There's no excuse for a self-driving car to run a red light, but human drivers do it millions of times every day and in most cases when we see it we just shake our heads and say "what is that fool thinking?!" But a self-driving car does it once and it's headline news for months.
"Do you know why I pulled you over?"
"No" lie #1
"Did you know you ran that red light back there?"
"No, it was yellow when I went through" lie #2
"Here's the ticket"
person shows up to court to fight the ticket by claiming their innocence, lie #3
Again, no excusing Uber's behavior, just pointing to a double standard. We fully expect human drivers to run red lights, and we fully expect them to lie about it. There's no excuse for Uber's response and no excuse for their software running a red light, but there's similarly no excuse for humans doing it. Yet humans do it all the time and no one really cares.
Like if we're going to report headline news every time a Tesla catches on fire, we should have breaking news stop-the-presses coverage every time a gasoline or diesel powered car catches on fire, too. But we don't because it's much more frequent, to the point where we almost expect it.
The real question is not "do self-driving cars commit traffic violations?" but rather "do self-driving cars commit traffic violations at a lower rate than humans?". That's what matters. Not that they're perfect, but that they're better in a measurable way.
But we're not talking about the act of running a red light, we're talking about the act of lying about it.
>It's a lot easier to do a software update on a poorly-behaving self-driving car than it is to re-educate poorly-behaving human drivers.
What makes you think this?
>"do self-driving cars commit traffic violations at a lower rate than humans?".
Indeed. So the companies behind self-driving cars should prove it.
I disagree. This is a corporation speaking with one voice to attempt to continue to run cars which have just demonstrated an inability to detect a crucial traffic signal. Think of it this way, in one example I run a red light and lie about it. In the other I make arguments in the public sphere to allow the legally blind to drive because it will benefit me financially. That's not scale, that's fundamentally different.
Then Uber should disillusion me, not lie and cover up. Was it a flash of light off a reflection, a leaf that blew across the light, an odd angle? Then Uber should tell us that. More importantly though is the question of whether Uber even knows why it failed. What if they don't even understand why the car ran the light?
EDIT:
>You're assuming that because it missed the traffic light once it will do so every time.
Where did I assume that?
Where have I not been consistent?
>You're assuming that because it missed the traffic light once it will do so every time. The real world is a dynamic environment, something odd may have happened that it just missed the light that one instance.
Whether Uber misses this specific light over and over again or whether it fails in one off incidents across a spectrum of events when "something odd" happens shouldn't change our judgment of the car or company.
Plus, even if Uber's car recognized the traffic light as green, the fact that the cars before it on the other lanes stopped should be a clear enough signal to not just speed through.
For Uber, their car was probably not aware that the light was red, which is more dangerous.
I do not think "a self-driving car runs a red light" is analogous to "a person runs a red light". A closer analogy is to "a distinct class of people who run red lights".
I do agree that the media response is overblown, however I do not think it is without some merit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...
Uber and all the other companies will permanently solve that problem the one time they figure out how to reliably identify a red light.
If a self driving car does the same people will think "ALL cars will make the same bad decission in the same situation". And there is some truth to that.
The human analogy is "<politician> ran a red light while drunk". The point is that they made errors of judgement that then caused this unsafe situation, rather than it being a random accident. (Especially in this case, in which high-handed defiance of both principles and the law is an established narrative.)
Humans fail in different ways, such as inattention.
We will face a recession again. Trump will repeal Dodd Frank, banks will start making riskier loans and obscuring them in hidden investment products, and one day someone big enough will pull out, causing the whole house of cards to collapse. And, Republicans and Democrats will do another TARP because the alternative is World Depression II. That is, unless Trump seizes enough power to prevent TARP II.
Oh, I beg to differ. From a hard-core libertarian perspective, the state has no right to exist, let alone impose arbitrary regulations on business owners. People should be free to trade at will and guarantees on safety should be handled through a contract between the people who are trading. To impose regulations on trade would be an act of aggression.
During vehicle operation, everyone using the road would need to agree on an acceptable level of risk, probably managed by the road owner, not a state. Even if the owner of a particular road refuses to do business with you, you would still be able to buy whatever vehicles you like and operate them on your own property.
Libertarian paradises aren't always theoretical. See early bitcoin, and the commonly cited Somalia. On the opposite end, known authoritarian-tightass state China currently has the most efficient capitalist economy the planet has yet seen.
That's a completely bogus argument- you're conflating anarchism with libertarianism in order to make libertarians look bad.
If something is already safer than humans, then it should be deployed in mass, NOW. Screw the laws. Or get rid of them.
A million people die every year due to cars. The market can fix this if government gets out of the way.
Every year we wait is another million people dead, due to terrible human drivers.
Introduced prematurely, it could set the tech back due to public outcry. A few more autopilot deaths in the US in this political climate could really hurt the industry. Chao is looking for an excuse to pull permits.
But not in Arizona, or any other red state.
Get the federal government out of regulating it, and let the states decide.
Then, when red states save thousands of lives, the blue states will follow.
Haha or vice versa! Depends who proceeds in the right way.
I don't believe there's definitively an answer as to whether Tesla (arguably red and anti-regulation, moving forward without much caution) or Google (blue, more cautious) will find more success. I personally think Google will, but even better than that, it's great that we have such a system that permits that level of competition.
that is really the hardest point, when you are trying to reduce unemployment like Trump is.
Never lower regulations when life are on the line.
There is a reason planes and cars don't crash every day, and it's because of these annoying regulations that force tests and QA. You'll never see a summer intern just come in and commits anything he wants and breaks everything. This shit doesn't happen in this line of business.
Regulations is good. You don't want devs being involved in your car with zero regulations to back them.