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Comment by askafriend | Hacker News Reader

Just because they will not re-apply in California now doesn't mean their efforts are stopping - and it doesn't mean they won't apply for permits in different states or just re-apply in California at a later date.

HN seems to be jumping to radical conclusions on the level of Reddit these days but I get that everyone is a bit emotional around Facebook / Uber during this news cycle...

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But doesn't that mean they're scaling back testing?

Considering the fact that Ubers entire valuation justification relies on them both getting self driving cars first....

It just means they won’t test in California in the near future.

It doesn’t automatically mean they will scale back their testing across the board.

My guess is that they don’t want to be seen asking for something they’ll publically fail to get. At this point, outside of the world of tech, people who were downright alarmed by SDV’s now have a place to hang their hat. Politicians follow the direction of popular sentiment, and they’re not going to risk the next Uber fatality having their stamp on it. They’ll be thinking the next corpse might be a child’s as well, and how that would hurt their prospects for re-election.

On HN there are a lot of Vulcans who have stats ready to go about human driver fatalities, but that’s far out of touch with the average voter. Fear = Dread/Sense of Control, and most people think they have a high degree of control as the driver of a car. I’m not arguing that they’re right, but they’re the majority.

Even the stats are pretty bad for Uber: while the sample size is minimal, an average driver is expected to drive ~33x more miles than Uber did in total before a fatality.

> while the sample size is minimal

This already disqualifies this from being called "stats". With a single data point you might be able to fit in a probability distribution, but there's enough wiggle room there to drive a self-driving oil tanker through.

But judging from the low fps video provided, I would guess most drivers would not have been able to avoiding hitting the person in that specific situation.

If I wanted to put Uber, Waymo, and other self driving companies out of business, I’d run on the platform of not allowing Silicon Valley technocrats deciding which kids in the street ate going to die the next time their reckless attempt at disruption goes astray.

It doesn’t matter if you’re being intellectually disingenuous if you think you can win on the platform.

Exactly, and this issue is highly emotive for many. The rational counter argument, that humans are generally terrible drivers, is just guaranteed to piss people off more.

But you'd be out-voted by elderly people who are afraid of losing their mobility when they lose the ability to drive a car.

Ever been to FL or AZ? The oldest people you’ve ever seen are still driving, slowly, dangerously, and happily. No one is taking their licenses with the AARP, around. Meanwhile you may be overestimating the love very old people have for automation, the prospect of being killed by an SDV, or being driven around town by a machine.

I’m from AZ and there are plenty of people there who don’t drive because they’re too old to.

My grandmother is 86, lives in Florida, and the state renews her license annually with no qualms.

Data size = 1.

I wish people stop posting anecdotal experiences. Not just saying for your comment to be clear.

I wasn't talking about whether the law forbids it. There are plenty of people who get too old and frail to drive, and stop driving of their own accord, without the government forcing them to.

The realities of how hard it is for an elderly person to get their license renewed aren't directly relevant here. What matters is the perception of the voters. If they perceive this to be a problem, then someone with money can pay for an ad to play upon those fears and use them to persuade someone to vote against a candidate.

That is a really scary thought because it has probably already been thought up by someone in politics already. That's too easy a win card for it not to get played pretty quickly

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