Humans murder other humans thousands of times a day. The first time a poratible vacuum stabs a guy to death outside of a strip club though, that will be one too many machine murders for me to back robot vacuums. Human employees fall asleep on the job too, but of the control system of the nuclear power plant decides to take a nap for a few hours, yeah... I’m going to want that fixed before we roll that out any further. Yes, people crash. It was 17 years between the invention of the first petrol powered automobile and the first recorded fatality caused by one. Prior to this most fatalities from steam/petrol vehicles are traced either to the fact that people and infrastructure were not acclimated to sharing space with motor vehicles, accidents caused by the primitive nature of machines and total lack of safety equipment or guidelines, or via negligence on the part of a third party. The first road going self driving car was made about 5 years ago.
Yes- cars were uncommon in the 1800’s, but so are self driving cars, and only 4 states even allow them to operate on public roads. We can build a car that is safe, that with “optimal” operation would cause effectively 0 fatalities- and the truth is that most traffic fatalities today in manned cars are traced to a driver exceeding theirs or the vehicles limits, safety for their surrounding conditions, the law, or generally doing things an operator shouldn’t be doing. The car itself is about as safe as can be for legal and prudent use. The new system is the computer control. In theory the computer control should not be susceptible to the impairments and errors in judgment a human would make. No currently practical system can completely protect against something like a person jumping Out 3 feet in front of a car that is going 60mph, but every fatality caused through theoretically preventable means in a self driving car is a fault in design or implementation that can and should be...
... worked out in BETA testing in controlled environments before the machines are set lose on the public. The reality is that such testing is long and expensive, and it is usually an enterprise decision to release a product after so much testing so that it can be put to real world conditions. These informal “user BETA” tests have a place, but where life is on the line, the scope and scale should be limited. To do otherwise is to put progress ahead of human life. If your loved one died in an accident that could have been prevented by more controlled testing, how much comfort would it be to be told that that testing would have caused the company 3 years delay, cost several million dollars, and positioned them behind a rival in the market? Surely their stock price and the prospect of owning a self driving car is worth more to you than a spouse or child right?
I may have missed something, but Nuclear Plants are already basically 100% automated and there has yet to be a case in recorded history of any computer falling asleep without it being commanded to.
I understand what you're saying about testing the machines properly before release
due to any flaw being a product of the design, but even if the self driving cars killed 1,000,000 people yearly, it would still be better than human drivers who kill 1,300,000 people yearly. But even then, it wouldn't neccesarily be a product of the design as it could easily be a product of improper road regulations in the arrangement of the lines on the road.
Humans are the problem regardless. When you're offered two choices that are bad, you choose the least horrible one. The least horrible one now is automated cars.
I understand what you're saying about testing the machines properly before release
due to any flaw being a product of the design, but even if the self driving cars killed 1,000,000 people yearly, it would still be better than human drivers who kill 1,300,000 people yearly. But even then, it wouldn't neccesarily be a product of the design as it could easily be a product of improper road regulations in the arrangement of the lines on the road.
Humans are the problem regardless. When you're offered two choices that are bad, you choose the least horrible one. The least horrible one now is automated cars.