Anthony Levandowski to Larry Page: Google's self-driving project is broken (2016)

> While working at Google's Project Chauffeur, the self-driving car program that would later evolve into Waymo, Levandowski allegedly modified the car's software so it could be taken on routes that were previously off-limits. After another employee became angry with Levandowski for altering the code, the two began to argue — which resulted in Levandowski taking the employee on a test run to prove his point, an executive told the New Yorker.

> Levandowski caused an accident during that test run, a former Google executive told the New Yorker. Google's self-driving Toyota Prius allegedly blocked another car from merging onto the highway, which caused the other driver to swerve into the highway median. Levandowski allegedly then took control of the Prius and swerved to avoid contact with the vehicle, but the violent motion seriously injured the other employee's spine.

> Even though Levandowski and Google's self-driving car appeared to have caused the accident, the pair allegedly drove off without checking to see if the other driver was okay, and the incident wasn't reported. Even after Google's self-driving Prius was involved with an accident, Levandowski defended his safety standards, and sent his coworkers an email with the subject line "Prius vs Camry" that contained a video of the accident.

https://www.businessinsider.com/anthony-levandowski-google-s...

2. Trusted tester program opened up to San Francisco residents for rides with a safety driver. Approved for commercial service (with a safety driver for now) by CA DMV.

Seems like they've made progress exactly like what Levandowski would have wanted.

Death by shared responsibility is well accepted. It’s about agency and consent.

If you rescued a group of 30 drowning people with your yacht. No one thinks you can shoot one or two on the head, on a whim, and argue that it’s okay— based on the fact that your actions led to a net saving of 28 lives.

So, how you die matters. We human drivers are all out there making a reasonable effort to avoid accidents. The standard self-driving tech must be held to is also “reasonableness.” None of the deaths due to self-driving cars I have heard of can meet that standard. They are unacceptable.

And I'm skeptical how much good you do. Yes, younger drivers are less safe, but I'm unconvinced that simply having some more instruction time and a test that is more rigorous but presumably not onerous really provides the equivalent of a few years of experience.

I am not saying it’s as good on average and clearly it’s much worse at some things. That said it’s not say ten times as likely to result in a fatal accident.

On the other hand if you’re keeping rural roads then self driving cars could make a huge difference even if cities banned cars.

So, that doesn’t actually change the near parity question much. Further, the question isn’t if the 100% self driving is available today for all roads and weather conditions, the question when is it good enough to start saving lives.

So, it says about capitalism that few customers actually care about safety when they do their buying decisions (the market then delivers according to these chosen priorities); customers rather complain when their conscious buying decisions turn out to be bad ideas (instead of accepting these as consequences of their buying decisions).