Technology

You make it sound like it's a 50/50 split between human drivers and autonomous vehicles, which is definitely not the case.

There are way more human drivers than autonomous vehicles. So, when an autonomous vehicle runs your child or pet over or whatever, who do you blame? The company? The programmers? The DMV for even allowing them on the road in the first place?

What's an autonomous vehicle do if it gets a flat? Park in the middle of the interstate like an idiot instead of pulling over and phone home for a mechanic?

DARPA figures out how to safely drive cars using LIDAR. Musk asked for a self driving car. Engineers come back the LIDAR solution. Musk fires them, says if humans can drive with two eyes, then so can computers. Cameras are cheaper than LIDAR. Second group tries it with cameras, can't get it to work, asked why they can't use LIDAR. Second group of engineers is fired. Third group comes up with something that 'kind of works'. People die. Big companies avoid self driving altogether, even though we have a perfect solution with LIDAR, all because Musk wanted to save a buck and can't get out of the way of his engineers.

Using the public as Guinea pigs for corporate profits: priceless

the real funny here is how the USA has the most lax driving test standards in the developed world resulting in crazy amounts of road traffic accidents and really high mortality rates, but instead of dealing with shitty driving at the source there's a billion dollar industry in autonomous driving.

When a for profit company is deciding how much time/energy/funds they want to invest in pedestrian safety, you get LOUD and you stay that way forever.

Your comment is blind to the reality we live in and the broken, out of touch people deciding if human lives are a businesses priority, and at what percentages, as these types of vehicles scale.

When humans get in an accident, there were choices/mistakes made, but there are things we can understand in certain situations and find closure often. When elon's failed experiment decapitates your grandmother by driving her under a semi and sheering off the top off the car, you'll probably never settle with that image as long as you live - and you'll see elon in the news each day being a tool and never seeing justice for that moment.

There's a difference with distinction in this conversation.

I mean, there's probably millions of drivers performing more driving and less than that of autonomous vehicles.

I personally can't wait for autonomous vehicles to take over but the argument would be clearer with percentages and stuff.

Did you read the article? The protests are in favour of affordable public transit, instead of using 'surveillance pods' as a way to build even MORE roads. The accidents are probably the least of their concerns, although still on the list

90 accidents a year is a LOT, if you stop to think that there are like only a few dozens of them out there, versus more than a hundred million human drivers.

Almost like public transit is better than self driving taxis

Maybe the cars are doing surveillance with the police, but that idea seems far fetched and unrealistic

I'm sure that's what people said about Ring, or Facebook messages being used to arrest women for abortions. Why would a company turn down an extra revenue stream (or subpoena)?

Companies like this will sell their data to anyone willing to pay.

Cars are incredibly inefficient at transporting people though, like you need a massive highway to transport the amount of people a train can transport, not to mention how much higher maintenance roads are compared to train tracks.

There's a concern about more cameras recording all the time, and while I don't personally buy that argument (because being out in public means you don't have any expectation of privacy) I don't agree with these companies storing that data to give to police, effectively making Waymo or Cruise into private arms of law enforcement.

The reason that makes the most sense to me is it still encourages cities to be designed around cars, and not transit or people-oriented methods of travel. Even though they might make travel smoother by better decision-making than people, I'd still rather see more spaces devoted to foot traffic connected by buses or trains than the sprawl necessitated by personal vehicles.