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Comment by claudeganon | Hacker News Reader

I’m very skeptical of this authoritarian market logic whereby we are told we must sacrifice others lives for the sake of “progress,” which is almost exclusively tied up with one person or business’ individual profit.

While I don’t think autonomous cars are a particularly good investment for the future of transportation, does anyone doubt that with massive, publicly-funded investment we could not achieve them? And what’s more on terms where whatever “costs” were associated with them were subject to democratic checks and debate?

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Humans are bad drivers, and countless people die in car crashes every year as a result.

The question shouldn’t be whether autonomous cars will kill people, but whether they’ll kill more people than human drivers. If they'll kill fewer people, then on net they're saving lives, not "sacrificing" them.

If your wife or child got mowed down by an autonomous car would you be thinking "Oh well, that's progress!"

Is it ethical to build something knowing it will definitely kill random people until you perfect the technology? Will auto makers be held accountable for any wrongful deaths caused by bugs?

Probably not, but are emotional responses the correct criteria for rational decision-making?

Is there a name for this type of argument? I've seen it a lot with certain types of people, one that ignores any logic from the discussion and uses a sort of trap that makes you appear insensitive if you try to argue it? Is it appeal to pity?

The good place makes me think it's a version of the trolly problem.

IANATOMP.

Pretty much what I was trying to get at

What does TOMP stand for?

Teacher of Moral Philosophy.

Watch the show, it's great.

A fascinating display of the human mind.

If your wife or child was mowed down by a normal car, would you be more supportive of autonomous ones?

If your wife or child wasn’t mowed down because the car was autonomous rather than manual (or vice-versa), would you even notice?

Yet, which of human or AI drivers get banned by 2040 depends on convincing people like you — assuming I am inferring correctly that your question is rhetorical and the answer is “no, obviously”.

There is no good reason to think pre-programmed computers are going to outperform human drivers when it counts. It's a prediction about the future, someting that has not happened yet. It's most likely wrong. No amount of marketing hype will change that.

I can think of lots of theoretical reasons computers might outperform human drivers. A computer won't get distracted, will have nearly instantaneous reaction times, and can literally have eyes in the back of its head.

I don't know if that will be enough to make the difference, but I can certainly see how it could be.

> "might"

You're still making a prediction about the future. Some predictions are safer than others: I predict I will see the sun rise tomorrow. Some predictions have little rational basis in reality: I predict you will agree with me. Your prediction about automomous cars being safer than human drivers? That falls somewhere in the middle.

From my perspective, all computer vision systems are abysmal crap and spend orders of magnitude more power to accomplish results many orders of magnitude less impressive than the human brain is capable of. The human brain uses something like 10-20 watts, how much CV/ML can you do with 10-20 watts? Not much at all. There is clearly a huge disconnect between our current approach to solving the problem technologically and how the evolutionary wetware solves the problem. That gap may be bridged sometime in the future, but I'm not holding my breath. I think the problem is being approached from the wrong direction, like trying to drive a screw with a hammer. Maybe we'll still get the job done, but I do not consider that a foregone conclusion.

Let's let all the companies in this space finish their work. Once they do, we can look at the data and decide what should be allowed on the roads.

I just hope that, if the time comes, the decision is based on comparative improvement, instead of hysterics about whether self driving cars will ever kill anyone ever.

By all means, they should be free to spend their money on whatever speculative research they want if they do it safely (it's easy to test cars on closed circuits.)

What would you say is "finished", even?

* Counting watts is probably the weakest argument for whether the tech is doing something well or badly.

* A car can spare 100x that many watts.

* Why would we even want cars to calculate the way humans do? It's a very clearly flawed method.

The point is not whether we can afford to power the machine. The point is that the power discrepancy suggests that the methods we're using are radically different than the methods the human brain employs (evidenced by their dramatically different efficiencies). Predicting radical advancement given past performance is a leap of faith.

> Why would we even want cars to calculate the way humans do?

The fact of the matter is that humans are orders of magnitude better at object recognition than computers. You may believe that will change in the near future, but that's not yet been demonstrated.

