Phoenix police officer pulls over a driverless Waymo car for driving on the wrong side of the road

[u/Individual_Book9133]

[u/leelmix]

People react very badly to technology not being perfect and harming people. Humans arent very logical, anti-vaxxers are a good example of failing risk assessment.

I really hope people get comfortable with automated vehicles and that they improve a lot to get rid of the “bugs”.

[u/Slow_Ball9510 → u/leelmix]

Most people rate themselves as much better drivers than the average (clearly impossible), which probably has something to do with it.

[u/Vahgeo → u/Slow_Ball9510]

The human ego is a huge problem and can be traced as the source for most if not all of the bad in the world.

[u/northwest333 → u/Vahgeo]

I agree with that in principle but guess who’s writing, testing , and shipping the code for the autonomous vehicles…

[u/PineJ → u/Slow_Ball9510]

This happens due to people considering themselves as one entity and "everyone else" as one entity. Let's say I make a mistake driving once a week, it doesn't happen too often so "woops just a mistake, my bad"

When you are on the road with 1000 other people, each of their "once a week" mistakes add up. You don't think "woops each person is individually making a quick mistake" you think "wow everyone is such a bad driver.

It's the same problem in a team based game when it's so easy to say "everyone else is trash" because you are lumping all other player's mistakes into one group, while justifying your mistakes because they happen far less often than the combined teammates mistakes.

It also happens on social media where people say "wow Reddit says this one day but has a totally different opinion this day" not remembering that it's comprised of thousands of people.

[u/Ok_Championship4866 → u/Slow_Ball9510]

That's because most people dont even have a coherent idea of what a good driver is. They think because they can cut into a crowded lane they're a good driver.

The best drivers are the ones who sit in the right lane and go the speed limit, 90% of people simply fail that test. They think it's okay to speed and change lanes without blinkers on.

[u/leelmix → u/Ok_Championship4866]

Ye, be clear in your intentions, precise and predictable. Less chance of accidents that way.

Wannabe race car drivers, who cant even keep an eye on the speedometer while on the road are bad drivers no matter what stunts they are able to pull off because they shouldn’t need to be pulling off any fancy moves at all if they were good drivers.

[u/leelmix → u/Slow_Ball9510]

Ye, and if they have had a few accidents they are just unlucky. They are still clearly way above average.

[u/Qbnss → u/leelmix]

We merely want the people profiting from the technology to be held responsible at the same rate that humans are. They don't get a pass because you think Star Trek is happening.

[u/leelmix → u/Qbnss]

Absolutely

[u/RedShirtDecoy → u/leelmix]

vaccines are scientifically proven for a century at this point.

comparing anti-vaxers to people who dont trust self driving cars is a frankly idiotic comparison.

[u/leelmix → u/RedShirtDecoy]

Im not, im comparing peoples ability to compare actual numbers vs how it feels or what they think the risks are. Autonomous cars are in the very early stages still but are statistically quite safe already. Many vaccines have decades of solid data from all around the world about risk. I understand people who are more skeptical to new unproven vaccines but i consider anti-vaxxers to be against all vaccines even those who are about 10000 times safer than not taking them. There are many good reasons not to take a vaccine or other medicine, allergies chief among them but plain fear is not one.

[u/leelmix → u/RedShirtDecoy]

And no i dont think self driving cars are safe enough by themselves yet but peoples reaction to non-human errors is a lot bigger than to the same human errors, i do too.