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Comment by nickjarboe | Hacker News Reader

World annual traffic deaths in 2010 were estimated by the WHO to be 1.25 million. If Elon Musk has the guts to let people voluntarily test out a system that ends up killing 100 people (and this estimate seems very high. The system could save more than it kills during development) but develops a system that reduces traffic deaths by just 50% one year earlier, that would be saving 625,000 lives. From a practical human suffering perspective, I am glad he is pushing hard to develop automatic cars a soon as possible.

Also: reusable rockets.

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The problem with this is he is selling it as a working product. Imagine if pharmaceutical companies could eventually cure diseases by testing a drug on consumers, but sold it to them as working - when in reality it is going to kill a bunch of people while the company figures out what works. In the long run this could be a win, but would you be okay with that?

The obvious solution to my complaint - rename Autopilot something else so people don't confuse it as a self-driving car (and many people do think this).

I don't think Elon Musk is interested in educating the public. I think he's interested in dazzling them. Which is why he strikes me as a salesman.

Imagine a car company that sells cars that may kill people driving them. And imagine that it would actually be one of the most common accident type that kills people. Would you be okay with that?

The thing is, every product is working and not working at the same time to a degree. It is only a matter of statistics - are we better off with or without the product.

The difference is, until recently, nobody knew the statistics for self-driving cars and how often they disengaged (by the way, Tesla is doing horribly in this regard). The information for traffic deaths has been public for decades.

Again, my emphasis is on the point that Elon Musk is spinning the information to his advantage. He has no interest in bringing attention to the shortfalls of his technology, only to sell the public on his soon-to-be-level-4 Autopilot system. He is also wildly misleading the public as to the capabilities of his technology, but unless you work on self-driving cars you wouldn't know that.

Of course it's his job to do this, and any sane businessman would. Which is entirely my point - Elon Musk is a salesman first and foremost.

But he does bring the shortfalls to public attention, he has repeatedly said that driver's should not view current version of the system as self-driving vehicle, for example.

His plan is to evaluate the self-driving capability by comparing its performance to the human drivers, in shadow mode, perfect the technology to surpass human driver (10 times safer, per his comments), then present statistics from that to the relevant authorities (who should be qualified to evaluate any claim they make on these grounds), and only then proceed to release the self-driving technology to market.

I disagree that he is first a salesman. He is an engineer - and as an engineer he knows that anything he sells has to work or the product - and the company - does not last. He knows that very well, and has bet his fortunes on his engineering skills.

He is a salesman only second. And that is why this can actually work.

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