Can the human brain see through fog? Can it observe in 360 degrees in real time?

Human sensory augmentation will save lives.

Would you describe a neural network as “pre-programmed”? What if it’s updated by every vehicle constantly comparing its own predictions with reality?

Don’t get me wrong, I am aware that current generation AI is fundamentally worse than a human brain, because if it was already as good as a human then the fact Tesla’s AI has done more miles than the average person has had heartbeats would make it essentially perfect. It isn’t perfect, so I know the AI is flawed.

But my question is, does it seem to you that this approach cannot ever become the equal of the best human (if that best human had 360 degree vision, sonar, and radar, and their nerve impulse conduction speed was way faster), and if not, why not?

I personally know of a recent fatal that likely wouldn't have happened even with the (garbage) ADAS in my current car. There are plenty of good reasons to think that pre-programmed computers can outperform human drivers in the cases that lead to many of our current fatal accidents. I take those as being the ones that really count.

> If your wife or child was mowed down by a normal car, would you be more supportive of autonomous ones?

Yeah, its an interesting dichotomy. I've been to funerals for people mowed down by "normal" cars. I know the stats. I'm more supportive of autonomous cars.

I also know that if the situation were reversed and the people closest to me were affected by autonomous vehicle accidents I might have an strong emotional reaction in the other direction.

The human mind just isn't rational when it comes to these things. It will take real leadership and risk taking on the part of manufacturers to get past this impasse.

aka anti-vaxxer logic, anecdotes > real world stats.

There are ~1.25 million car deaths per year (20-50 million injured or disabled), a lot of room for "progress" to save countless lives.

> There are ~1.25 million car deaths per year (20-50 million injured or disabled), a lot of room for "progress" to save countless lives.

The vast majority of those occur in areas that will not see autonomous vehicles for a very long time, and have a lot of environmental challenges that make it much harder for an autonomous vehicle to outperform a human.

and? it's not worth doing unless every life can be saved? The point is thousands of people die per day at the hands of human drivers. The sooner we can transition to autonomous vehicles, the sooner they'll start saving lives.

> and? it's not worth doing unless every life can be saved?

I did not say or imply that.

> The point is thousands of people die per day at the hands of human drivers.

Yes, and thousands will die every day for quite a long time. You make it sound like autonomous vehicles are going to make a significant dent in that number.

> The sooner we can transition to autonomous vehicles, the sooner they'll start saving lives.

This is quite true. It will just be limited to lives in developed nations and a few select other major cities.

You’re stringing together a few questionable statements here.

It’s true that the vast majority of cars won’t be autonomous for “a very long time” so the vast majority of deaths won’t be prevented. But what’s your point? That if the vast majority of the problem can’t be addressed quickly it’s not worth exploring?

On a quick search, 30% of fatalities involve alcohol. 7% involve rain (the most common condition that causes crashes).

Cars don’t actually need to be better than humans, or even as good as the average human. They just need to be better than the bottom 5th percentile, prefer safe driving, and not get distracted/drunk.

> It’s true that the vast majority of cars won’t be autonomous for “a very long time” so the vast majority of deaths won’t be prevented. But what’s your point? That if the vast majority of the problem can’t be addressed quickly it’s not worth exploring?

My point is that trotting out the 1.25M number when we are very far away from dealing with the vast majority of it is distracting at best. We should instead be talking about the numbers of injuries and fatalities on the countries where autonomous vehicles are most likely to be deployed, and how many of those people could have been saved.

> Cars don’t actually need to be better than humans, or even as good as the average human. They just need to be better than the bottom 5th percentile, prefer safe driving, and not get distracted/drunk.

That's very true, but orthogonal to the point of using realistic numbers.

That seems like arguing about metrics for the sake of it. If we change the definition to be x% reduction in the rate of accidents relative to the expected rate if a non autonomous car would be use otherwise... you would get a similar rate of impact, normalized to a smaller population, limited primarily by rapidly diminishing economic barriers that don’t seem especially relevant to the argument at hanf

Do you not put your hands behind the car wheel with moral confidence, the confidence that you are okay with the sum of your action? Do you view the medical system differently?

