[cryptoz]

Reminds me of that time in Russia at the chess tournament, where they repurposed some industrial robot to play chess and it crushed a kid’s hand.

Also reminds me of when Uber got kicked out of California to test self driving cars, so they moved to Nevada and promptly killed a woman.

I guess it’s not surprising that safety is taking a back seat in robotics development everywhere in the world. It’s a mad race for profits of untold scale. But it would be so great if the companies that win would be the companies that don’t fumble on human safety, taking perhaps a slower approach but one that kills/maims fewer people.

[inglor_cz]

For self-driving cars, safety is probably not taking a back seat, otherwise there wouldn't be much profit in them. We just have an unrealistic expectation that they can and must be 100 per cent harmless, which we would never extend to human drivers.

The vast majority of previous transport tech, including horses and mules, was way more gory and dangerous than self-driving cars are.

This includes quite recent developments. How many people died on a Segway?

[throwanem]

One? Heselden's the only one to come immediately to mind. That the owner of the company should drive its product off a fatally high cliff is embarrassing, but still quite literally n=1.

[inglor_cz]

I know of at least one fatality in my acquaintance circle. "A drunkard cracks his skull when falling from a Segway onto hard pavement in a tourist zone" isn't the kind of story that makes international news, unlike Heselden's demise.