer because the driver didn't see it? I won't claim that that never happens, but I doubt it's very common. If you were to take 1000 random car crash deaths I do not think a very large proportion of them are caused by people running head-on into a sideways tractor trailer that they had a long distance to notice and react to. Tesla says this is the only fata…
Wow. After the introduction where the author thoroughly refutes his own thesis ( approximately half a million people would have been saved if the Tesla autopilot was universally available ), the 3 reasons given was astoundingly poor. Reason 1: Different people will die. Example, blind people who are currently not at risk (because they don't drive) will die in greater numbers. And this is an argument against saving 50…
I'm not seeing where the author concedes that 500k lives a year would be saved. That number is in an Elon Musk quote, not the authors argument. Keep in mind total US road fatalities in the US is ~32k. I'm not sure how Elon got to 500k, but even if we handed out a free Tesla to every single American, and not a single person was ever killed in a Tesla, it's off by an order of magnitude. Of course Elon is quoting global…
Regarding the numbers behind the 500k:
- there were 1.25 million road deaths globally in 2013
- yes, this can be improved through seatbelts and safety standards, but it can also be improved by self-driving technology. This isn't an either-or problem. Having one doesn't preclude the other.
- self-driving cars aren't limited to Teslas. Any car manufacturer can integrate self-driving into their cars.
- there's no reason why self-driving technology won't penetrate the market and become mainstream, at some point in this century. This is obviously not going to happen overnight. The more we delay the initial roll out, the longer mainstream penetration will take.
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The article is just responding to the level of intelligence of arguments saying we should all soon stop driving and have automated driving everywhere. I am all for self driving cars, but the common statistical argument (lower number of deaths than humans) for them is just silly for a number of reasons.
Why is that a bad argument? It's a pragmatic approach which I believe to be A LOT BETTER than the status quo. Unfortunately people prefer the current way of implementing things: pretend to make everyone happy because people can't think 5 seconds ahead of time or even imagine that their actions affect others. It's so easy to sell everything for the small, immediate benefits while ignoring the bigger picture.
Other reasons here:
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The "different people will die" argument has been debated for decades in the philosophical question called the "Trolley Problem." [1] The short answer is that yes, it's generally agreed to make the active choice to save more people, even if it means different people die. Air bags kill people sometimes in accidents where they likely wouldn't have died, but we put up with the risk because overall we're more likely to l…
I'm not sure if the trolley problem applies here. The trolley problem relies on one of the choices being passive. In the case of cars however, both choices require active effort. Either we actively build cars that cause X deaths every year, or we actively build cars that cause Y deaths every year. It seems pretty obvious that we should build the car that causes the fewest deaths. Even if this is a trolley problem, if…
Fair enough. Like your analogy.