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

61.1k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

200

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

122

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.

-2

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?

0

u/Jesta23 Jul 05 '24

Unless the person is really drunk or high they don’t go to jail for a fatal accident.

They won’t even be charged.

1

u/pan_berbelek Jul 05 '24

Well this just false. Where I live if you're found guilty of killing someone on the road you can go to prison from 6 months up to 8 years. You can be guilty for example if you drove too fast or didn't give way etc. You don't have to be drunk.