not to defend shitty self-driving implementations, BUT if on average they crash less than humans, even if they’re not 100%, society might accept that.
Even if you take this at face value:
1. such "dangerous" drivers still screw over "safe", by crashing into them. Unless you're willing to take them off the road entirely, you can't invoke "the majority drives better than average" and call it a day. At least in the US, doing this is a non-starter.
2. Driverless systems aren't slightly safer than the average driver, they're significantly safer. For instance waymo claims "81% fewer injury-causing crashes". This effect alone might swamp out the "majority drive a lot better than average" phenomena you talk about. Most drivers might be safer than average, but are they 5x safer than average?
Waymo operates an extremely conservative system that uses human oversight, roof mounted LIDAR, 100% 3D mapped environment in a very limited deployment, etc. This isn't robust to demonstrate Tesla or other self-driving situation, often using just a couple of cameras and a 2D map of roadways.
Tesla has boasted about the value of their system, using the classic per mile argument to justify its advantages. Only the overwhelming bulk of Tesla FSD or autopilot miles are on highways, which statistically is much safer than any other form of auto transport. This number is then compared against the drunk on the unlit country road type grab bag of every other style of driving and declared the victor. And of course even for highway accidents, aside from extreme weather events accidents are often people who purposefully wouldn't be using any assists -- stunt driving and the like.
It all seems very dubious right now. I believe Waymo's stats, I don't remotely believe Tesla's. We'll see what happens as people start using it more in normal driving situations.
So far, anyway. I wonder if legislation could move in that direction tho? For example, if you have multiple drunk driving offenses or are convicted of reckless driving they take your license away for a time.
The solution to this is self driving cars reaching critical mass through some other means[1]. Because then it will become the new normal before anyone realises it.
Personally, I think taxis are going to be the thing that takes them to critical mass regardless of all safety considerations. The driving force behind this will be the fact that in some countries humans driving taxis will soon be economically infeasible, at the prices people can afford. Then, if you agree that Uber et.al are far too entrenched in society for people to just forget about it, you can imagine waymo, robotaxi, etc, picking up.
[1] the "true" solution is to train it to get into the kind of accidents humans get in to, and try to "shape its uncertainty", but this is hard and of course infeasible with real world experiments. Recently, simulations have become extraordinarily better (due to generative models) for robotic/self driving tasks, so there is a slim chance this might change.
Isn't nuclear energy, one of the safest forms of energy overall?
But I still can't shake the fear of it.
And that fear across most of the population has hindered nuclear energy despite all its benefits.
It is going to be interesting to watch how regulation unfolds.
-how often does it fail,
-what are the consequences of a failure.
When you plot those two and set what is the "acceptable" area, it is skewed. And it is perfectly normal.
https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/solutions/enablon/bowtie/ex...