Tesla sued in wrongful death lawsuit that alleges Autopilot caused crash

Re:Tesla sued in wrongful death lawsuit that alleges Autopil... by ehnto on Thursday May 02, 2019 @06:23AM (#19806363)

I agree with your conclusion, but the compassion angle isn't helpful in discerning whether or not it is truly safer, and every fatality is a human death and can be just as impactul to others. This guy is no different to the 3.7x more people per mile who have died in other vehicles, so where is the concern toward those manufacturers? What are they doing wrong that their fatality rate is so much higher?

If turning off automated features in a Tesla would lead to more deaths would that still be the right thing to do? At some point in automations progress this will become the Trolley Problem thought experiment, with one side being "Five people die but it was their own fault" and the other side is "One person dies but a machine did it" and we will have to decide which is morally correct.

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Re:Tesla sued in wrongful death lawsuit that alleges Autopil... by roenxi on Thursday May 02, 2019 @06:44AM (#19806464)

The moral issues will get swamped by practical ones pretty quickly.

Driving while checking a phone is illegal in most jurisdictions I'm aware of. Humans driving cars could eventually be seen in a similar light - there is no defense of choosing to drive yourself if a machine that is statistically better than you was available to do the job. It would literally be endangering other road users. And it isn't clear why a rational driver would choose to drive themselves anyway, other options being available.

The only blockers are (1) how good are computers really? and (2) how much extra does it cost?

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