When a plane crashes no one says “let’s let people decide if planes should be allowed to fly over their houses”, we say “let’s figure out exactly what went wrong and how to make sure it never happens again” and that’s probably why aviation is one of the safest modes of transportation

That's true but there's also a separate element here which is there is an obvious need for aviation and not an obvious need for autonomous vehicles.

> not an obvious need for autonomous vehicles

We've grown numb to it, but 40,000 US traffic fatalities is an obvious need.

Agreed, we shouldn't let people drive cars

Absolutely true and worth repeating. A lot.

The actual issue is that people spend too much time in their cars. Autonomous driving is a crutch to bad city planning.

> Autonomous driving is a crutch to bad city planning

I agree. In the US trains and buses deliver slow, unreliable, inflexible, expensive, dirty, and dangerous service at high cost.

It will be great to see the safe, clean, flexible, and affordable transportation that will be possible with self-driving cars.

Sorry but cars are the worst form of transportation. Not even a "worst except for all the rest", just straight terrible. The US has finally realized how colossal of a mistake it's made over the past few decades and is starting to fix the problem.

Flexible, I get. Safe, affordable and clean? Nothing moves more people more efficiently than subways. Take it from a Parisian who owns a car but never feels the need to use it, I've never felt such freedom.

Cars are noisy, take a lot of space, are crazy expensive, dirty (even electric ones leave tire particles in the air) and are involved in 99% of road incidents. Them being self-driving wouldn't fix any of these issues. Maybe they'd be a little safer? But even that is doubtful.

I understand US transportation is in a dire state right now. This shouldn't be a reason to make it worse, quite the contrary IMHO.

i’m not convinced yet that autonomous vehicles will actually fix this

the main argument i can see in favor of autonomous vehicles is that they don’t get tired, ill, or drunk, but would they outperform on other kinds of situations across a larger uncontrolled ecosystem? is it worth the expense to develop?

the main reason to develop them is to make military capabilities more mature, which i don’t support. the military would love to have unmanned convoys that are guarded by drones.

that way they can have an easier time doing invasions of sovereign countries

yes but what is worth more to the sanfranciscon 400000 mostly non-sanfranciscan hu-man deaths, or 1 outrageous death of a beloved san francisco cat

It is of course such an emotional vs rational argument, so extreme, so ridiculous, what can you do but grab a picket sign and say to ban all cars and combustion engines for the sake of poor kit kat. A very easy sell since combustion engines are already viewed as the devil

I think that this approach could feasibly lead to something far safer than human drivers (from what I’ve seen they already are safer), so it would be human drivers that we would question the need for at that point

>That's true but there's also a separate element here which is there is an obvious need for aviation and not an obvious need for autonomous vehicles.

At least in America, the need for autonomous vehicles is much, MUCH more obvious than for aviation actually unless you're a 20 year old exclusively city person. In most of the country by area, and at least a good hundred million-ish people by population, being able to have [arbitrary point to point mechanized transportation] is a necessity for normal adult life & work. Right now that equates exclusively to having and being able to drive your own vehicle. There are no other options of any kind unless you are extremely wealthy to the point you can employee an exclusive human brain & body not your own for that role. There are no buses. There are no trains. There are no human driven taxis for that matter. Normal family, friends and neighbors can fill in on an occasional/emergency basis and that's a safety net, but you will be heavily restricted. And tens of millions of people, indeed eventually almost all of us, do not have the ability to safely drive themselves. They are either too young, too old, have some sort of disability preventing it, or have made some poor life choices that nonetheless are compounded upon by this.

Right now it can't be helped, it is what it is, our mechanical technological capability ran ahead of our information processing capability so the human brain and body was called upon to fill in and here we are. The law also reflects that, with far more generosity given to poor and dangerous driving because it's by necessity a quasi-right however much it's called a "privilege". But fully public road autonomous vehicles would change all that. Driving yourself would truly become a hobby practice, not a requirement. Major training could be demanded. If someone has any DUI infractions or the like boom, no more driving privilege. You could be 90 with failing eyesight and reflexes and physically incapable even during the day. And it'd all be ok with everyone still having near identical mobility because they could just fall back on having the car itself take them where they need or want to go on their schedule, same as someone driving today.

