> If automated cars drove perfectly 99.9999% of the time but then crashed horribly that remaining 0.0001% — taking some poor pedestrians or bicyclists along with them — I wouldn't get into one
Thousands of human drivers crash horribly every day and over a million people die every year by car accidents in the World. If humans "crashed terribly" 0.0001% and a self driving car did so 0.00005%, it would already be a great improvement.
I don't have solid data about this, but I think LOTS of the current accidents are due to drivers being reckless, distracted. high or emotional. Self-driving cars would introduce some new risks, but they would take away lots of the current ones.
And for many of the situations that you list, there is a simple solution: the car should have two modes, self-driving and human-driving. Self-driving will only work when conditions are normal. Incompatible weather conditions? Broken sensor? The car parks itself, and you need to drive yourself or wait for assistance.
> And for many of the situations that you list, there is a simple solution: the car should have two modes, self-driving and human-driving. Self-driving will only work when conditions are normal. Incompatible weather conditions? Broken sensor? The car parks itself, and you need to drive yourself or wait for assistance.
That would be a good solution, but many people who talk about self-driving cars don't want that. They want to sleep in the car. They want to "drive" home drunk. In both cases, a manual override would be disastrous and probably illegal. (We can already get a DUI just for getting into a car while drunk!) They also want to be able to "fetch" their cars without a driver, which wouldn't work.
First of all, "many people" will just go along with what is offered, even if it isn't their ideal solution.
Regarding the sleeping and "fetching" your car, those would still be compatible: simply, if the conditions aren't good, the car would respectively park and wake you up, or inform you that it can't respond to your fetch request at the moment.
Regarding a drunk/high person, it would still be an improvement to the current situation: most of the times you wouldn't drive yourself.
Thousands of human drivers crash horribly every day and over a million people die every year by car accidents in the World. If humans "crashed terribly" 0.0001% and a self driving car did so 0.00005%, it would already be a great improvement.
I don't have solid data about this, but I think LOTS of the current accidents are due to drivers being reckless, distracted. high or emotional. Self-driving cars would introduce some new risks, but they would take away lots of the current ones.
And for many of the situations that you list, there is a simple solution: the car should have two modes, self-driving and human-driving. Self-driving will only work when conditions are normal. Incompatible weather conditions? Broken sensor? The car parks itself, and you need to drive yourself or wait for assistance.