The other issue I see is that I believe Waymo doesn’t live map the terrain in SF and Arizona right? They are using intricately created maps and so my question is what’s the leap for Waymo to operate with this success in say Pittsburgh?
Have you been paying attention to the status quo at all? https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/state...
If not, you might want to. https://jakeseliger.com/2019/12/16/maybe-cars-are-just-reall...
I live in Arizona and have taken Waymo a bunch. It's great! https://twitter.com/seligerj/status/1707259311809073313/vide...
Humans make mistakes and car accidents happen. We don't and won't accept the same from machines. Why is that so hard to understand?
Cruise's problem was hiding the footage from the regulators. As the saying goes, “It's not the crime, it's the cover-up.”
https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/gms-cruise-robotax...
> In a Dec. 1 filing recounting how Cruise handled disclosures about the accident, the Public Utilities Commission asserted the company tried to conceal how its robotaxi reacted to the accident for more than two weeks. Cruise didn't provide the video footage until Oct. 19, according to the regulatory filing. The cover-up spanned 15 days, according to the PUC, exposing Cruise and GM to potential fines of $100,000 per day, or $1.5 million.
While a car "dragging" someone can be traumatic and horrible in it's own right... objectively, if we could get rid of thousands of deaths a year in exchange for fewer "mishaps"?
In 2021 2,116 people age 15-20 died in car crashes. 13,384 people for DUI related deaths in 2021. 42,939 car related deaths.
If we could exchange 42k deaths for 1,000? wouldn't that be worth the tradeoff?
Basically the trolly problem where you have to choose between letting a train go forward and kill 5 people or hitting a button to change tracks and kill 1.
If we can get into the "9's" in accuracy and trust bypassing humans... why wouldn't we?
If you’re drunk you’re going to have pay for a ride either by a person or possible by program or you can break the law. I don’t see anyone who was going to drive drunk not do it because they could pay for a robot taxi over a real taxi. Here’s my comparison. If your self-driving car kills or maims someone in a situation where a normal sober person driving wouldn’t have it shouldn’t be on the road.
What if it does this while also _not_ killing/harming in many other situations where a human would have?
"if your thing makes a mistake it shouldn't be on the road" yet the roads are full of people that make mistakes. (Hint: thousands of them die every year learning. See above about kids dying each yar).
So you'll focus on one of many reasons to sidestep the question (bias of some sort?) so I'll say it again:
At some point computers will be smart enough, fast enough and safe enough to do a better job at driving than people. Mistakes will be made but - like drunk drivers - humans make mistakes too. So if we can move to a safer way... why wouldn't we? Why are you willing to sacrifice thousands of kids lives if we can eventually progress to a better and safer option?
that's like asking "do you trust a spreadsheet where the math is done by a computer and not verified by a human".
At some point in history... the answer would be "no way I'd trust numbers not checked by a human".
Today? It's easy to say we can trust software produced numbers.
The question becomes what is that cross over point?
Are you saying you don't think we'll get to a point where computers drive better than humans? I think we're closer to that point than you think and with defensive programming we can do so safely.
My theory is that as we face climate change more and more and as the economy goes out of whack owning a car will be a privilege for the rich and super rich. Sort of like it's already the case in parts of Europe.
At that point this self-driving crap is going to look ridiculous. Even without it it's ridiculous testing this technology on public roads and gambling with everyone's life.