[dboreham]

The notion that if self-driving technology is statistically safer in bulk than humans, then "it wins" is I think highly fallacious (even though it is made here repeatedly and often).

We as humans do not judge whether to do one thing vs another on that basis. E.g. we would ban widespread gun ownership in countries that allow it at present (very large numbers of people would not die as a result); we would mandate a basic set of vaccinations in countries that at present do not do that (same outcome); we would fit the passenger seats facing backwards in commercial aircraft (same outcome). The list is endless but we do none of these things because people prefer to judge the risks in some activity or behavior in the context of their own near term pleasure or convenience.

Heck we could mandate very simple low-tech driving safety measures for human-driven cars such as top speed limits and a block on driving the wrong way down the freeway.

[jimmywanger]

> we would ban ... we would mandate ...

A common misperception is that we could ban objects, or mandate behaviours. We can only impose penalties on the possession of objects, or mandate punishments on certain behaviours. Simply passing laws does not save lives in the short run.