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One dead and nine wounded after accident with self-driving car

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Re: One dead and nine wounded after accident with self-driving car

#81
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would depend on the details. If black kids are dying because the car accelerates in school zones and swerves directly into black kids at high speeds, you can imagine that would obviously be not okay no matter what the statistics are. My point is that a single metric like “deaths overall” is insufficient. The failure modes need to be reasonable and sympathetic to a human.

The premise of GP may have been slightly different. If a safety improvement reduces child pedestrian deaths by 100% in groups A, B, C, and D and by 50% in group E, that safety improvement should be welcomed, even though all child pedestrian deaths are now in group E (even though that group is also better off).

That is completely reasonable and would be completely unacceptable politically.

Re: One dead and nine wounded after accident with self-driving car

#82
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably for the exact reason that your comment substantiates: we have little to no reason at all to suspect the car flopped.

That still doesn’t mean the company needs to be censored? The media doesn’t answer to BMW shareholders.

> The media doesn’t answer to BMW shareholders.

Oh but it does. Corruption is alive and well and often so are the laws to facilitate it.

Re: One dead and nine wounded after accident with self-driving car

#83
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The premise of GP may have been slightly different. If a safety improvement reduces child pedestrian deaths by 100% in groups A, B, C, and D and by 50% in group E, that safety improvement should be welcomed, even though all child pedestrian deaths are now in group E (even though that group is also better off).

That is completely reasonable and would be completely unacceptable politically.

Perhaps it could be improved by being explicitly programmed to kill 25% as many children in groups A-D vs the original baseline. Then let activists argue why that figure should be doubled.

Re: One dead and nine wounded after accident with self-driving car

#84
post #61
post #19

Serious question: will we demand perfection from autonomous cars before we allow them out of “test” status? How many autonomous miles without an accident will be sufficient to prove safety? I am not diminishing this tragedy; I can only imagine the grief of the families involved and my heart goes out to them. I am also NOT making the “have to break a few eggs to make an omelette“ argument; clearly something went wrong…

The reason why I'm against self driving cars is simply the fact that they're cars at all. I sincerely have no idea why we are collectively spending so much time and resources to avoid the solution we've had for years: public transportation. I would much rather live in a world where I have to deal with the minor inconvenience that is waiting 20 minutes for a train to arrive but get to my destination cheaply and easily…

Self driving cars could be the public transportation of the future. Like taxis with the fraction of the price. It would be something that would dramatically reduce the need for private cars in sparsely populated areas, and even reduce the need for short and medium length flights.

I love public transportation, but the possibility of low cost taxis is very exciting.

Re: One dead and nine wounded after accident with self-driving car

#85
post #36
post #19

Serious question: will we demand perfection from autonomous cars before we allow them out of “test” status? How many autonomous miles without an accident will be sufficient to prove safety? I am not diminishing this tragedy; I can only imagine the grief of the families involved and my heart goes out to them. I am also NOT making the “have to break a few eggs to make an omelette“ argument; clearly something went wrong…

Serious question: will we demand perfection from autonomous cars before we allow them out of “test” status? I don't think anyone is demanding perfection, but they are quite reasonably demanding that autonomous driving doesn't cause any accidents that wouldn't have happened if a human was driving (not that this is clear from the accident in the article). The bar issimply 'better than a person'. If a car apparently cha…

> quite reasonably demanding that autonomous driving doesn't cause any accidents that wouldn't have happened if a human was driving

That's totally unreasonable. If a self-driving car prevents 10,000 accidents that human drivers would have caused, but causes 20 accidents that human drivers would have prevented, we should accept it without demanding further safety improvements first.

> The bar issimply 'better than a person'.

This, on the other hand, is totally reasonable.

Re: One dead and nine wounded after accident with self-driving car

#86
post #19

Serious question: will we demand perfection from autonomous cars before we allow them out of “test” status? How many autonomous miles without an accident will be sufficient to prove safety? I am not diminishing this tragedy; I can only imagine the grief of the families involved and my heart goes out to them. I am also NOT making the “have to break a few eggs to make an omelette“ argument; clearly something went wrong…

In my mind, I would be happy with 75% of the risk of human driving. That is enough to be clearly better and clearly safer. It is a big enough margin to prevent lying with statistics ('oh, we only count highway miles', or 'yeah we were including with that statistic the young drink drivers'). It also isn't too unrealistic. If (to simplify things) you imagine that every accident has two cars involved and is the fault of…

How is it lying with statistics to take into consideration the prevalence of drunk driving?

