[qwytw]

> We as individuals should not be advocating for the modality that maximizes the number of deaths, regardless of other trivial factors like status quo bias.

I'm not sure it's that simple. Traffic deaths are not entirely random, they can but there are actions you can take to decrease risk for yourself and other people in your car. If the number of deaths only marginally decreases the chance of death for some people (those who don't drive while intoxicated, don't use their phones, are more attentive etc.) will increase?

Also the state will have to grant legal immunity to car manufacturers so that they couldn't be sued to bankruptcy. That shouldn't provide them too many incentives to make their cars safer..

[hackerlight]

"Minimizing deaths" is probably too simplistic, but not by much. If we can be reasonably confident that replacing human drivers will lead to 30% less traffic deaths, I think it would take some pretty large extenuating circumstances for me to not want that to happen.

> Also the state will have to grant legal immunity to car manufacturers so that they couldn't be sued to bankruptcy. That shouldn't provide them too many incentives to make their cars safer..

Indeed we would need to be careful not to make the wrong incentives.

[qwytw]

But there are already many measures which could decrease traffic deaths by up to 30% or so. They are expensive and/or inconvenient (but not even close to how expensive replacing all cars with self-driving ones would be). Which choose not to implement them for these reasons.

For instance ban all cars made prior to 2008 or so. That combined with massive investments into public transport (would decrease average miles driven, .e.g many EU countries have way less traffic fatalities per 100k pop. but about the same when adjusted by distance driven). Should be about 30% if not more and we don't even need self-driving cars...

https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/Publication/8118...