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Comment by buvanshak | Hacker News Reader

>But until then, the whole thing is deeply experimental. And regulation is premature

If it is deeply experimental, then it should be conducted in experimental settings, and not on public roads. If regulation is premature, then public tests are also premature. I am surprised I have to explain this. To be on public road the vehicle should pass a minimum benchmark that shows that it can consistently handle at least all the common scenarios..

There is no urgent need for self driving vehicles. It is not like they are going to solve some of the pressing issues that humanity is facing right now. It is just a curiosity, and can may be boost the profits of some corporations. That is about it.

I don't think it is worth or just to risk lives of unsuspecting public towards that end..

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The best angle I have seen for this is: if we knew a safer way than road testing to teach something to drive we would do it. Teens are way more dangerous than experienced drivers, even after classes and 100 hours of training, but we still let them on the road. It’s imperfect but the only known way to get the experience needed to get better is drive in the real world before you are 100% safe too (and nothing ever hits 100).

> if we knew a safer way than road testing to teach something to drive we would do it.

Exactly. The tests and regulations for self driving vehicles only need to ensure this. That it has been taught to the limits of what can be done in an experimental setting, before it is allowed to be on public roads.

Right now this is not the case. A company can put a SDV on road, that is not even capable of avoiding hitting a pedestrian right in front of it in plain sight at more than breaking distance. I mean, there is nothing to ensure this does not happen. That is my whole argument.

There should be a minimum benchmark that any experimental SDV should pass consistently to be tested on public roads. There should also be some process to ensure the continued validity of the license thus given. For example, it should only be valid until a software/firmware update.

I short, authorities along with engineers and company execs need to sit down and think this through and create a framework before this program can continue..

>There is no urgent need for self driving vehicles. It is not like they are going to solve some of the pressing issues that humanity is facing right now. It is just a curiosity, and can may be boost the profits of some corporations. That is about it.

If you don't consider the second leading unnatural cause of death in the United States (only recently surpassed by suicide) killing 40,000 people a year an "issue", then sure.

> If you don't consider the second leading unnatural cause of death in the United States (only recently surpassed by suicide) killing 40,000 people a year an "issue", then sure.

It is an issue, But not one among the "pressing issues humanity is facing right now" and definitively not worth risking the lives of unsuspecting public.

Interesting that you intend to solve the issue of "40,000 people being killed an year" by putting even more dangerous things on the road, that may or may not become better drivers in a period of god knows how long...

The only sure thing about SDV is that it ll save these companies a boat load of money during the time they are allowed to operate them on the roads...

If the "lives being risked" are less than 40k a year, then the math says that yes, it is worth it.

Status quo is the risk. It is a decision to make the active choice of killing 40k people a year, to prevent something else.

To be clear, the parent poster was arguing that we need to start testing these vehicles even before some sort of tests and legal framework can be devised to ensure them to be road worthy..

My argument was that we have no such urgency, and we can and should wait till we have such a framework in place.

If that delays things by X years, then that mean X times 40k people will die.

That's the tradeoff.

Yes these rules and regulations are important, but are they worth X times 40k lives?

Perhaps one could argue that they are. Just as long as you are honest about the trade off of "I am willing to sacrifice 40K times X lives, because this issue is THAT important".

>if that delays things by X years, then that mean X times 40k people will die.

>That's the tradeoff.

No. With the unknown value X (and numerous other, very relevant unknowns that you have conveniently omitted), that is not a trade off. That is speculation...No, that is worse than speculation. That is just wrong.

That is like some one saying

"Hey you, you are so unlucky that you might kill X number of people every year if you drive a car, so you should not drive a car. Are the lives of X people really worth risking just so that you can drive around in a car?". See? without the value of X, that is just meaningless.

You just can't plug in variables and construct arguments as if they are of certain values and with no sort of quantification. That is like..fundamentally wrong....

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