> Von Ohain and Rossiter had been drinking, and an autopsy found that von Ohain died with a blood alcohol level of 0.26 — more than three times the legal limit — a level of intoxication that would have hampered his ability to maintain control of the car, experts said. The details make this seem less of an autonomous driving issue and more of an incredibly irresponsible operation issue.
These two were idiots, but this highlights the dangers of L2 driver assistance systems (misleadingly marketed as "Full Self Driving") that requires driver attention at all times to prevent accidents. It gives you a false sense of security and there's no guarantee you'll take over in time to prevent an accident. If you give dumb toys to people, they will use it in dumb ways. This is why Waymo/Google abandoned their dr…
That said, cars are dumb toys to give people. Certainly access to cars is dangerous for people that are going to use them while drunk. “Sense of security” or not, why were these guys in control of a vehicle?
While autonomous vehicles are not ready, this event just cements the need for them in my mind. I expect that they have already saved more lives than they have cost. Some continue to insist that replacing human drivers is a high bar. In edge cases and for the best drivers, it is. Collectively though, evidence suggests that the bar is very low and that we have already surpassed it.
At this point, it is more of a “fairness” or “control” issue who gets hurt by autonomy than it is aggregate safety by the numbers. In this case, thankfully, it sounds like it was fair.