this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2024
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Here we go. Autonomous vehicles are now mowing down cyclists.

I hope that Waymo's insurance is good!

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Last year, or the year before, there was a murder in Iceland and it made national news. Why? Because there are virtually no murders in that country - it is an exception to the rule.

Mile-for-mile, self-driving cars fare significantly better than humans: who are actually the ones "mowing down people." Especially the drunk ones. It's exactly the same situation as Iceland with the murders, if you had national news each time a human caused a casualty there would be hardly enough time to tell the news.

The "mowing down" hyperbole is doing your cause no justice. I certainly agree that it's too early to go completely driverless (especially when your trustworthy humans go hands/eyes-free in cars that explicitly disallow it) - but humans have never had the qualifications to deal with something that drives 10x the speed than they can sprint.

If you want to pull self-driving cars off the road then, great! I think we can all agree with that. Let's pull all human drivers off the road first - not only do the statistics support that we're incompet, biology does too.