Safe Streets Rebel’s protest comes after automatic vehicles were blamed for incidents including crashing into a bus and running over a dog. City officials in June said…
You make it sound like it’s a 50/50 split between human drivers and autonomous vehicles, which is definitely not the case.
There are way more human drivers than autonomous vehicles. So, when an autonomous vehicle runs your child or pet over or whatever, who do you blame? The company? The programmers? The DMV for even allowing them on the road in the first place?
What’s an autonomous vehicle do if it gets a flat? Park in the middle of the interstate like an idiot instead of pulling over and phone home for a mechanic?
You need to first ask yourself if it more important to put blame than to minimize risk.
“Autonomous vehicles could potentially reduce traffic fatalities by up to 90%.”
“Autonomous vehicle accidents have been recorded at a slightly lower rate compared with conventional cars, at 4.7 accidents per million miles driven.”
That opinion puts a lot of blind faith in the companies developing self driving and their infinitely altruistic motives.
What do you mean, I’m sure the industry whose standard practices include having the self-driving function turn itself off nanoseconds before a crash to avoid liability is totally motivated to spend the time and money it would take to fix the problem. After all, we live in a time of such advanced AI that all the news sites and magazines tell me we’re on the verge of the Singularity, and they’ve never misled me before.
You don’t need to put faith into companies beyond the faith that is put into humans. Make companies just as financially liable as humans are, and you’ll still see a decrease in accidents.
So…
Your car is at fault. Their kid is dead.
Who pays for the funeral?
Does your insurance cover programming glitches?
If your insurance determined that an autonomous vehicle will cause less damage over time than a human driver, they will do that, yes.
I mean, why shouldn’t it? Is a programming glitch in a self driving all that different from a mechanical issue in a manually driven car?
are there actual datasets to look at and info regarding how data was collected? all the sources on that page are just domain links but don’t appear to point to the data making the claims?
4.7 accidents per million miles doesn’t mean much if the cars are limited to specific roads or include test tracks that give them an advantage. the degree of variance in different environments would also need to be measured such as weather effects, road conditions and traffic patterns.
I’m all for autonomous driving, but its not like companies don’t fudge numbers all the time for their benefit.
Story time…
I once had a crazy accident driving only like 15-20 MPH or so down a side road, then about 20 feet in front of me some idiot backed out of his parking spot right in front of me.
Broad daylight, overcast skies, no other vehicles blocking his view even. Dude just backed up without looking like a freaking idiot.
I responded in a split second. I did not hit the brakes, as I knew I didn’t have enough time or distance to stop. If I had hit the brakes, his car would have had more time to back out further and I would have smacked straight on into the passenger side of his car.
Instead of hitting the brakes, I quickly jerked the steering wheel hard and fast to the left. See, I knew an impact was inevitable at that point, I made that move to clip his bumper instead of smacking into the passenger side and ruining both vehicles.
Would an AI do that? 🤔
