[srackey]

I fear it will end up more like nuclear energy: a clearly better, objectively safer technology that nevertheless is very easy to fear-monger against. Development won’t be pushed to the Third World, but rather those political systems less susceptible to being swayed by nonsense public pressure like that.

[4k3aa4]

I feel like nuclear energy is a bad example, because when it goes wrong it's "one big scary thing" as opposed to the papercuts that would add up with dangerous robotaxis. Also the benchmark for car danger is already so incredible low. You can see in this thread the argument that "cars are already killing people, so we as a society just have to decide how many it's ok to have die while we figure out to make them work."

As far as "objectively safer" - not sure how that works (or matters). Since when has safety actually mattered in terms of public opinion? If safety mattered we wouldn't have cars on city streets at all, all last mile would be slow & public and we'd have built our towns & cities to support that.