[ckinnan]

Lives on the line? On average, existing cars kill more than 100 people each day on American roads. The current system of human-driving cars has killed one million Americans over the past couple of generations, mostly from human error. To save lives we need to push forward on self-driving tech.

[pythonaut_16]

No, on average existing drivers kill more than 100 people each day [source?].

There's no proof yet that self driving cars are safer than human drivers. And more importantly there's a big difference between being safer on average than a human driver, and being safer than the average human driver.

[francisofascii]

The average was 102 per day in 2016, and that is just in the U.S. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...

[frgtpsswrdlame]

And when will we actually start saving lives? How many humans are going to be killed by bad self-driving technology before we hit the break-even point? No one can even say! Self-driving advocates never seem concerned with the real-world present day costs of the technology, only the futuristic possible scenarios. You have to weight both sides of the equation.

[ghostbrainalpha]

What if we required everyone who received a DUI to only operate self driving cars for a period of 2 years?

Some of the alcoholics in my family drive about as safely as your average toddler. It takes years for them to collect enough accidents and DUI's to be forcibly taken off the road.

I feel like the break even point has already been reached for my family. But I'm fine if safe drivers don't want to turn over their domain to AI for another few decades.

Maybe AI vehicles could be required to be painted Bright Yellow like a Taxi Cab, or have other really obvious markings so that other drivers on the road knew to take extra caution with them? Just like an "AI Student Driver" program, that we all work together to get through safely. The AI could maybe just be allowed in rural areas, and kept out of the urban hellscapes of LA, BAY AREA, and NYC traffic.

[vkou]

> What if we required everyone who received a DUI to only operate self driving cars for a period of 2 years?

What if we required every car to have a breathalyzer ignition control?

We'd cut fatal crashes by a quarter, for far less then the cost of equipping every car with LIDAR.

For some reason, this idea never gets traction with the self-driving crowd. It may be because safety is not their first concern - watching Netflix while your car drives you around is.

[rhino369]

I wouldn't assume rushing an unsafe version into mass production will speed up the production of a safe version.

Once v.1.0 goes gold, there is a lot less incentive to build a slightly more safe version.

[emodendroket]

This is a spurious comparison. The number of miles logged by self-driving cars are a blip compared to human-operated ones.

[Semirhage]

Ok, you go volunteer on a test track then. While you’re at it, you should volunteer for medical testing, do you know how many people die each year from various diseases?! Maybe the needed progress will come soon, or maybe not, but since your only justification is the magnitude of the present problem I’m sure that you won’t object.

Gooood luck!

[Game_Ender]

Because sick people are desperate we actually make it quite hard for them to volunteer for things like risky medical tests. Requiring more animal or smaller pilot studies first. I don't know the numbers well enough to know whether this is a net win for humanity, but just like any technology development project, the longer your dev cycles the slower things go.