I believe that if car crash deaths were reduced to 4,500/year in the U.S. with only self-driving cars on the road — a 90% drop from last year's actual 45,000 — an overwhelming majority of Americans would still reject self-driving cars because of the loss of agency involved.
Basically I prefer to be exposed to risks that a human "can't" avoid than from something like this which a human wouldn't do: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/tesla-firetruck-car-c...
I assure you that false collision alarms are causing accidents that aren't being accounted for, some of them serious. Just as with first-generation airbags that did more harm than good to children and properly-belted passengers, it'll take a while for the actuaries and statisticians to catch up with how modern cars are actually behaving on the road. At that point a cynic might predict (or even hope for) the trial lawyers to take it from there.
Last to catch on will be the legislators who have mandated auto-braking tech without imposing strict performance and reliabilty standards.
People were worried about dying from electricity—a power source out of their control—to turn on their lights, and it certainly did and still does kill people, but more people died by starting fires in their homes to read at night or stay warm. But the number of people wanting to replace their lightbulbs with candles for a little extra control of their energy source is quite low (although they do exist).
Just that subtle hint that the speed limit has been reached would likely keep me near the limit most of the time. I don’t even want it to prevent me from exceeding the speed limit.
This doesn’t help with the 95% of other cars that don’t know the speed limit, but it has to start somewhere. It seems odd that my car has redundant features and alerts for avoiding speed traps and traffic cameras, but little to actively help me stay within posted traffic rules.
Edit: Also, I think that many of the casualties resulting from autonomous vehicles will be situations that humans could have easily avoided (vs. lots of saved situations where humans couldn't have done anything).
But then, aggressive drivers will be the last ones to put the autopilot on I'm sure, they're also the ones that will insist on the agency aspect of driving.
This would not just affect the adoption of autonomous vehicles but all kinds of automated systems without direct human oversight. If the system makes too many mistakes a human would catch but prevents many mistakes a human wouldn't, the best of both worlds is to have a human in the loop and catch all the mistakes that can be made.
People often pitch this view but don’t provide real numbers.
Can you please link to the lawsuit? It could be one related to unnecessary emergency breaking which would likely be annoying but not cause death.
And very rightly so. Someone who never drinks under influence and nearly always drives during the day (say to/from school) and is driving since 30 years has a probability so much lower to be involved in a deadly crash than a 18 years old on alcohol or drug driving on a Saturday night that it'd require much more than a 90% drop for that person to be safer by moving to a self-driving car if they were to only create 90% less accidents.
Here's something totally bonkers: in several statistics the car brand the less involved in car crashes (per miles or per 1000 cars of that brand or per anything you want) is...
Porsche.
You read that correctly. And it's not because Porsche repeatedly gets amazing short braking distances compared to other car brands: it's because young inexperienced people don't have the means to buy a Porsche (and Porsche are still pretty much regular cars, not crazy nervous stuff like Ferrari or Lamborghini).
If self-driving cars could be implicated in 90% less accident, the winning strategy would very likely be something like this: "put anyone under 25 years (and over a certain age too) in a self-driving car".
And maybe, maybe, once self-driving cars are implicated in 99% less accidents, experienced drivers never driving under influence would accept to move to self-driving cars.
There's absolutely no reason that those the less likely to have crashes should be moving to cars that are less likely to create crashes for those the most likely to be implicated in crashes.
"Moving everybody to self-driving cars" is the wrong way to think about the issue.
It's the segment at risks that should be moved to self-driving cars.
People just look at the total number of accidents and don't realize that "Porsche on the highway driven by an experienced drive bringing his kids back from school during daytime" is not anywhere near as likely as having a serious crash compared to "teenager on alcohol or drugs driving on a secondary road on a Friday night".
They're not even comparable. A rounding error.
Put it this way: it you were to get a 90% by moving everybody to self-driving car, you'd get an even bigger than 90% drop by moving only those in the segment at risks to self-driving cars.
And then, later on, once self-driving cars drive near perfection, you can move everybody to self-driving cars.
P.S: and to put things into perspective, we're talking about self-driving cars being fooled by stickers or bird poo on street signs. There's still some way to go.