| That habituation will work in the other direction too. 1: cars driving super cautiously will become the norm, so human driving behaviour that is normal now may become seen as abnormal and dangerous. I expect to see a lot more traffic tickets for driving 10mph above the speed limit, blowing through yellows, et cetera. 2: crashes will be increasingly blamed on the driver. Right now when a driver crashes into a pedestrian or cyclist, most of the time the driver is let off the hook relatively easily. But if it's an accident that a self-driving car would have avoided, the public will be seen as much more avoidable and the driver will be blamed. There's also the factor that a majority of accidents are caused by a minority of drivers; people who think they are bad drivers are more likely to adopt self-driving cars. Sure there's a large dunning-kroger effect: 80% of drivers think they are above average, but the other 20% are probably really bad. So I do expect the widespread presence of self-driving to make human drivers much better. But as you said pedestrians and cyclists will likely become worse. I think it'll balance into many fewer fatalities, but we'll see... |