[afavour]

Human driven cars cost people their lives multiple times every day, though. So I don't think the calculation can be quite as simple as that. As self driving cars are rolled out I think each incident like this needs to be studied to see how avoidable it was, whether a human would have been able to resolve it, and what changes can be made.

There are always going to be fuck ups at some level. The question is whether we’re moving from a world of more fuckups to fewer or not.

[Noaidi]

But in the case of self driving cars, who do we find at fault? Have we even answered that question? I mean did the Waymo car even get a ticket for blocking the ambulance?

[jeffbee]

Has any human driver ever received such a summons?

[amelius]

The argument that as long as they cause less incidents than human drivers they are a win has to go. Because that only works if the statistics of the environment are stationary.

[afavour]

What does “statistics of the environment” mean in this context? How can fewer deaths on the road not be a win?

[majormajor]

I think they're getting at something like this: If self-driving cars resulted in dramatically more miles-traveled-in-car per person they could be safer per-mile and more efficient per-mile while making some important total outcomes worse.

Relevant to this example: if people travel by car more because they care less about traffic when they're playing video games or on TikTok during it, instead of driving, overall congestion will likely go up which makes emergency services worse.

[afavour]

That’s fair but I think it’s kind of orthogonal to the original point.

As is already the case in cities with robust public transit systems you’d need to make sure you’re applying the right incentives (i.e. taxes and charges) to make sure people are making decisions that benefit everyone. That doesn’t alter the possibility of self driving cars being much safer than human driven ones.

[jeffbee]

"Multiple" being stretched to the absolute limit in this comment.