The driver had actually been road-raging with another driver when he hit the bicyclist. He wasn't directing his anger at the cyclist. (edit: He had also left a bar, and may have been drunk, but he was not connected to the hit-and-run for days, so there was no evidence to charge him with drunk driving.)

This doesn't seem like a huge leap to me at all. If he'd been driving responsibly, he probably would not have hit the cyclist. And autonomous drivers don't get angry or careless. Your follow-on about imaginary scenarios kind of underscores the weakness of that argument.

And I do agree that a raging driver taking control from the automation continues to be a problem. But that's no worse than the original situation, now is it?

Well, yes, it's easy to attack my "argument" when you didn't originally give the full details.

Bugs are not imaginary scenarios. Also, did the US outlaw gun ownership without the rest of the world noticing?

> And I do agree that a raging driver taking control from the automation continues to be a problem. But that's no worse than the original situation, now is it?

I only replied to one point: that you cannot state with 100% conviction that the cyclist wouldn't have died had there been a self-driving vehicle.

You could back down and just concede you really meant to add at least one condition: "if that jackass had a completely autonomous vehicle, with no manual input possible, it is highly unlikely the cyclist would have been killed"

I'll concede to the point of "If the car had a good quality collision detection system, and the jackass did not deliberately disable it". You don't need "no manual input possible" for this. You just need a system smart enough to apply the brakes when the driver doesn't.

I was out car shopping recently, and even affordable midrange cars (Subaru Crossfire and Honda HRV) offer technology that could have done this, as a standard feature.