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from the how-long-could-they-last-in-Boston? dept.
A little while back, I saw the following tweet:
I can print mostly. My wifi works often. The Xbox usually recognises me. Siri sometimes works. But my self driving car will be *perfect*.
The tweet has since been deleted, so I won't name the author, but it's a thought-provoking idea. At first, I agreed with it. I'm a programmer and know full well just how shoddy is 99.9% of the code we all write. The idea that I would put my life in the hands of a coder like myself is a bit worrying.
[...] The reality is that self-driving cars don't need to be perfect. They just need to be better than the alternative: human-driven cars. And that is a much lower bar, as human beings are remarkably bad at driving.
[...] Self-driving cars don't get tired. They don't get drunk. They don't get distracted by friends or a crying baby. They don't look away from the road to send a text message. They don't speed, tailgate, brake too late, forget to show a blinker, drive too fast in bad weather, run red lights, race other cars at red lights, or miss exits. Self-driving cars aren't going to be perfect, but they will be a hell of a lot better than you and me.
Related: The High-Stakes Race to Rid the World of Human Drivers
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Monday January 04 2016, @03:36PM
Aside from the technical capabilities of the cars, an essential prerequisite for mass deployment are sensible liability laws. This whole area of law needs serious revision, especially in the US, but really pretty much everywhere. Mistakes happen, people should be compensated fairly for those mistakes. However, multi-million dollar awards, class action suits, and other "lottery" plays on the legal system make product liability a crap shoot.
Here's a suggestion: Put a number on a human life, something modest. Use this as a basis for calculating damages. Make awards according to this scheme following a "no fault" insurance scheme - i.e., each person's insurance pays their own damages. Suing companies, filing class action suits, or whatever should only be possible after showing proof of genuine negligence or malice. The level of proof required should be substantial; it should not be possible for random ambulance-chasing lawyers to initiate anything.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.