> Not safe to assume the risks don't exist just because they
> aren't mentioned in an Ars Technica article.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zsG9yKcriht2doRhM/inadequacy...
I don't believe that the risks don't exist. I believe that what risks exist are extremely unlikely to be something that can be pointed out with a one-line comment on HN. I don't believe that because of this article. I believe that because lasers are unbelievably useful and widely-deployed in industry and tend to cause immediate, visible, and unmistakable damage, so organizations like OSHA have studied them extensively and failures are expensive enough that operators put actual effort into minimizing risk.
> I would have thought it would be safe to assume a
> company wouldn't mount a laser on a car that would
> permanently ruin peoples cameras, but here we are.
I would have thought that that it would be safe to assume that people wouldn't strap 200kW motors to two-ton lumps of metal and send them hurtling around under purely manual control with no physical limits or safety barriers separating them from foot traffic, but here we are.
If the price we pay for eliminating the leading cause of violent death worldwide is that we have to stop pointing cameras at everything, so be it.