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Comment by gambiting | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised people have this opinion, on HN out of all places. In my view this technology shouldn't be allowed on public roads at all. Not even a little bit. Either it's 100% safe under all circumstances or it shouldn't be allowed. And Tesla definitely shouldn't be allowed to call it autopilot or "full self driving" when it very clearly isn't.

And yes, human drivers might be statistically worse - but just because this might be statistically better(and I'm not even sure that's actually the case here) it doesn't mean it should be allowed.

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Isn't this position tautologically the case of letting the perfect getting in the way of the good?

I'm not saying Tesla is making a good move here or maybe isn't being careful enough. I don't know yet & am not familiar with how the engineers feel about the development of the product & how bad the corners they cut during development are. That being said, the standard you've laid out is not a good world to live in. I don't know if the tech equipped in the car is sufficient.

A huge statistical difference in quality should be sufficient to go with automated cars even if they don't make the same mistakes as humans or sometimes make mistakes humans don't. "Statistical difference" isn't about a coarse level analysis either but situational. If they get into fewer road accidents but kill pedestrians at a larger rate, that's a problem. The problem is the news media only reports the top-line number because analysis is hard.

Industrial automation that runs the world at large in thousands of ways isn't 100% safe under normal circumstances, much less "all" and yet we have almost entirely automated elevators, high voltage relays, medical equipment, nuclear reactors, autopiloted airplanes, and gas powered furnaces, to name just a few.

Most of this automation operates under certain assumptions about its environment and in some cases shuts itself down in a controlled fashion to fail safe in ways that may not be available to cars on roads, but these are not new ethical dilemmas.

But to pick just one example, automated saw stops and controllers aren't 100% effective at preventing injuries, but they're still a huge safety improvement over the human population at large just winging it.

Should everyone on HN have the same opinion, didn’t get that memo?

Nothing is 100% safe. By your logic we’d have no medicine, have you ever read the side effects of some medicines.

> By your logic we’d have no medicine, have you ever read the side effects of some medicines.

You picked the worst example possible.

Medicine is one of the most tightly regulated fields in the world with huge upfront cost and approval processes spanning years or even decades. E.g. the research and approval process of a new antibiotic costs multiple billion dollars before it can be sold.

What you see now wrt the Covid-19 vaccine is an international effort that is fast-tracking everything. Regulators are willing to overlook a lot for it to come to market as fast as possible and it's still taking a year or more before it's approved for use on everybody.

I would actually say it's a very good example. That no matter how tightly and strenuously we regulate the safety of a product, 100% safety is an unattainable goal and that given sufficient benefit there is an acceptable level of risk of grave outcomes, including death. This is from a publication on the risk/benefit evaluation of new medical devices from the FDA:

Uncertainty – there is never 100% certainty when determining reasonable assurance of safety and effectiveness of a device. However, the degree of certainty of the benefits and risks of a device is a factor we consider when making benefit-risk determinations.

pg 11 - https://www.fda.gov/media/99769/download

Regulated doesn't mean safe. It means a little, but not a lot, compared to the internal practices of the companies under regulation.

And regulation in no way - in no way - addresses the fact that medicine isn't close to 100% safe before adoption, and neither should self-driving cars be. As long as they are safer than humans, that's enough. Any other conclusion will cost lives.

If technology is required to be 100% safe under all circumstances, then why aren't humans held to the same standard? For humans, we have a driving test that measures readiness for driving. It includes a margin of error for new drivers and there's also an expectation new drivers suck more than experienced ones (e.g., indirectly via higher insurance rates).

I'm having a hard time understanding your position as to why the technology should not be allowed, even if it were to perform statistically better than humans. Is this more of a philosophical perspective?

What else not 100% safe shouldn't be allowed? Passenger planes? Cars in general? Cancer medicine?

Why wouldn't a community of engineers welcome a statistical improvement over meat drivers?

If that's the standard, full self-driving won't become a thing for another 50 years at minimum if not longer, because not only is it a crazy high target, the lack of data and improvements brought by real-world usage would hamstring development — there's not but so far test tracks and single-city pilots can go.

It's a lot like the "old space" approach to spacecraft engineering, spending decades and hundreds of billions of dollars to develop a rocket that would've been cutting edge half a century ago, all in pursuit of making the initial product perfect.

>Either it's 100% safe under all circumstances or it shouldn't be allowed.

This would be a much more compelling argument if the technology in question weren't replacing an existing system that is frequently lethal. I do agree that it needs more testing and possibly regulation.

I'm surprised that people have this opinion, especially on HN out of all places. Seems like most people here are aware of how dangerous human drivers are and the vast possibilities of technology. Seems like you're just needlessly scared since you're arguing for killing people?

> Either it's 100% safe under all circumstances or it shouldn't be allowed. And Tesla definitely shouldn't be allowed to call it autopilot or "full self driving" when it very clearly isn't.

Then no human should be driving on the roads either or at least every vehicle should have a breathalyzer in it to check your blood alcohol level before the engine can turn on. You're being unreasonable.

I’m trying to think of a comparison and I can’t come up with one. Something where we’ve relinquished control to something else that we’ve designed. Maybe trusting robots to build the cars themselves or something akin to that.

Either way, it’s definitely new territory for us. I am sure there will be debates on this forever but I foresee reasonable arguments by both sides.

Elevators. Automatic doors. Fly-by-wire. Airplane autopilot.

Heck, modern cars are full of things that control aspects of driving for you: Cruise control. Automatic emergency braking. Brake assist. Antilock brakes. Traction control. Many of these features are so beneficial to safety that they are mandatory for new cars.

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