Re: One dead and nine wounded after accident with self-driving car

#87
post #61
post #19

Serious question: will we demand perfection from autonomous cars before we allow them out of “test” status? How many autonomous miles without an accident will be sufficient to prove safety? I am not diminishing this tragedy; I can only imagine the grief of the families involved and my heart goes out to them. I am also NOT making the “have to break a few eggs to make an omelette“ argument; clearly something went wrong…

The reason why I'm against self driving cars is simply the fact that they're cars at all. I sincerely have no idea why we are collectively spending so much time and resources to avoid the solution we've had for years: public transportation. I would much rather live in a world where I have to deal with the minor inconvenience that is waiting 20 minutes for a train to arrive but get to my destination cheaply and easily…

I'm much happier to put up with the expense, bureaucracy, and overhead of owning a car than I would be if every trip, every day of my life took 20 minutes longer (and for a lot of places I go, 20 minutes is an underestimate). If you'd choose the opposite, that's fine, but don't do things like banning cars that would restrict my choice. That's just as unfair as banning public transit would be.

Re: One dead and nine wounded after accident with self-driving car

#88
post #61
post #19

Serious question: will we demand perfection from autonomous cars before we allow them out of “test” status? How many autonomous miles without an accident will be sufficient to prove safety? I am not diminishing this tragedy; I can only imagine the grief of the families involved and my heart goes out to them. I am also NOT making the “have to break a few eggs to make an omelette“ argument; clearly something went wrong…

The reason why I'm against self driving cars is simply the fact that they're cars at all. I sincerely have no idea why we are collectively spending so much time and resources to avoid the solution we've had for years: public transportation. I would much rather live in a world where I have to deal with the minor inconvenience that is waiting 20 minutes for a train to arrive but get to my destination cheaply and easily…

If you like public transportation, then I’m delighted. I hate it and don’t want it forced on me. I think that ultimately autonomous cars are likely to replace much of public transportation, or at least be a large part of such a system.

Re: One dead and nine wounded after accident with self-driving car

#89
post #88
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason why I'm against self driving cars is simply the fact that they're cars at all. I sincerely have no idea why we are collectively spending so much time and resources to avoid the solution we've had for years: public transportation. I would much rather live in a world where I have to deal with the minor inconvenience that is waiting 20 minutes for a train to arrive but get to my destination cheaply and easily…

If you like public transportation, then I’m delighted. I hate it and don’t want it forced on me. I think that ultimately autonomous cars are likely to replace much of public transportation, or at least be a large part of such a system.

The problem is we're currently living in the opposite situation, one which is so normalized most people don't even realize it. We have entire cities built around and for cars instead of people, with public transportation treated as an afterthought and just walking to places not even considered as a possibility. I wouldn't want to force public transportation on people either, but pretending the alternative of forcing cars on everyone else is better, desirable or not current isn't productive.

Re: One dead and nine wounded after accident with self-driving car

#90
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason why I'm against self driving cars is simply the fact that they're cars at all. I sincerely have no idea why we are collectively spending so much time and resources to avoid the solution we've had for years: public transportation. I would much rather live in a world where I have to deal with the minor inconvenience that is waiting 20 minutes for a train to arrive but get to my destination cheaply and easily…

I'm much happier to put up with the expense, bureaucracy, and overhead of owning a car than I would be if every trip, every day of my life took 20 minutes longer (and for a lot of places I go, 20 minutes is an underestimate). If you'd choose the opposite, that's fine, but don't do things like banning cars that would restrict my choice. That's just as unfair as banning public transit would be.

We're in agreement then. My ideal world is one where we have cities designed for public transportation (including walking), which would eliminate or at the very least reduce the current problems those methods of transportation currently have for everyone, while the current system provides somewhat efficient transportation but only for those who can afford it. I think spending money and human resources into improving cars instead of public transportation just exacerbates that problem, so it just frustrates me on a personal level to see that this is the direction we're headed to.
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