Edit: I don't mean to sound like I'm singling out ride sharing/hailing companies, it's an across the board thing with human drivers.
I feel that people are latching onto their opinions about driverless car tech and not talking about the wider implications. That is the point, I am poorly, making, apparently....
I just think that not all the questions have been asked about what it means to be a "driverless car" and that we need to run through all the risks -- and thats the one thing I find really lacking in any of these conversations at all.
My mention of “we” though are the consumers who will be paying these companies for rides and presuming they have already thought about these safety issues, yet “we” have no privvy to an understanding about who has approached the issues nor who has the best approach and neither a standard to refer to that “we” can expect the companies to uphold.
That’s the whole point of “us” starting to ask questions.
“So, uh, you want me to fly in your plane, to what standards are these planes built to?”
Oh look, “we” have an FAA who manages all that, regardless of who made the damn plane.
Ahh, if you think this is a new problem, you're too young to remember the fun of calling a cab by pay phone to some obscure address, then alternating between going inside and calling the dispatcher and then running out to the street to try to flag down the cab.
At least with a driverless car I can pinpoint my location on a map when I call it.
Person winds up being in an unsafe environment and needs immediate assistance.
Existing car-share (and cab) drivers are also willing to drop you off in an unsafe environment if that's where you told him you want to go. While sometimes they'll stick around to make sure you make it to your door (if you're female), that's by no means guaranteed.