Re:Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent A...
by kevin_thibedeau on Friday August 25, 2017 @01:13AM
(#15096278)
"Appears" is the operative word. The new system is going to kill somebody. It hinges on building a whitelist of geolocated problematic radar signatures to avoid nuissance braking [1]. It's only a matter of time before a real danger that coincides with a whitelisted location causes a crash.
[1] https://www.tesla.com/blog/upgrading-autopilot-seeing-world-...
As far as I know it is indeed correct that autopilot safety is statistically higher than manual driving safety (albeit with a small sample size).
However, something has always bothered me about that comparison ...
Is it fair to compare a manually driven accidental death (like ice, or wildlife collision) with an autopilot death that involves a trivial driving scenario that any human would have no trouble with ?
I don't know the answer - I'm torn.
Somehow those seem like apples and oranges, though ... as if dying in a mundane (but computer-confusing) situation is somehow inexcusable in a way that an "actual accident" is not.