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Comment by cheeze | Hacker News Reader

... which is different from the child whose body got folded in half by someone looking at their phone?

I think "good enough" ends up being okay. I _like_ driving. I would do manual mode often still just because I enjoy it. But I'd be completely fine with the option of autopilot in good conditions. Reality is that 99% of the time, my commute is boring and in good conditions. I don't need a self driving mode that can handle a blizzard when I'm in stop and go traffic and it's 20c outside.

This is much harder for Waymo since there isn't as easy of a manual override mode... But in my car? rip it.

Luckily I basically already have it. Adaptive cruise covers most of my cases well enough, but I wouldn't mind something with a bit more control (turning, etc.)

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I'm waiting for independent analysis of the data. According to those with access to data - but also with reason to lie with statistics - waymo is enough better overall than humans that I'm not comfortable with any human driving on any public road. If you like to drive then do it on a private track/course where your mistakes won't kill other people.

Of course the real data is hidden from me and nobody I trust to be independent has seen it and is talking.

I haven't seen the data, but I have sitting strong reason to believe that roads with no cars on them cause fewer motor vehicle accidents than ones with any distribution of human and/or autonomous vehicles, so I'm not comfortable with any cars driving on any public road. If you like cars to drive, than have them do it on a private track/course where your mistakes won't kill other people.

Alternately, we could recognize that figuring out where to draw the line for a diverse group with varying behaviors is pretty hard, and any possible place you try to draw it will be strictly less safe than where I might say to draw it instead, unless you're willing to ban cars entirely. I'm guessing you'd say that banning cars entirely isn't realistic, which I'd be forced to agree with, but if you follow up by suggesting that we just ban humans instead, I'll be very interested to hear your realistic plan for how we deal with the fallout of shutting down millions of restaurants and stores that aren't near public transportation, preventing ambulances for bringing people to hospitals, and transporting goods to anywhere that's not directly on a rail line.

Of course, I have an incredible bias on the conversation on whether humans should be allowed to drive, so you might not be able to trust me. Specifically, I haven't driven for over a decade, have never owned my own car, and don't even have an active license anymore, so I don't particularly care about the idea of people liking to drive. It's probably worth it to mentally adjust what I said above to be a bit more sympathetic to human drivers based on that.

> ... which is different from the child whose body got folded in half by someone looking at their phone?

Fair enough, we can apply the same standard: just like the humans who drive like that aren't allowed to drive anymore, the autonomous software that drove the car like this also should be forbidden from operating vehicles. I'm sure you agree that a vehicle operator that's this reckless shouldn't be allowed back on the road just for taking a few classes or being taught a few specific techniques like "killing children or drowning passengers is bad!", so we'll be much safer going forward by just keeping off the road indefinitely. It's for the children, of course!

If a child is "folded in half" by someone looking at their phone, no one accepts that as "good enough", and there is a direct action: the driver responsible will lose their licence and likely end up in prison. If it happens often enough, laws are changed.

What happens when a Tesla does the same thing? Besides them lying and hiding information I mean. What remedial action is taken to reduce that specific risk from reoccurring?

>If a child is "folded in half" by someone looking at their phone, no one accepts that as "good enough"

But of course we do. Yes, we punish the individual driver that did it, but we still allow humans to drive cars. We accept the fact that driving a car carries sone risks, but we value the convenience of getting to our destination easily more than we value lives of those kids that will get killed from time to time.

> Yes, we punish the individual driver that did it, but we still allow humans to drive cars.

Yes because bad drivers aren't representative of all drivers. You also missed the part where laws are changed, safety laws are strengthened.

Oh wait. You're American aren't you.

In most of the world, laws are put in place to protect people. The Cybertruck for example, cannot be legally driven (regardless of not being for sale) in many countries because it doesn't meet pedestrian safety standards.

In my home state it's a finable offence to touch or even have your phone sitting in your lap while driving a car, and they've put detection cameras in place to enforce these laws.

So maybe define who you mean by "we" before claiming that people think kids being mutilated by negligent drivers of either the robotic or fleshy kind, is "good enough".

    > In my home state it's a finable offence to touch or even have your phone sitting in your lap while driving a car, and they've put detection cameras in place to enforce these laws.

I never heard about this. Where?

South Australia. Possibly other Australian states too, I haven't checked (I live overseas currently)

Okay, but what about the hundreds of clones of this driver who have identical education, behavior, no sense of individual identity to attribute their actions to separately? Certainly we don't wait for every one of them to kill a child before doing something more drastic than firmly instructing them "killing children is bad!"

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