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Comment by izend | Hacker News Reader

There were nearly 6,420,000 auto accidents in the United States in 2005. The financial cost of these crashes is more than 230 Billion dollars. 2.9 million people were injured and 42,636 people killed. About 115 people die every day in vehicle crashes in the United States -- one death every 13 minutes.

I will wage anyone that if all the cars on the road were computer driven there would be no where near 42,636 people killed per year.

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I too can imagine the number dropping down far lower than that, even under a thousand, let's say.

I can then imagine the newspaper headlines the few times per year that computers do end up, for whatever reason, being responsible for a small handful of deaths: "COMPUTER GLITCH KILLS FOUR PASSENGERS IN HORRIFIC CAR ACCIDENT!"

Never mind that human "glitches" are responsible for dozens of such accidents every day at present. For whatever reason, I have a strong feeling that headlines such as those will scare people worse than the way things are now.

This suggests that any effort to introduce driverless cars should be preceded by a multi-year ad campaign that (ahem) drives home the >40k dead/yr. figure.

Presumably, it would be paid for by insurance companies. It could be rolled out as a general public awareness effort (i.e. packaged with generic reminders about wearing seatbelts, maintaining proper tire-pressure, etc.), combined with localized elements that included maps highlighting particularly deadly times and places where drivers should be especially vigilant.

Once the figure is widely accepted, the companies who would be offering the technology would have an established base against which they could run ads that credit themselves with lives saved. Assuming that these claims are backed up by public data assembled by trustworthy parties, even the most vociferous "if it bleeds it leads" news agencies would have a hard time terrorizing people BACK to the days of a 9/11 every month.

Also, while I hate to be cynical, there's an upside to corporate mass media, in that a lot of ad dollars spent by pro robo-car interests WILL make news agencies think twice about scaring the daylights out of people just for a ratings bump. After all, the whole point of ratings is to boost the price of ad sales.

I realize that this may seem like a lot of effort, but no industry takes a longer view than the insurance industry. If there's one group that has the time, money, and motivation to make the push, it's the guys who are paying costs associated with all the current grief and mayhem. Moreover, our not-so-clean political system does mean that legislators can be easily persuaded once insurance companies are comfortable that the technology is truly secure.

My guess is that any push would need Federal backing, and would be focused - initially - on the Interstate highway system, where much less reactive driving takes place.

It will be pushed as "driver assist".

A little siren goes off, warning you to break. Navigation tells you where to go, and how.

An override button appears, allowing you to give the computer control in an emergency. Eventually, the button becomes a switch, and the switch gets left on.

"Autodrive" licenses (similar to automatic licenses) are introduced, allowing people to pass their driving test in full auto mode, provided they only drive cars in full auto.

So why would insurance companies actually want that future. Wouldn't car insurer be out of buisnes if there were no more crashes?

And I worry about the case when it will become more blameworthy for a human rather than a computer to operate a vehicle.

Why? If computer-driven cars are much less likely to crash than human-driven cars, it would be entirely appropriate for there to be a social stigma against humans driving cars (because it would show disregard for the lives and safety of others). It would also be entirely appropriate to treat human drivers more harshly when they were responsible for accidents, as they would have had the choice of instead allowing a computer to drive and statistically probably avoid the accident.

You misinterpreted my sentence (but perhaps it wasn't your fault since I elided a crucial piece of information).

I did not say that human-driving ought not be morally blameworthy but, since I enjoy driving, I am understandably worried about a time when something that brings me pleasure will become unethical.

I suspect you will then be able to exercise driving in a more controlled, and most likely more interesting than everyday city driving, environment the same way it is now for kart circuits and the like.

One problem is that even if there are far fewer road casualties with driverless cars, there will still almost certainly be some casualties, perhaps many. Who do we hold responsible for those?

If we blame the car makers, there may not be any car makers because nobody will want to take on the liability.

If we don't blame anyone then there is no incentive to improve the situation and no way to hold people accountable for sincere negligence.

We would have to accept that a consumer product will occasionally kill us, and come up with some standard to judge whether the manufacturer "tried hard enough" to prevent it.

I can't think of any precedent for that. There are plenty of products that can kill us, but only if we misuse them. A driverless car will have a few deadly design flaws that we only learn about from experience.

Maybe this should be publicly acknowledged up front and a legal framework established. That seems better than pretending it's completely safe, causing a shitstorm when something inevitably goes wrong.

Perhaps a new entity is needed? Think of a zipcar like service which is accountable for the vehicle. Large enough to absorb the occasional accident, and pressure automakers for safety/efficiency improvements.

I can't help but think that people may not drive well with computer-controlled cars on the road. The decisions that a driver makes sometimes depends what they think the decision of other cars will be. Unless the computer-controlled cars account for this in their decisions, then there may actually be more crashes, as the other cars don't do what human drivers expect. Another interesting result is that computer controlled cars may not be able to use the most efficient behavior until most cars on the road are computer controlled.

I imagine they would be designed to drive using under the assumption that other cars are going to make unusual maneuvers, and to compensate for that.

During the period where both human and computer driven cars share the road, I suspect the human driven cars will get a speed advantage because of this.

Personally, I'll be more than happy to add ten minutes to my commute if it means I don't have to drive. I think a lot of people will be with me on that one.

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