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Know what else is safer and already exists? Trains and streetcars and shit.
Trains and streetcars and shit can't fill the same niche that taxis do.
Yeah but the latter is safer and already exists.
Meanwhile, they're blocking those pesky emergency vehicles...
And humans never screw up under those circumstances?
There will always be anecdotes to support any conclusion. It's statistics you should be looking at when deciding what's really safer.
Humans are taught to do their best to obey the law, even and especially when there are flashing lights around.
No that doesn't mean humans are perfect, but at least they're educated what to do when around emergency vehicles. But you throw some flashing lights and shiny reflectors around autonomous vehicles and they spaz out and go stupid.
At least you can charge humans for such negligence, but who do you hold accountable when the vehicle itself doesn't obey the rules of the road, especially when first responders are on the scene and even sometimes trying to tell the car what to do.
If there's an officer trying to direct the car around or through a detour, autonomous cars aren't trained for all that, so they don't even listen. Humans have ears and brain goop to follow orders and change their direction as necessary though.
I mean let's get real, do you trust bits of cryptic silicon over your own brain? When did humans start placing more trust in computers than their own noodles? God knows we've all seen our share of error messages and BSOD's...
If there’s an officer trying to direct the car around or through a detour, autonomous cars aren’t trained for all that, so they don’t even listen.
Do you actually know that to be the case? There was a recent video showing the current state of Tesla self-driving and it was handling detours through construction zones just fine.
I mean let’s get real, do you trust bits of cryptic silicon over your own brain?
In a great many circumstances, yes, very much so. I use GPS to navigate, I time out my activities using clocks and alarms, I use a compiler instead of hand-coding assembly langauge, I communicate using telephones and computers rather than writing letters to be hand-delivered. I have fortunately not needed significant medical treatments in my life, but when it comes to that there will be all manner of medical devices that I'll be trusting my life to.
The reason we trust these technologies is, as I have said, because of statistics. We know that on the whole these things work. Every once in a while someone will come up with an anecdote about that one weird time that the GPS led them astray or an alarm failed or whatever, but those are anecdotes. The plural of anecdote is not data.
It's literally the first result when you look up 'self driving car vs police'
That is an anecdote. I just spent a paragraph cautioning against basing your views on anecdotes.
People with functioning brains don't spaz out when near emergency vehicles. They do their best to move the F out of the way as directed.
Mitch McConnell might be an exception though, he'd probably spaz out.
I guess the statistics keep you safer, screw the person that died in the blocked ambulance though...
Humans can be found culpable. Is cruise being held to the same standard?
Is having someone to blame for stuff going wrong more important than things actually going wrong less often?
We can acknowledge the benefit while still keeping both classes of party honest. The dichotomy you propose is unnecessary.
They are right now because there's a focus on getting greenlit to grow this as a business. At some point, a companies will start to chip away at any regulation that may be in place and optimize for lower-cost cars with fewer sensors or prioritize say travel speed over safety, at which point it's likely going to place them exactly where humans are for much decision making.
this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2023
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