[LINK] Robot cars and the fear gap

[David Lochrin]

On 2016-07-13 15:55 David Boxall wrote:

> For me, the question is not whether self-driving vehicles are perfect (every system has a failure rate), it's whether they're an improvement.
> 
> http://reneweconomy.com.au/2016/robot-cars-fear-gap-50008
> There’s a historical precedent to this. An article from a 1984 edition of the New York Times outline efforts to encourage seatbelt use, and the dramatic reasons people refuse to use them:  [...]  There is a persistent myth, for example, that it is safer to be thrown free of the car than to be restrained by a belt.  [...]

The example isn't comparable.

There's negligible doubt about whether a seatbelt will fail; the quoted myth relates to the supposed consequences of being restrained.

However there is certainly a well-founded doubt as to whether the computer system in a driverless car will fail, as the recent Tesla example shows.  If you ran a series of tests in which the same type of Tesla car in the same situation was driven (a) automatically and (b) by an experienced human driver, what do you think the results would be?

David L.