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The article is claiming that the development of self-driving cars will require killing people on public roads. That's a tantalizing prospect ("kill thousands now to save millions later"), but no evidence or arguments are presented why. Sure, there will be deaths due to road accidents, but is it really inevitable that more people will die due to failures of engineering like Uber's or Tesla's?

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Utopias are always justified this way, and the worst crimes are committed as a result. After all, if a potentially limitless number of lives are saved in the future, you can argue for sacrificing millions today. Somehow people never seem to understand that nothing real or worthwhile is down that road, and as a species we go down it repeatedly.

I think the best argument against this, is to demand that the person willing to let many die is the first to die.

"I think the best argument against this, is to demand that the person willing to let many die is the first to die. "

That's why I am saying that all road testing of autonomous cars should take place in the neighborhoods where the executives and their children live and are on the road. That would align the incentives of the company and the public.

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