>countless people

We've got very accurate counts. To say countless is hyperbole.

>If they'll kill fewer people

Everyone assumes ML / AI will be better drivers than humans, but I think that's just blind hope at this point.

I've seen no proof or studies that show any better logic than fusion power being about 20 years away (indefinitely).

> >countless people

> We've got very accurate counts.

Pointless rebuttal, the exact number isn't relevant, nor easily quoted as the number of deaths per day, month, year is fluid, evident as you've made no attempt to quantify an "accurate count" yourself.

> Everyone assumes ML / AI will be better drivers than humans, but I think that's just blind hope at this point.

You call someone out for non precision then follow up with a baseless supposition that you think people who believe autonomous drivers are safer then human drivers are hopelessly blind.

You can include the NHTSA and the U.S. Department of Transportation in your blind hopefuls who are keen on moving towards an automated driving future:

https://www.nhtsa.gov/technology-innovation/automated-vehicl...

Calling something countless is hyperbolic exaggeration. I wasn't expecting an exact number. I also was not expecting hyperbole.

NHTSA is no different than the DOE stating their (thusfar inaccurate) expectations for fusion. Government agencies can also express hope.

>The continuing evolution of automotive technology aims to deliver even greater safety benefits

They have a very well thought out timeline with goals and expectations. But there's no real evidence of why we should expect to hit level 5 driving in a given time frame.

It's still just a goal they hope (aim) to hit.

Unless there's a Moore's law of AI driving ability that I'm unaware of.

> Calling something countless is hyperbolic exaggeration. I wasn't expecting an exact number. I also was not expecting hyperbole.

It's not a hyperbolic to use "countless" when it's one of the top 10 causes of deaths.

> NHTSA is no different than the DOE stating...

You're really into your inaccurate strawmans

1) that is the very definition of hyperbole. Exaggeration for effect.

2) I'm not the one making the claim that a revolutionary technology that will save millions of lives is just around the corner.

Will progress be made? Probably. Will an army of driverless cars be safer than the same number of humans driving in X years? Thats a bold statement that requires an explanation beyond "Because technology progesses."

I think the comparison to fusion is quite adept at this point. We can re-evaluate in 20-30 years.

> 1) that is the very definition of hyperbole. Exaggeration for effect.

Using the word "countless" to describe one of the leading causes of deaths is not close to a valid example of hyberbolic exaggeration.

> 2) I'm not the one making the claim that a revolutionary technology that will save millions of lives is just around the corner.

You're the only one making proclamations, hypocritical of others for not using exact numbers you wont quote yourself and proclaiming some of the smartest engineers in the world and motor vehicle institutions must be blind hopefuls for investing their efforts in automatic driving solutions to save lives.

> I think the comparison to fusion is quite adept at this point. We can re-evaluate in 20-30 years.

Says a lot that you think unproven feasible future technology is somehow an adept strawman to actual technology that's driven over 1B miles.

Tesla's AutoPilot results for the latest Q2 2019 shows it had 1 accident per 3.27 million miles vs NTHSA's recent statistics showing 1 accident per 498k miles: https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport

The state of automation is meaningful today, it's not blind hope to presume actively developed technology will improve even more with time, it would be naive to think otherwise and suggest it needs another 20-30 years to evaluate FSD's for viability.

> Calling something countless is hyperbolic exaggeration. I wasn't expecting an exact number. I also was not expecting hyperbole.

I'm sorry if I caused any confusion. I meant "countless" simply as in "more than a person could reasonably count". The usage I'm familiar with appears to be different from yours.

> But there's no real evidence of why we should expect to hit level 5 driving in a given time frame.

Not that level 5 is necessary. A good level 3 would make a huge difference. If it can self-park too then it's basically everything I want.

True, but I meant in more general terms- I'm not sure that we've got a good handle on when to expect any particular level (or achievement), other than the very short term.

It seems like even Tesla themselves have Trouble forecasting more than +/- 6 months out.

Predicting technological progress is hard, both in terms of timing and absolute ability. And this is before you even get into predicting the market success of a shippable product.

