[Fins]

I am not really sure if development of SDVs is really that important, but even if it were, your proposal would only be acceptable if it were you and Mr. Musk racing your Teslas on Tesla's private proving grounds. Somewhere in the Kalahari desert seems to be an acceptable location. The moment people "making a sacrifice" are unsuspecting customers, and eventually innocent bystanders you are veering very much into Dr. Mengele's territory.

Actually, one thing that I was curious about regarding this incident -- they say that authorities had to wait for a team of Tesla's engineers to show up to clean up burning mess of batteries. Luckily for everyone else trying to get somewhere on 101 that day, Tesla's HQ isn't too far away. What if next time one drives into a barrier it happens in a middle of Wyoming? Will the road stay closed until Tesla's engineers can hitch a ride on one of Musk's Falcons?

[kbutler]

"Nearly 1.3 million people die in road crashes each year, on average 3,287 deaths a day. An additional 20-50 million are injured or disabled. "

And $879B in USA per year.

[Fins]

So we should kill even more people, who had never signed up to be guinea pigs, so that maybe there will be a self-driving car at some point? Which most of those dying in those crashes will not be able to afford anytime soon anyway...

[kbutler]

No, but every year we delay replacing human drivers with something much safer, we incur huge distributed costs.

It is thus very important.

[Fins]

Thnat's assuming that the replacement actually is safer, which in case of the Auto-Pilot is not the case now, and not necessarily the case ever. There is a reason Waymo isn't unleashing their stuff onto unsuspecting public.

[kbutler]

> "I am not really sure if development of SDVs is really that important"

For the 1.3 million people and their loved ones and to 20-50 million injured EVERY YEAR, yeah, it's really that important.

Is it ready today? No. We're in pretty violent agreement on that.

Will we get there? I don't see much reason to doubt that we will, eventually. It may require significant infrastructure changes.

It's pretty clear Waymo/Uber are pushing the envelope too hard, without adequate safeguards, but "only be acceptable if it were you and Mr. Musk...on Tesla's private proving grounds" is probably not pushing the envelope enough.

Even Waymo is "unleashing their stuff onto unsuspecting public" by driving them on public roads - lots of innocent bystanders potentially at risk there.

[Fins]

Did Waymo kill anyone yet?

Both Waymo and even Uber do not pretend that their systems are ready for public use and at least allegedly have people who are paid to take over (granted, in Uber's case it's done as shadily as anything else Uber does). Tesla sells their half-baked stuff to everyone, with marketing that strongly implies that they can do self-driving now, if only not for those pesky validations and regulations. I think there's quite a bit of a difference.

A lot of deaths and injuries on the road happen in countries with bad infrastructure and rather cavalier attitude to rules of the road. Fixing those could save more people sooner than SDVs that they won't be able to afford any time soon. Not to consider that an SDV designed in the first world (well, Bay Area's roads are closer to third world, but still...) aren't going to work too well when everyone around drives like a maniac on a dirt road.

Not to say that SDVs wouldn't be neat, when they actually work, but this is a very SV approach, throwing technology to create overpriced solution to problems that could be solved much cheaper, but in a boring way that doesn't involve AI, ML, NN, and whatever other fashionable abbreviations.