[chiefofgxbxl]

Agreed. If car crashes kill so many in the U.S., wouldn't it make sense to make the country a less car-dependent nation if we want to reduce fatalities? Walking and biking generally won't get people killed, so why not promote that?

I think part of the problem is that self-driving vehicles is marketed as a life-saving technology, when it is the novelty and futurism people are attracted to. (It is indeed an impressive and challenging problem.) The furthest mainstream press release I can recall making the case for autonomous vehicles was Google's efforts. This makes me wonder if they had a solution in search of a problem, so they took road deaths in the U.S to sell the idea. Maybe they were chasing the next iteration of intense computing application, e.g. Deep Blue -> Watson -> self-driving cars.

The 40k+ fatalities per year is a solvable problem without autonomous vehicles: (1) promote equity in other methods of transportation, (2) enhance driver-assistance technology, (3) design roads to be built for safety rather than convenience/speed [0]

Regarding point 2 above, note that Chevrolet has "teen-driver technology" which can set a maximum speed, and provide visual and audible warnings if the (teen) driver exceeds the speed limit [1]. Presumably the vehicle has cameras to read speed limit signs. Why isn't this being applied to all drivers? It seems to be the classic case of "let's blame teens for everyone's bad driving" (juvenoia).

[0] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/1/25/speed-kills-so... [1] https://www.chevrolet.com/teen-driver-technology