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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 04 2016, @08:04PM
I think being safer than the 90th percentile of human drivers would be adequate. That would make a huge reduction in traffic injuries and fatalities. I'm pretty sure that self driving cars can achieve that level of safety while increasing throughput, and reducing the variance in throughput, at the same time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 05 2016, @01:16PM
If you were the car manufacturer would that really be safe enough for you?
If elevators were merely safer than 90% of all human stair climbers I think elevator manufacturers would be sued and shut down.
http://www.livescience.com/17504-fatal-nyc-accident-elevators-safer-stairs.html [livescience.com]
But maybe car manufacturers might study how escalator manufacturers do it...