Poll of the Day > How do you feel about SELF-DRIVING CARS?

(+) Yeah! (+)

MannerSaurus posted...

Yes, it's true that 99.9% of all accidents are caused by human error (either not paying attention, underestimating distance needed to brake in relation to momentum and weight, underestimating weather effects on traction even in an AWD car, etc etc etc.) but there are certain situations where computer failure would lead to extremely deadly accidents

My attitude toward that is similar to my attitude toward seatbelts. There have been accidents where being buckled up caused a fatality, or where not being buckled up let somebody slide over to the other side of a bench seat and avoid taking the full impact and dying. You'll often see people citing these as a reason to protest seatbelts being mandatory. That fact of the matter, though, is that wearing a seatbelt is far, far safer than not wearing one in the vast majority of collision or other emergency scenarios, so wearing one at all times is unambiguously the better choice. Similarly, while no self-driving system is ever going to be perfect, and there will inevitably be deadly accidents, in the grand scheme of things it has the potential to be much safer than manual driving. Perspective's important: One self-driving car driving off a bridge each year is far, far better than the 37,000 fatalities that happened in 2016. You'll still be more likely to be killed by somebody else hitting you than by the computer in your car screwing up.
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