The question is the intrim period, when autonomous cars are improving, but still killing more people than human drivers. Still ok in that situation?

Why should such a period exist? They can gather data with humans in the driver seat, as they have been.

That interm period, if it existed at all, has likely already passed.

> By this last estimate, Autopilot has about the same to 35% lower fatal crash rates than any conventional vehicle at this time.

https://medium.com/@mc2maven/a-closer-inspection-of-teslas-a...

So, an autopilot-equipped Tesla is a fully competent self driving car?

I feel like this entire 0.0005% vs 0.0007% chance discussion is somewhat off-track, because it doesn’t matter. More can be less.

Personally, and I tend to believe it’s not very different than average, I don’t want less chance to be hit. I want more control and awareness, which can reduce risk fundamentally. I know that accidents happen, but I also know that chances grow by orders of magnitude if I fail to detect dangers and/or make predictions. Malfunctioning traffic lights can do much more harm than your average drunk driver. Not seeing someones intent (or steering/braking problem) does that too. If autopilots provide me a way to reduce risks by clear means on my side, I would not mind [with a great share of egoism, but that’s how it works] if on average it could harm crazy leapers even more than human drivers do. Because the road is a source of danger (due to natural physical/perception failures) and by skipping safety checks they enter a potential chaos which is un-manageable by definition. Heck, I’d better coexist with a tech that never gets tired to send me clear “fuck off” messages, than with human drivers who e.g. think they are smart enough to not brake, because “our current inertial frames render a collision unlikely anyway”, or whatever bs they believe when doing this. But it’s a false negative for me, idk for sure if they see me at all or estimate their reaction time correctly.

> I’m very skeptical of this authoritarian market logic whereby we are told we must sacrifice others lives for the sake of “progress,”

Then you should be _very_ sceptical of the current state of affairs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2196238-does-air-pollut...

I am very skeptical of the place of the personal car in American life and the massive subsidies that automotive industry receives in terms of things like infrastructure and military defense of fossil fuels. But I also don't believe that autonomous cars are a good solution to these concerns relative to proven solutions like various forms of mass public transportation.

They may not be a perfect solution but people already waste hours of their lives stuck in traffic and clearly hate riding the bus. Look at the stats for declines in mass transportation ridership since Lyft/Uber took the US by storm. I love rail and subways, particularly high speed rail, but currently because of so many reasons, it's expensive to build per mile in major cities. Affordable mass produced semi-autonomous vehicles will quickly improve lives. We're already on the cusp of it. I own two them. Tesla and Comma.ai are the functional autonomous vehicle equivalent of the Apple iPhone and the Android T-Mobile G1. And there's no reason these sorts of industries won't be massively subsidized by a future (perhaps more liberal) American government, once we move on from subsidizing companies who barely innovate (General Motors, etc)

Air pollution is completely orthogonal to the deployment of autonomous cars.

> I’m very skeptical of this authoritarian market logic whereby we are told we must sacrifice others lives for the sake of “progress,” which is almost exclusively tied up with one person or business’ individual profit.

This is a fairly nuanced Bloomberg article. You're making it sound like Elon himself is proclaiming that some sacrifices must be made for the sake of his self-driving Teslas.

Of course. Even the article mentions Elon Musk never ever saying anything even slightly off: "uh, now I took my hands off the wheel and it still drives well, but that would be illegal, don't do it, wink wink, nod nod".

Far better to have someone else do the job. Independently, of course: it's definitely NOT Elon Musk saying that, no no no. Nod, nod, wink, wink.

People's lives are being sacrificed now, teaching us how to build safer cars. Some large percentage of the time, seatbelts prevent death or reduce the injury. Some small percentage of the time, they induce further injury or death.

Do we stop using seatbelts until they are 100% effective? Was it a mistake to start putting seatbelts in cars before it could be proven that they absolutely wouldn't kill anyone?

Also look at what regulations have done to seat belts. They are almost all identical and the tech hasn't changed much in quite a while. Are they completely optimal, or are they merely sufficient for liability by meeting government standards?

There is the question of what we are trying to optimize for.

