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A comment on Toyota Research Institute head says full autonomous driving is “not even close”. Parent comment

Re:Toyota Research Institute head says full autonomous drivi... by cryptoz on Monday August 28, 2017 @11:11AM (#15117024)
30,000 people in the USA alone are killed each year because of human driving error. Humans are not getting any better at driving. Car safety mechanisms have reduced road death rates significantly in the last 50 years, but still - 30,000 deaths/year in the USA alone due to human driver error.

Cars will be automated because cars have to be automated.

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Re:Toyota Research Institute head says full autonomous drivi... by throw2016 on Monday August 28, 2017 @12:00PM (#15117501)
Self driving advocates having trivialized human drivers have now realized the technology is not quite there and have changed tack to demonizing human drivers and scare stories and FUD.

These are self interested business people. There are real issues around self driving cars like safety, autonomy, rent seeking, corporate control, individual freedom and surveillance that self interested tunnel vision advocates simply cannot comprehend.

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Re:Toyota Research Institute head says full autonomous drivi... by cmurf on Monday August 28, 2017 @03:53PM (#15119534)
About the same number of people die of influenza each year. We've been dying in these numbers for a long time, and it really doesn't matter at a macro scale. It's fine to try and do better, there are some positives for trying, but this is more of a want, not a need.
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Re:Toyota Research Institute head says full autonomous drivi... by averagewall on Monday August 28, 2017 @09:27PM (#15121500)
Those are mostly the elderly and babies who have a high risk of dieing anyway. Elderly people especially are certain to die of something soon. If it's not the flu, it'll be a cold or an infection or whatever.
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Re:Toyota Research Institute head says full autonomous drivi... by chrismealy on Monday August 28, 2017 @11:18AM (#15117084)
Other countries have much lower car death rates. It's a social problem that can be solved without waiting technological miracles.
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Re:Toyota Research Institute head says full autonomous drivi... by Bahamut on Monday August 28, 2017 @11:37AM (#15117245)
The US death rate is lower than most countries: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic...
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Re:Toyota Research Institute head says full autonomous drivi... by stevenwoo on Monday August 28, 2017 @04:35PM (#15119838)
The general trend from that data appears that the higher the standard of living, the higher the safety is per driving mile and the US is where one would expect in such a list, better than third world countries, worse than Europe.
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Re:Toyota Research Institute head says full autonomous drivi... by chrismealy on Tuesday August 29, 2017 @12:45AM (#15122129)
Canada has 40% fewer road deaths by population. I don't think they're that much richer or smarter than Americans. Complacency is killing people.
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Re:Toyota Research Institute head says full autonomous drivi... by stevenwoo on Tuesday August 29, 2017 @01:19AM (#15122256)
Good point. Probably no single simple correlation will do - higher fuel prices points to the one thing that Western Europe and Canada share off the top of my head compared to the USA. (That and nationalized healthcare. :) )
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Re:Toyota Research Institute head says full autonomous drivi... by chrismealy on Tuesday August 29, 2017 @01:41AM (#15122329)
If raising gas taxes would save 12,000 lives per year then America should definitely do it. It's a social problem that doesn't require technological solutions.
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Re:Toyota Research Institute head says full autonomous drivi... by gjjrfcbugxbhf on Monday August 28, 2017 @11:18AM (#15117085)
Just because we want or even need something doesn't mean we get it.
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