autonomous driving is a great example here. It will never be "correct" because there will always be accidents. So the author is right about that. But it is very possible that those cars may be 10x safer than the average human driver some day.
What if you are an above average driver? Maybe for most people it would be an improvement in security, but for you it'd be more dangerous to be in an autonomous car.
If you're an above average driver, a below average driver will ram your car unexpectedly. And there will be nothing you can do, because your reaction times are human.
Also, you're likely not as above average as you think yourself to be.
> If you're an above average driver, a below average driver will ram your car unexpectedly. And there will be nothing you can do, because your reaction times are human.
That doesn't require level 5 self driving cars, only brake assistants.
> Also, you're likely not as above average as you think yourself to be.
That doesn't mean that there aren't above average drivers. I'm not assuming I'm among them, but for them, driving in a self driving car would make matters worse.
It requires more than brake assistants. People are, in the limit, idiots (at least when driving). If you drive long enough, you'll see lots of really hair rising things - and the benefit for the above average driver is that the below-average drivers are off the road.
The benefit to self-driving cars is not only that they are driving (hopefully) better than humans - it's also that they minimize the risk of completely erratic behavior. People don't have accidents when they're doing average. They have accidents when they're at their worst.
Last example I witnessed: At a traffic light, a car going ~30mph suddenly and without warning pulls into oncoming traffic because for whatever reason they thought "must left turn" - despite left turns being clearly disallowed.
That wasn't just a "below average driver", because that doesn't happen every day. That was somebody who was very clearly way off their game. And that's the main source of accidents, doing something clearly wrong that you likely wouldn't even think about on a good day. Or being distracted.
Taking these things out of the equation is way more important than "driving better than the best human on their best day".
And this will benefit the above-average drivers as well. (Also, the average will likely move up, so "above average human" might suddenly not mean a lot)
The idiots you encounter are not all the same people all the time. And sometimes, you're someone else's idiot. You might not even notice when that happens.
All it takes is a moment of confusion, or distraction, or frustration. Or a chemical impairment. Or having a stroke. Or drowsiness.
Braking assistants are good, a self-drive function that has the goal of safely removing the vehicle from traffic--for operators that can suddenly no longer function at speed--would be better. Hitting a panic button and waking up on the shoulder with the hazard lights on is preferable to getting intimate with a pole or guardrail while the cruise control is set to 70 mph.
Our informational machine assistants would also be better with access to vehicle state and sensor data. Your navigation assistant could then tell you, if you are approaching an intersection with your left turn signal on, that left turns are not allowed, before you get there and possibly make a bad snap decision. The nav app on your phone doesn't know that you are signaling left. The GPS signal isn't quite reliable enough to pinpoint which lane you're in. It only knows the positions of vehicles whose operators are currently using the same app.
Obviating snap decisions by drivers should be a goal, because less thinking time means more mistakes. Mobile nav apps have gotten better at this, saying which lane you should be in, and whether destinations are on the left or the right, but they could still do better for in-vehicle improvisation, when the destination changes while enroute, or temporary detours are needed.
Driving ability is almost the perfect case study for Dunning–Kruger effect. Most drivers think they are better than they really are.
So you maybe right in that really good drivers may be safer when in control of the car, but it won't be the case for people who think they are good. And if you leave individual drivers a choice, you can expect to see a lot more of the latter. And, to follow up on groby_b, they are going to ram your car and there will be nothing you can do.
In the end, unless we have a system to reliably select the highest skilled drivers, and making sure they are at the peak of their ability, autonomous cars will be safer for everyone.