If you are trying to attain maximum safety for a belted passenger, then no, current passenger seatbelts are not optimal. This is clearly evident from the far better seatbelts and driver safety devices used in motorsport.

Current seatbelts represent a tradeoff between safety if you use it, and how annoying they are to use (and therefore, how likely people are to get annoyed and not use them).

It's a liability issue.

Say someone gets hurt from a seatbelt. If it's designed exactly as required by regulation, there is an immunity for the company (IANAL so I don't know the legal term for this)

IF you try to make it better, and do make it better for most cases, but worse for some edge case, then you have a liability issue in that your 'negligence' caused injury that wouldn't have happened otherwise.

The stance on civil liability in America often stifles innovation in many areas regarding life safety. Tesla is learning this quickly.

> does anyone doubt that with massive, publicly-funded investment we could not achieve them?

Yes, I doubt it. The scale of the problem is massively bigger than anybody will admit right now. To get to the point where an automated car will kill fewer people than human drivers, the car must have an understanding of its environment. Machine learning isn't going to get us there.

I say variations of this all the time. I don't get why people just assume AI will be better.

It's like questioning the existence of their God.

Sci-fi conditioning mixed with a hefty assumption that people are computers.

> To get to the point where an automated car will kill fewer people than human drivers, the car must have an understanding of its environment.

Are you sure about that?

> Machine learning isn't going to get us there

Do you mean ANNs aren't going to get us there?

Binary computing is never going to emulate wetware on a reasonable scale. A few neurons? Sure. It's going to take a different pardigm, likely biological.

Evolving FPGA's (by ignoring the digital abstraction) is a window into why.

Citation needed.

Let's look at the scale. A brain neuron is 4 microns to 100 microns in size. Whereas a transistor sizes are now pushing 3nm. That's a lot of free space to work with, why can't we easily simulate many neurons within the space of a biological neuron?

Start with something easier, like simulating water. Our best ab-initio simulations, last time I checked, don't correctly predict it's phase change locations. Digital abstractions deliberately supress every single other interaction unless explicitely accounted for. Those interactions happen "for free" in real systems. We need to boil quite a bit of water to even approach simulating a small subset of atoms.

Consider the 3 body problem. Without a math breakthrough, we can only approximate, and even with a math breakthrough, we can still only approximate (because real systems are not closed). This idea that we can simulate something misses the point. It's always going to be a guess, on bounded memory, because we cant copy real states.

Letting go of the digital abstraction provides a window into why this is hard.

https://www.damninteresting.com/on-the-origin-of-circuits/ http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.50....

These circuits evolve to become hyper-specific to their enviroment. We have no hope of repeating those results with software, it's the physical attributes of the hardware that are being exploited.

Sure we can only approximate, but why wouldn't those approximations be sufficient?

We were able to solve the n-body problem with sufficient accuracy for Voyager to successfully encounter and gravity-slingshot around Jupiter twice and every other outer planet, with only the computing power available in 1977.

The mechanism of action of a neuron is not very complex. It follows the all-or-none principle along with an activation potential which is easily emulated in a binary circuit. It does have additional chemical inputs which can raise or lower activation potential. The only difficult part is sufficient connectivity, but we can simulate that, no need to use an FPGA to get actual connectivity. Modern transistors are super-fast and super-small compared to neurons so you have quite a bit of room to sum inputs, check activation energy, check chemical levels, and lookup + signal the 'connected' neurons.

We will see! Our intuition that we understanding something is often incomplete in critical ways. Exciting times ahead either way.

Why is an understanding necessary, and how do you even define that?

Humans are not as hard to beat as you think they are. They have lots of limitations:

- Can only see in a single direction at a time.

- Vision-only, no radar

- Prone to becoming emotional

- Drive in unfamiliar places where they do not have a full understanding of the environment or local laws

- Can be inebriated, easily distracted, fall asleep

- Selfish: time to destination is often more important than the safety of others

- Majority of people do not follow all traffic laws (speed limits, turn signals, lane-usage)

> does anyone doubt that with massive, publicly-funded investment we could not achieve them?

