Earlier quoted context omitted.
A human driver is no longer the null hypothesis they have to beat. Most vehicles in the US are now sold with collision avoidance systems. The alternative to an autonomous vehicle is a vehicle with the combined efforts of humans + automated systems. Also, until there's a SAE level 5 vehicle in existence, we're comparing different sample sets. The situations humans crash most often in are many of the same situations wh…
What I'm 'driving at' (hehe) here is that there's a lot of daylight between what the math says, and what people are likely to accept. We are, for better or worse, somewhat comfortable with the fact that a human driven semi truck will occasionally wipe out a minivan. It's not clear to me at all that we as a society are, or will ever be comfortable with a computer-operated semi-truck doing the same. No amount of "Well,…
For instance: If I'm worried about killing my child in a first-party drunk driving crash, the average crash rate is irrelevant, because I can decrease the risk to zero by not drinking and driving. If I'm worried about third-party risk of a drunk driving crash, I can greatly mitigate that risk by choosing when and where I drive with my child in the car.
> No amount of "Well, the number say this truck is statistically safer when driven by a computer..." will move the needle on that
And I think the reason for that is that people subconsciously understand that the people who would be interested in (or financially capable of) purchasing an autonomous vehicle for the safety features are the same people who have lower accident rates than average.