this post was submitted on 23 May 2024
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This is literally the only way we'll ever get self-driving cars. You have to test them in real life. Simulations and tests tracks can only take you so far. Yeah it'll probably cost the lifes of some number of people but this will be greatly outnumbered by the amount of lives saved when the technology actually starts working as intented. It's not like human driven vehicles are exactly safe for pedestrians either.
Also, when a self-driving vehicle fails it almost always means it ends up getting stuck somewhere or blocking the road. It's extremely rare for it to cause an accident, though that does happen aswell.
I don't think public deaths is a valid cost for creating self driving cars. We could be builidng safer and more effecient transportation systems. Some billionaire is going to make even more money because they were allowed to use the general public and city streets as a testing ground for their product. This is not fair to the family or the people who are injured or killed by self driving cars.
There are currently 80+ people dying every single day just in the US alone because we don't have self-driving cars. Not developing that technology is just as much of a choise to let people die than going forward with it. I'd argue it's the moral thing to do. People are awful at driving. As a fan of cars I like to go sit by the freeway watching them passing by several times a week and the number of people driving 120kph while staring at their phones is mind boggling.
Not only that but virtually all of those vehicles are going to be electric as well so that also means less people dying because of air pollution. Then there's also the fact that it'll bring down the cost of taxies immensely as well as allowing private individuals to let their vehicle go do ride sharing for the day instead of sitting on the parking lot of their work place unused. There's just too many upsides to it. Also it's not like passengers getting killed by rogue self-driving vehicles is a particularly common occurance despite the technology still being at it's infancy. This is the worst they're ever going to be.
The same problem could be fixed with electrified transit and walkability. Transit would also be even more environmentally friendly.
Plus we could still develop self driving cars but do a lot more testing before we set the public as the guinea pigs to see if they are safe.
Id also argue that we cannot claim this is the worst self driving will get since self driving cars are only used in a few areas right now.
Like I said; there's only so much you can test on a closed track. At some point you must start doing that in the real world. Pedestrians getting killed by experimental self-driving vehicles is not an actual issue we're dealing with right now but more like a theoretical possibility of what could happen in the future. There are only a couple of such incidents recorded ever. That's not a good enough reason to not continue with it.
What I mean by them now being the worst they'll ever be is the self-driving technology itself. It's constantly improving and the trend is towards better. The technology we have right now is the worst it's ever going to be.
Easy to say when those lives doesn't include yours or anyone you love/care about.
How could anyone know that? It just as well might.
It's a fallacy to think we can build a perfect world where all bad things can be avoided. With all new technology comes downsides. We're already losing 80+ a day in the US alone because we don't have self driving cars. It's far more likely for someone close to me to get killed by a human driver.
So you'd rather more people die in avoidable traffic accidents because we weren't allowed to develop this technology?
I'd rather have people avoiding using cars at all, adopting mass transit solutions instead.
Great that's admirable, but that isn't going to happen because it doesn't work for most people and there is no political capital to make it happen, so what then?