Possibly, but the far harder thing to achieve is massive publicly-funded investment in the first place.

"does anyone doubt that with massive, publicly-funded investment we could not achieve them?"

Yes, I very much doubt it in the US at least. We are many generations deep into an extremely nepotistic and corrupt bureaucracy. I have no faith that the US Federal Government is capable of handling even mundane projects at this point. We would require a serious shift in patriotism, education and accountability before I could believe the USA of 2020 is capable of doing something like the moon landing again.

I'm confused by this sentiment as the technology was invented using this means to begin with:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-driving_car#History

Why does government research always seem to become a corrupt, inefficient bureaucracy the moment that private industry runs off with its solutions to profit from?

The US government has done some of the greatest technological accomplishments in history. The people who did them are largely the Jews who had immense gratitude and pride for being a part of the nation that halted Nazi Germany. It's the children of the soldiers who stormed Normandy. It's the citizens of a nation riding the most impressive economic wave in history.

As a result, in the 50s and 60s, there was no better job to be had than working for the government. Astronauts were like the modern day equivalent of rock stars who also started Google. It wasn't the money, but the pride of being a part of yet another great accomplishment that the greatest nation in history was embarking on. But that's gone today.

We still had some of this going into the early 90s, and DARPA and the NSA I'm sure could attract and underpay enough talent to make up for other government bloat. But in 2019, we have lost this national opinion (or delusion).

It plays perfectly into the neoliberal ideal of expansive personal freedoms, enabled through technology, purchased by capital.

Why don't we see any fully autonomous buses? You could run buses 24 / 7 without worrying about drivers. The difference, people aren't going to pay 50k for a bus seat.

If you choose traditional vehicles you are also sacrificing lives... is that not clear?

It's not like we are sacrificing lives to get there. Data shows that, at the margin, Autopilot prevents more accident than it causes.

So, the headline of the article is wrong IMO, but in the article the author makes the correct points.

What data shows this? Has there been a public release of sufficient amount of data to support your claim?

Tesla Autopilot has driven in total 1.6 billion miles on highways, in clear conditions, in modern high-crash-safety cars. There have been 3 fatalities.

The equivalent number for 1.6 billion miles across all road types, all weather conditions and all types of vehicles would be 22 deaths in the US. But in the UK that number would only be 8, illustrating that safety is tightly linked with road conditions and vehicle demographics.

As the Autopilot is only used in the easiest conditions and safest cars, there is simply not enough statistics to say whether they are safer or not.

You would have to collect data on a single version of the system for half a decade before you could say anything certain.

Exactly the data you cited. I agree that we need more data, but it does seem that we're not "sacrificing lives" to get autonomous driving to work, does it?

It does not. The expected number of deaths for 1.6bn miles in expensive cars in perfect driving conditions is probably 0, Tesla had 3.

I asked a question on Twitter a few weeks/months ago, and didn't receive a very good answer:

At what point do we have enough data?

To be honest: probably at around 50 billion miles driven with a single version of the autonomous system without any fatalities. That would be a milestone where you could say without a doubt "we've made a leap change to car safety".

The gold standard for other safety critical systems like medical devices, commercial aviation etc. is less than one fatality per billion operating hours. 50 mph avg gets you 50 billion miles. A vision for car safety that doesn't approach this level isn't much to write home about, it would in fact be difficult to distinguish from just waiting 15 years to let the statistics incorporate the safety systems that already exist today.

According to Wikipedia there were 1.16 fatalities per 100 vehicle miles traveled in 2017. Why do you say autonomous cars need to be over 50x safer to be better than human drivers?

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...

Edit: Forgot to add year.

Because that number is averaged over all types of vehicles, in all types of weather conditions. It includes people crashing in their '95 Honda Civic. It includes people forgetting to look over their shoulder when switching lanes. Crash survivability and "non-smart" safety features like blind spot warning has increased significantly the past ten-fifteen years. Just waiting until most of the old cars on the road today are replaced with newer ones will yield a 5x to 10x improvement, if we keep the human drivers, assuming no new tech at all.

For instance the UK is already below 0.5 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles. Car demographics matter a lot.

