[Peleus]

The bait and switch with this comparison is you're comparing something you have no control over (bread slicer which randomly malfunctions) against something you have full control over (my own cutting abilities). No one thinks their cutting ability is inferior, so of course they don't want to give up control, because they are (obviously) better than the average human.

If I posed the question as: Would you prefer to place your hand next to a machine which will accidentally cut your finger off once every 100,000 cuts, or a human chef that will accidentally cut your finger off every once every 50,000 cuts, which would you prefer?

I don't know about you, but I'd give the machine a crack.

[gambiting]

Ok, maybe a different, well known example - the radiation Theraphy Therac-25 machines which would sometimes(extremely rarely) deliver a lethal dose of radiation instead of the one entered. Undoubtedly those machines saved more lives than they took, and also it's without question that they did so more accurately than any human operated machine could ever do. Yet they are considered one of the biggest failures of medical engineering ever.

I see it the same way - the current "self driving" systems shouldn't be allowed on the road, period, no matter how much safer they are than a statistical driver, unless they can be demonstrated to be completely 100% perfect in all scenarios(other than actual hardware failure - they shouldn't for instance run into a truck that's turning across a highway just because the system chose to ignore it).

[jakzurr]

Would I be incorrect to suppose that you don't use seatbelts?

[gambiting]

I don't see why I wouldn't use them(or why would anyone), can you explain?

[jakzurr]

Yeah, I guess my comment was kind of off the cuff.

What I was thinking about, was that seatbelts are hardly "100% perfect in all scenarios." I mean, they can make it a more difficult to get out of a burning vehicle quickly, just as an example. Even ignoring the possibility of malfunction, or jamming and such, they're not perfect.

The fact is, even if seatbelts decrease your risk overall, they are nowhere near 100% perfect. Nevertheless, many of us choose to use seatbelts, and indeed even chose to do so before widespread legislation.

[LtWorf]

The statistics we have about self driving are kinda useless though. Teslas don't do intersections… which is where most accidents will happen. So yeah good they don't crash because they give up in the difficult situations.