> We just need to know that, even armed with all that knowledge, he still made the decision he did, and that we should not expect others with less knowledge of how software works to be any less human.

This is maybe one of the most important lessons of the 20th and 21st centuries (at least thus far): knowledge does not automatically prevent us from errors in judgments nor does it necessarily protect us from misfortune.

Nor does it absolve others from liability.

My friends like to talk about how awesome it would be to time travel or know what the outcome of a future decision will be. Even when armed with knowledge from observed outcomes of near-identical setup scenarios, majority of the time they end up doing exactly what they would have normally done. Happens to me from time to time.

knowledge does not automatically prevent us from errors in judgments nor does it necessarily protect us from misfortune.

Relevant xkcd https://xkcd.com/795/

Not automatically, but it can help.

I was in this very situation at the top of Pikes Peak. A storm moved in and the park rangers closed the place and sent everybody away. They knew the statistics of being hit by lightning in that very place.

If anything I would expect less knowledgeable people to be more skeptical and cautious than somebody who has a vested interest and passion for technology. I can't imagine anybody other than a tech enthusiast who would maintain trust in a self driving car technology that previously attempted to veer them into a barrier.

100% agree with this. Most people I’ve talked to about this incident think the guy is an idiot; if you had found a car’s feature to be unsafe on a portion of your commute before, why on earth would you trust it with your and other’s lives? If you had a new fancy belaying device slip in the gym, you wouldn’t use it on your next big wall climb.

I also don’t get how everyone is forgiving him for being on his phone, in a construction zone no less. Reckless driving is reckless driving, being an Apple Engineer and Tesla owner doesn’t somehow negate that he was being a belligerent driver.

It's not about forgiving him for being an idiot. It's more about recognizing that there's more than just the one idiot on the road. To an approximation, pretty much everyone who has ever had a driver's license has been guilty of making an idiotic decision or two while behind the wheel.

And, Autopilot being a technology that, among other things, enables (or even encourages) idiotic behavior, there's real risk that placing too much blame on the driver's choices lulls us into an attitude that enables the next idiot to kill themselves and/or someone else.

I agree that everyone makes bad choices from time to time on the road. But as a society we put 100% of the blame on the driver if they aren’t doing everything in there power to prevent an accident. “Everyone makes mistakes” isn’t a get out of jail free card, booze clouds people’s judgement to the point where after enough drinks they’ll think they are good to drive, but that doesn’t change anything if they get behind the wheel, its still a DUI.

This guy was on his phone in a construction zone and crashed because of his lack of intervention, using a driving assist feature doesn’t somehow absolve him from being so preoccupied that his vehicle veered off the road and into a wall. Imagine if instead of him dying he had killed a construction worker; I have no doubt a jury would find him guilty of manslaughter. When you get into the driver’s seat of a car you are taking on responsibility for a death machine. I find it troubling that this conversation is happening at all, the blame should be put squarely on his shoulders.

Iff the car suddenly slammed the wheel to the side causing him to lose control or became unresponsive to his inputs, that would be another matter. But this could have been prevented if he wasn’t being grossly negligent of the risk he was partaking in behind the wheel.

An ounce of prevention is worth many, many pounds of assigning blame after the fact.

(Unless you're plaintiff's counsel, of course.)

This has been my takeaway from the whole situation. It says something about the exactly how safe this stuff needs to be for it to be considered reliable.

My impression is that it's already more reliable than humans. Not perfect, but it probably averages better than all the crashes humans are causing.

> it's already more reliable than humans

Only when comparing aggregate statistics. Not all humans are equally (un)safe drivers; insurance rates vary based on driving record for good reason.

Maybe we should keep it the way and use it as a culling method.