So if autonomous is going to give us a significant improvement, it has to be something like 50x better than the average for humans today.

Interesting. Do you have statistics for more modern cars only that are comparable to a Tesla (without the Autopilot features obviously)?

PS: I meant 100 million miles in my comment above as you probably assumed :-)

For comparison, drivers in Los Angeles county drive 1.6 billion miles before 9a this morning.

Congratulations, Tesla had almost a morning worth of driving data.

And yet somehow with all that data they can't make a car that can drive itself in a parking lot.

1. We have democratic checks and debate now, regarding this issue.

2. I see no evidence that "massive, publicly-funded investment" would achieve this technological goal faster or better than via capitalistic means. Do you have any?

3. Lives will be lost regardless of how the tech is developed. Surely this is obvious. So what are you even talking about?

Re: 1. above, who do we sue when the autopilot kills someone? The owner of the vehicle? The manufacturer? The driver behind the wheel (if there is one and it's not the same as the owner)?

That is an area that is still being debated. I suspect it will depend on the level of autonomy the car claims to provide. If it is level 5, and perhaps doesn't even include a steering wheel or other means of controlling the vehicle, then there would be no rational basis to hold anyone inside liable for failure. If, on the other hand, it is level 3 or 4, and does provide a steering wheel, and prominently informs the user that they are ultimately responsible for the vehicle, then the driver would be liable in this case.

This technology is still evolving, though, and the law will need to be adjusted accordingly.

Ideally, every self-driving car would have secondary insurance baked into its price. If someone dies, it's an insurance payout of a standardized amount.

I don't think the plaintiff's bar is going to allow standardized payouts on deaths or injuries. That would ruin their business model, and they have a lot of influence. The question will be whether the inevitable losses due to jury awards can be sustained by any of the manufacturers.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that publicly-funded investment would make this happen faster. Just safer.

It's an inherent characteristic of capitalism that the primary driver is profit. I mean, it's the whole point of the system. What is the value of one human life within this system? Historically that value has not been high.

Now, when people saying "publicly-funded investment" it's a popular conception that this means a vast amount of government waste, because everything the government does is wasteful, right? How is three or four companies spending huge amounts of money to pursue the exact same goal not wasteful?

Look at things like the internet itself. Public funding of technology can work.

* capitalistic automatic cars mean 2000 deaths per year, reducing linearly to zero after 10 years

* socialist automatic cars eventually mean 1200 deaths per year, reducing to zero after 30 years

* manual cars mean 1000 deaths per year, not reducing

Then after 11 years total deaths will be the same in all 3 cases (11,000), but after 30 years it will be 11k capital, 18k socialist, and 30k and growing with no changes.

However that's of no comfort to the families of who died in the start, especially the ones who didn't opt in (as was typical with flying when it was more dangerous).

Is there any real point in debating numbers like this that are just plucked from the air?

The relevant point is

> I don't think anyone is suggesting that publicly-funded investment would make this happen faster. Just safer.

The point is that while it could be safer per year, being slower means that it's not safer.

Maybe OP is referring that some billionaire appears with some bad statistics that if we let him kill 1000 people he assures us that he will probably invent something to save double.

Putting those billions in removing the drunk or tired drivers from the roads, enforcing the laws and rules would save more people.

So are you volunteering?

>1. We have democratic checks and debate now, regarding this issue.

Not functionally, consistently, or meaningfully. Many of these companies have learned to how to ingratiate themselves to party machines in the markets where they operate, such that this decision-making is almost entirely excluded from public check or debate. Others, like Uber, willfully break laws with little consequence, for much of the same reason as the above.

>2. I see no evidence that "massive, publicly-funded investment" would achieve this technological goal faster or better than via capitalistic means. Do you have any?

As someone else pointed out, its not about faster but more safely. But the whole technology that these companies are building on top of was arrived at by this kind of public research to begin with:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-driving_car#History

>3. Lives will be lost regardless of how the tech is developed. Surely this is obvious. So what are you even talking about?

That private companies not be the nearly sole arbiters of what lives are worth sacrificing.

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