That'd be just wildly huge and will only get bigger as America follows the rest of the developed world in terms of aging demographics. This is putting aside all sorts of massive improvements in productivity, lives saved, urban/suburban/rural development, electrification, and probably more we haven't considered. Certainly there are pitfalls to be avoided but it blows my mind anyone could possibly not see all this. The car is one of the most important things in American society and consumes EONS of human time. Literally. An eon is a span of one billion years. Hundreds of millions of people have absolute spent a year or more of their lives behind a steering wheel. It adds up. Anything that shifts that is by definition enormous.

So what we can infer here is that if Waymo ever kills a person, it’s basically over for them in SF. Your plane analogy is apt, because for us to “get there” with autonomous cars, where it’s anywhere and everywhere, we’ll have to be willing to basically die to some degree. Just like in planes.

It would childish not to come to terms with that.

We do actually.

There are planes that are certified to fly over populated areas, and those that are not.

cause: management after boeing merger.

Boeing management had been described as Boy Scouts, whereas the McDonnell Douglas managers were Hunter-Killer Assassins...

https://newrepublic.com/article/154944/boeing-737-max-invest...

Progressives always defend legacy obsolete businesses against competition. They tried to stop Uber and Lyft from replacing cabs and now they do the same with Waymo.

Non-US perspective: ”Progressive” and ”conservative” labels don’t make much sense to me these days.

Perhaps you need another way of thinking about these things.

Of course they don't. Political labels don't cross national boundaries easily. Even right next door in Canada "conservative" means nothing like it does in the US.

Yea they do when you have a firm foundation on political theory. However, parties often diverge from their name.

And people often have no idea what the actual principles of an ideology are, they go with whatever their friends/family/bubble says is good.

that’s true, but usually there is some kind of foundational need that is being satisfied by the candidate or policies, or in the case of middle class people, some kind of postmodern spectacle as was innovated in the 1930s

Another non-US perspective - you can't tell them how to think about their weird political camps.

We saw this play out with Uber. The "progressive" side wants things to be more regulated and frames it in terms of protecting vulnerable people from unchecked corporate power. The "conservative" side does wants less regulation and more competition to keep things from stagnating economically.

The same thing is happening with AI, and with self driving cars.

It's sort of counterintuitive that on the surface, at least in this case, the "conservative" side is the one welcoming change and the "progressive" side rejects it.

You see this federally in the US. The "conservatives" want to tear down all the institutions, but they'll frame it as a return to traditional values like self sufficiency and freedom. The "progressives" want a return to the Biden era, in the name of people depending on these programs.

Many Canadians here, but I guess that makes sense.

To the rest of the world (right or wrong) you are culturally pretty much the same as Americans.

Yes. I know. Your political scene is wildly different.

How can people not understand this. The entire leftist edifice is carving out more and more pieces for handouts. That’s it. This is arguing for another handout

I guess I'm a bit more generous to them on this point. Ironically, what they are is actually conservatives (in the generic meaning of preserving the status quo, not the American political meaning). What they want is stability and freedom from risk. They have this idea that you should be able to get one job and work it for your entire career, and they often cite the post WWII period as an example of this.

Of course technological progress is anathema to this. Progress is chaos. It causes disruption of entire industries, which TBF does disrupt people's lives. So they enact policies to defend existing industries from competition and fence off who is allowed to do what job with useless credentials and certifications. Essentially trying to preserve the status quo forever. They trade long term progress for short term comfort. The practical economic effect of this is, in fact, a handout to incumbents, and there are plenty of grifters on board for this reason, but it isn't the driving force behind it.

I agree with your take but it’s just another form of handout, which the rest of society pays for

Begging the question. Regular cars are not "legacy" or "obsolete," and self-driving cars do not yet have a proven track record.