> Theoretically the reputation cost would discourage for-profit organizations from releasing unsafe self-driving vehicles for testing on public roads.

This assumes that the reputation costs are comparable in weight to the acts that they commit. Based on the past year and what I hear about Uber's growth[0], I'd argue that their reputation and their valuation are quite uncorrelated, but it's hard to know the truth.

0: https://www.forbes.com/sites/miguelhelft/2017/08/23/despite-...

> This assumes that the reputation costs are comparable in weight to the acts that they commit.

Rather this assumes reputation costs times risk of having those costs while undertaking some action is comparable to gain from this action.

The problem for Uber is that if they lose this race, then there is no Uber. The outcome of this is that they will be willing to risk a lot in order to succeed. This seems to be collateral damage for them. Completely unsurprising as it seems they lied about running the red light in autonomous mode and the ran their program without proper licensing (and reporting). Nobody should be surprised that Uber was the first company to rack up an autonomous driving death.

>Theoretically the reputation cost would discourage for-profit organizations from releasing unsafe self-driving vehicles for testing on public roads.

And theoretically the only people who can regulate banks are the banks themselves.

Funny how you hear that argument every time a horrible industry is trying to keep profits high by eternalizing costs: meat packers in 1900, tobacco in 1950, oil and gas till today.

What if you already have a sh*t reputation like UBER?

I doubt it. If you exclusively kill people outside the vehicle who are walking or riding bikes, you encourage people who don't have a car to hire the vehicle.

The only possible costs would be if they're made to pay a price in a court of law, which seems unlikely since the woman who was killed had a bike with her, and it's unknown if she was on the bike at the time, but she's been described as a pedestrian outside of a crosswalk. Clearly Arizona authorities just don't care about safety.

> Theoretically the reputation cost would discourage for-profit organizations from releasing unsafe (...)

I wonder whether food companies (like the meat packing industry in Chicago) said the same thing before the FDA was created in 1906; i.e. that reputation will just regulate the industry to not sell mislabeled products, or spoiled or adulaterated food.