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by makeitdouble 1455 days ago
> From a customer's perspective, it isn't clear that a software taxi driver is in any way better than a human taxi driver

The taxi driver having 0% chance of raping or stealing you would be prominent a clear win.

Or really any of many many other issues you could have with an actual human person with a specific world view and social position interacting with you. Not even considering if you yourself have specific shortcommings (fear of social interactions etc.)

It wouldn't be fair to pit a perfect human against the self driving car, there are many other stuff to be consided outside of the sheer driving competence.

2 comments

> The taxi driver having 0% chance of raping or stealing you would be prominent a clear win.

I find it interesting that this gets mentioned so much - I’ve done some moderate googling for cases of rape by a cab driver in Berlin and the last case that went to court was in 2013 - and even that is not a classic case of premeditated rape (+) There is one case later where a passenger raped a taxi driver and one where two rapists pretended to be Uber drivers - they could not have easily pretended to be taxi drivers in Germany since the cars need to have very specific signage and equipment.

Now, this doesn’t mean that no rape occurred - after all not every rape case gets reported - but it certainly indicates that the risk of being raped in a taxi in Berlin is low.

Things may be different in the US, but even there my initial assumption is that the risk gets overestimated since this is the kind of crime that gets overrepresented in the news.

(+) the passengers didn’t want to pay the fare and threatened the driver who then pulled out a gun and forced them to have sex as payment. Still rape, no question, but not a premeditated rape case.

The robo taxi can't steal FROM you very easily, but it can certainly steal YOU.
Good correction :)

Then, the robot taxi is probably not stealing you on its own, there would need to be other humans involved...

The robot taxi could always stop next to a robotic arm, similar to the one from a car factory. But your point is well made.