[matthewmacleod]

I don't think I agree with this.

Road traffic accidents are something like the 10th most common cause of death worldwide. It's clearly a rather dangerous activity.

The idea that we have 'deemed acceptable' the risk involved is only the case where the risk cannot be lowered without compromising other goals (e.g. fast travel).

In a hypothetical future where autonomous cars are widespread and much safer, the tradeoff changes – it suddenly becomes possible to have both fast and safe travel, with the proviso that humans can't be in change cars.

I'm not going to argue that this is a good thing, because I don't know. But it's not fair to say that it's fear-mongering – it's objectively true that cars kill loads of people, and quite possible that non-autonomous vehicles will be banned or at least heavily regulated in the future.

[closetnerd]

> Road traffic accidents are something like the 10th most common cause of death worldwide. It's clearly a rather dangerous activity.

I just want to note here that if you look at the same statistics in countries that have implemented better driver training programs, its clear that there is still leaps and bounds of efforts we can take to address the concerns of safety without outlawing the practice completely.