Yes, self-driving cars will save lives if we assume that the self-driving technology is superior to humans in every way. That's almost a tautology though.
Self-driving cars don't get bored, but they don't seem to see white tractor trailers either. Technology has different shortcomings than people do. Whether tech shortcomings result in fewer lives lost than human shortcomings remains to be seen.
It's astounding to me that HN stories about self-driving cars sit right next to stories about iPhones and anti-virus software, and tone of the comments are diametrically opposed. If you read the comments on self-driving car stories, you'd think that technology can do everything better than people. If you read the comments on stories about iPhones and anti-virus, you'd think that everything has terrible bugs, vulnerabilities, and shortcomings.
Isn't Tesla using pure vision? Google also uses lidar, which fixes the problem. EDIT: Looks like I'm wrong and Tesla uses radar.
> Technology has different shortcomings than people do. Whether tech shortcomings result in fewer lives lost than human shortcomings remains to be seen.
Technology also gets better. Ten years ago, people were as bad at driving as they are today. Ten years from now, they'll be as bad as they are today.
Now compare self driving cars ten years ago to self driving cars today. And ten years from now.
> If you read the comments on self-driving car stories, you'd think that technology can do everything better than people. If you read the comments on stories about iPhones and anti-virus, you'd think that everything has terrible bugs, vulnerabilities, and shortcomings.
Those aren't contradictory.
I assume you just pulled that out of thin air but even if you hadn't, it is completely meaningless. We have nothing to compare human performance against. Humans have been driving for more than a century. What are you going to compare that to?
As to how preventable accidents are- sure, if you remove factors like the ones you say, you'll reduce accidents, but humans suffer from those cognitive impairments on top of our extremely well-tuned cognitive apparatus. Computers have nothing of the sort. They may not get distracted, but they're rubbish at doing the thinking that keeps humans safe on the road the vast majority of the time (given that the vast majority of drivers don't get killed in accidents).
To put it plainly, if you put a brick on the gas pedal and lock the wheel, you'll reduce the amount of accidents caused by cogntivie impairments like inattention and poor judgement- but you won't reduce the overall rate of accidents.
In other words, if you hand control to a system that doesn't sleep on the wheel but can also not tell a puddle from a boulder, you will increase risks rather than reducing them.