Well, just because people react badly when confronted with personal tragedy doesn't mean you have to do the same when it's not applied to you.

For example it's clearly excusable to be angry / depressed / looking for someone to blame when a personal tragedy happens to you. But that doesn't mean you should replicate that behaviour when a tragedy happens to someone else. We should distance ourselves from subjects where we're emotionally compromised, not guide our decision by the example of emotionally compromised people.

> …statistically self-driving cars have killed less people than human drivers?

I realise that the point you're making is about emotional turmoil and not really statistics, but it looks like so far Uber aren't doing so well in terms of driving safety:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16620736

So yeah, if it turned out that Uber were sending cars out into the world without sufficient engineering or testing* and they killed someone (especially someone I know) then I would be understandably furious.

* In order to get to market sooner? I don't trust Uber and I wouldn't put this past them. Nothing I have seen of the Uber self-driving car program makes me want to be anywhere near one on a road.

> Would you care that statistically self-driving cars have killed less people than human drivers?

I don't think there are enough data points right now to make such claim, but please correct me if I am wrong.

All deaths are a tragedy to someone. A statistic is an aggregate account of untold suffering and misery. To be truly compassionate, we must learn to see the humanity in statistics. We must recognise that our emotional reaction to the death of a loved one and our indifference to the death of a stranger is not a sign of compassion, but egoism. As enlightened citizens, it is our duty to use all our ingenuity and effort to reduce the sum total of suffering.

This death is a tragedy. There were 37,461 such tragedies in 2016. Every single one of them matters equally. It is only by studying and analysing them in aggregate that we can prevent future tragedies. Seat belts, air bags, crumple zones, anti-lock brakes, median dividers and rumble strips are tremendous acts of compassion. Statisticians, scientists and engineers have made an incalculable contribution to human welfare.

> how would you react if your father/mother/sister/son/daughter/etc was the victim?

Shit, of course. But I'd like to believe that I'll realize that banning self-driving cars is not going to make things any better, just like I'd never propose banning cars in general. I'm not sure how it would help here to imagine it's my daughter; it's not as if we imagine it being our daughter in every traffic accident we hear of, since that would be crippling given the sheer number of them...

Would you care that seatbelts are statistically likely to save lives if your loved ones died drowning in their car due to them?

What do we do differently based on the answer to that question?

Yes. I'm in favour of safer drivers, robot or human.

> how would you react if your father/mother/sister/son/daughter/etc was the victim?

How you would react when emotionally distraught shouldn’t be the model for how you act all the time.

This. And I think this is why these stats end up posted here when stuff like this happens. Because the emotionally distraught look at this situation and they're like BAN SELF DRIVING CARS! and the people posting stats are here to remind them that they're still safer than regular cars and accidents happen but we can't impede progress because of one accident here and there.

Could you please not use allcaps for emphasis in HN comments?

This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

I didn't realize that, it's been a while since I read those. Thank you for the information!

I think that's a strange thought experiment, since it's basically requesting that you think emotionally and as irrationally as possible to draw conclusions.

It's requesting that you remember that a human life was just lost, and to not reduce this woman's life to a rounding error.

The only strange thing in this thread is the emotional detachment many are showing and one could probably argue that's the exact kind of thinking that will lead to more cases like this.