[dotancohen]

My then-five-year-old was run over by a human driver. Luckily, in his case the human was paying attention and managed to slow down to ~20 KPH before sending my son flying tens of meters, breaking his maxilla and knocking out all his front teeth, not to mention road rash on every part of his body, from his face and ears to his hips, legs, shoulders. I think that only his shoes survived to be worn again.

That human driver reacted in about 1.5 seconds, judging by the dashcam footage. I fear that another 0.5 seconds of reaction time might have had a vastly different outcome. Likewise, I would have had many calmer months had the reaction time been 0.5 or 1.0 seconds sooner, like a computer would do.

I anxiously await computer-assisted driving to protect my family, even when my family is pedestrians. I've since bought a Tesla.

[ZeroGravitas]

I myself was hit in a very similar way when 4 years old, while crossing a road outside a school, and also lost my front teeth.

My father tells of my clothes being cut off by the medics with scissors in the ambulance and my entire body being bruised and me having a Joker like smile from where the car ripped my face open. The scar still itches in cold weather.

He then himself nearly hit a child that ran out in front of him about a decade later and was totally shaken by the experience even though the car didn't actually make contact this time.

One of the reasons (there are many, I highly recommend it) I cycle commuted for years was that I didn't want to put myself in the position of being the driver that hits the kid that I once was.

Computer assisted braking and self driving both seem like good technical solutions to me. I trust computers much more than distracted humans and see the benefit for both the pedestrian who doesn't get hit, and the car driver who doesn't injure someone.

[kaba0]

I hope your son is doing okay!

But I don’t think your generalization is correct - just because computers can in theory indeed react way faster than humans, they are just a black-box algorithm that may very well just break abruptly due to a plastic bag in the wind, vs not stopping at all for a child. Humans are simply much much much better at reading the environment, understanding it based on their internal model of reality and reacting aptly.

If anything, the “correct” decision would be to back any car with auto-breaking, as that is a sufficiently well-constrained problem for computers, and that can save countless lives enhancing human capabilities. And this feature is available in even lower end Modern cars nowadays

But FSD is a scam that may very well take lives.