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Comment by jordanpg | Hacker News Reader

You are far more optimistic than me about the future of driverless cars. Given N driverless cars, some fraction p will eventually run over and kill small children. Stand back and watch the hysteria and the end of driverless cars.

Also, before driverless cars become widespread, they will need to be first proven and then regulated. Imagine the fantastic force of the driving lobby that will oppose that from happening: taxi drivers, truck drivers, fleet drivers.

Why do trains and subways still have a human sitting in them?

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You chose to make your point with probability, which is actually what will most likely make people accept driverless cars in the end.

It's amusing to read the same reasoning after striking away "driverless":

"You are far more optimistic than me about the future of cars. Given N cars, some fraction p will eventually run over and kill small children. Stand back and watch the hysteria and the end of cars."

or with elevators:

"You are far more optimistic than me about the future of automatic elevators. Given N elevators, some fraction p will eventually malfunction and kill small children. Stand back and watch the hysteria and the end of elevators."

If the accident probabilities can be brought to acceptable levels, why wouldn't we adopt them?

PS: With trains and subways we have 1 driver per dozens of passengers, where the savings gained from reducing it to 0 may not outweigh the risk increase/loss of safety feeling.

Good point. I totally agree that if the risk is low, we should adopt the technologies.

I was addressing how I believe these sorts of accidents will portrayed in the news and media, especially if there is an organization with an agenda behind the coverage.

Yes, I think (automatic) car makers will have to be extremely careful. If we have dramatic accidents to soon, it may be hard to sway the public opinion with statistics (as is the current case with nuclear power).

    “If you look at newspapers from American cities in the 1910s
    and ’20s, you’ll find a lot of anger at cars and drivers, 
    really an incredible amount,” says Peter Norton, the author 
    of Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the 
    American City. “My impression is that you’d find more 
    caricatures of the Grim Reaper driving a car over innocent 
    children than you would images of Uncle Sam.”

Same thing happened with the horseless carriage when it first showed up. Didn't stop it.

http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/murder-machines/

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