While many social media users are blaming the pedestrian for reportedly crossing against the light, the incident highlights the challenge autonomous driving faces in complex situations.
If you just look a pure numbers, sure, you can make it sound good. When you go look at the types of accidents, it’s pretty damning. Waymo and Cruise both have a history of hitting parked cars and emergency vehicles. Tesla Autopilot is notorious for accelerating at the back of parked emergency vehicles.
The issue is not the overall track record on safety but how AV accidents almost always involve doing something incredibly stupid that any competent, healthy person would not.
I’m not personally against self driving cars once they’re actually as competent as a human in determining their surroundings, but we’re not there yet.
The issue is not the overall track record on safety but how AV accidents almost always involve doing something incredibly stupid that any competent, healthy person would not.
As long as the overall number of injuries/deaths is lower for autonomous vehicles (and as you’ve acknowledged, that does seem to be what the data shows), I don’t care how “stupid” autonomous vehicles’ accidents are. Not to mention that their safety records will only improve as they get more time on the roads.
If you just look a pure numbers, sure, you can make it sound good. When you go look at the types of accidents, it’s pretty damning. Waymo and Cruise both have a history of hitting parked cars and emergency vehicles. Tesla Autopilot is notorious for accelerating at the back of parked emergency vehicles.
The issue is not the overall track record on safety but how AV accidents almost always involve doing something incredibly stupid that any competent, healthy person would not.
I’m not personally against self driving cars once they’re actually as competent as a human in determining their surroundings, but we’re not there yet.
As long as the overall number of injuries/deaths is lower for autonomous vehicles (and as you’ve acknowledged, that does seem to be what the data shows), I don’t care how “stupid” autonomous vehicles’ accidents are. Not to mention that their safety records will only improve as they get more time on the roads.