[bseidensticker]

The problem is that it's a different set of people who will die with self driving cars. Imagine the trolley problem but instead of 5 vs 1 it's 30,000 vs 29,000. The 30,000 people get hit by the trolley and die if you don't pull the lever, and a completely different set of 29,000 people die. People who did not do anything wrong. People who had no chance to fix the situation. Sure, it's 1,000 fewer people, but none of those 29,000 people did anything wrong. They were all killed by the self driving systems made by car manufacturers.

Regardless of whether or not you personally would pull the lever, you have to admit it's not the same as saving 1,000 lives.

[rmbyrro]

This is completely absurd reasoning. If we knew who was going to die, we'd let them know beforehand, so they could pick a safer spot on the street at their "death time".

There's no such thing as a deterministic future, as you suggest.

We can't stop doing things because a theoretical future will be changed. This is absurd.

[enragedcacti]

While it is a whiff, one grain of truth is that its possible that pedestrian deaths increase with self driving vehicles, even if overall deaths decrease.

Is it fair to trade lives of people who choose not to drive a car at all for those who do? As of now NHTSA weighs weighs them identically which I think is a huge mistake.

That said its hugely dependent on the technology involved. I think a Waymo is safer than your average driver already for pedestrians. FSD Beta if unmonitored would be drastically worse than your average driver for pedestrian safety.

[bseidensticker]

I'm not suggesting it's deterministic.

People have been saying that if driverless cars are safer than humans by any amount we should allow them. I'm saying they should be much safer than humans before we allow them.

The public will not tolerate car manufacturers killing 10's of thousands of people per year just because they are very slightly statistically safer than the average human driver.

[antoinealb]

I just want to point out that drunk driving also kills innocent bystanders: pedestrians, cyclists, sober drivers around, etc.