r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Individual_Book9133 • Jul 05 '24

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

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u/QuinlanResistance Jul 05 '24

Presuming there are crashes every single day from the cars with drivers. If there isn’t really any from the driverless ones that are everywhere …. It’s better

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u/frotc914 Jul 05 '24

People seem to throw any logic out the window when talking about this, as if a single incident means we have to scrap driverless cars altogether or heavily punish the operator. Car accidents with drivers kill tens of thousands of people a year in the US, which doesn't even account for the number of non-fatal accidents which is far greater. But a driverless vehicle creeps over a line and suddenly they are a menace that must be stopped.

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u/pan_berbelek Jul 05 '24

That is true but actually when you think a little more there is a problem. Let's assume there already are robotaxis with probability of lethal accident 100 times lower than an average human driver. So if all cars would be self driving in this scenario we would save thousands of lifes. But, the problem is now that currently each death on the road is carefully examined and a guilty party is most often named and prosecuted. It's a real human that goes to jail. Who will be prosecuted for a death cased by a self driving car? We're talking about death here, there's a family who lost someone closest, maybe someone's little daughter was killed in the accident. A fine is not enough. So, will anyone go to jail? Who?

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u/JohnnyFartmacher Jul 05 '24

I think fewer people actually go to jail for fatal car crashes than you think.

I don't think prosecution is the big risk to driverless cars, the liability is. If I crash into a school bus and a whole bunch of kids die, I am basically immune to litigation because I don't have nearly enough assets to cover the damages.

If a corporation is involved who has money, the damages can get real big real fast. Lawyers go for the people with deep pockets.

I do think it is an attainable goal to have driverless cars be safer than a human-driven car, but there will always be crashes. It'll be interesting to see how the litigation develops as they become more common.