Self driving Uber vehicle kills pedestrian

[vorlon13]

Hmmm . . . .

[Minimalist]

Maybe the machines figured out that she would give birth to someone who would ruin their plans to take over and decided to take her out?

[johan]

Oh, no.  Not so.  The first five minutes of every local news broadcast is either traffic accidents, someone shooting someone else and/or the cops shooting someone or a fire.  

That was true when you and I were kids. These days car accidents rarely make the local news and if they do, they're almost never the lead story. The only exception is when they happen to have good (i.e. horrific) video of the scene or dashcam/traffic cam footage of the accident actually happening. If they can't get their hands on good video, it will almost never make the broadcast anymore. Unless it was a self-driving car. Statistically speaking, in the last week at least 3 or 4 people lost their lives on the road within 100 miles of wherever you are. How many of those deaths have you seen in the news?

[Mr.Obvious]

Self driving cars don't need to be perfect, they just need to be better than us.

[Anomalocaris]

Self driving cars don't need to be perfect, they just need to be better than us.

Humans care about quantifiable safety far less than the appearance of safety, however deceptive.

[Mr.Obvious]

Self driving cars don't need to be perfect, they just need to be better than us.

Humans care about quantifiable safety far less than the appearance of safety, however deceptive.

Humans can be idiots.

[CapnAwesome]

Cars with drivers run down pedestrians all the time. What I want to know is whether there is a lower or higher incident rate with driverless cars, not to expect perfection. How many peiple were killed by people texting and driving last year?

As a bike messenger, who's life is regularly put at risk by idiot dirvers I believe computers will be better drivers than human beings, and look forward to the coming era of driverless cars.

[notimportant1234]

The only problem that I have with self driving cars is that they will take away a lot of jobs.

[brewer]

I have to many trust issues and will probably never own or ride in one.

[vorlon13]

The only problem that I have with self driving cars is that they will take away a lot of jobs.

So, you support federal subsidies for manufacturing buggy whips and slide rules ?

How many people we want to impoverish paying taxes to support people without marketable skills indefinitely??

Rather see displaced professional drivers retrained (at public expense) for better career options. Driverless cars are coming out slowly enough now, if people would stop choosing 'driving' as a job, natural attrition might carry through for quite a while. This is entirely foreseeable issue and if we had a well managed congress this transition could be virtually painless.

A good way of How Not To Do It (that should be avoided) would be like the dems telling the coal miners (and their bundled union campaign political contributions) to Go Fuck Yourselves and You Filthy Coal Too. That could certainly have been handled BETTER. To this day, it remains to be ascertained if Dem leadership learned anything from that self inflicted wound. The rest of us can be smarter.