Comment by ex-aws-dude
4 days ago
> Only accident rate per mile driven (compared to human drivers' rate) is a relevant comparison
This is such an insane take I see all the time from self-driving boosters
If a self driving car glitches out and crashes in some edge case pathological scenario we don't just accept that as totally fine because its hidden under big statistics
The reason why a crash happened does matter, its not just about aggregate statistics
As a thought experiment if I have a perfect self driving system but I add some code that purposefully crashes 1 in 10 million rides are you ok riding in it since the aggregate statistics look good?
> As a thought experiment if I have a perfect self driving system but I add some code that purposefully crashes 1 in 10 million rides are you ok riding in it since the aggregate statistics look good?
Do I know about the purposefully added harmful code? If yes, I would demand you remove it, because why not. If I don't know about the code, I would be OK with it, since it's clearly still more safe than the alternative and apparently cannot be made even better.
You seem to be neglecting the important part of that scenario where you're other option you have to compare it to is a human driver that will randomly get it a crash at some higher rate.
You're making it sound like the obvious answer is the irrational one.