A big difference is that you can't put a robot in jail. Even though the person driving the car is usually not harmed by hitting somebody on foot, it's still a life-or-death level situation, they might be looking at multiple years in prison, a large portion of their life gone.

The same even stakes are not there with robots killing humans. For one side it's a life-or-death situation, while for the other side it's profit margins and numbers. Companies are usually very happy to increase yearly profit for something as minor as a decimal percentage rise in human deaths spread across society, that's not even controversial.

Heck, not only can you not put a robot in jail, you can't even stop it from driving the next day as if nothing happened because it's duplicate running the exact same software and hardware is all over society.

I still think robot cars is a good thing though, because they will have a lot less accidents than us humans who love to drink and drive, or speed for no good reason. Still, it will raise some big important questions.

A friend of mine works in a bank. He said, "Did you know, the optimal amount of fraud is actually not zero? Because first of all, you can't get zero, and second, if you try, you screw up the whole bank."

The optimal amount of fraud is close to zero, but it's not zero. (He didn't say if they knew the actual number, but they probably do.)

I think the same logic applies to a lot of other things as well. You want to get as close to 0 as you can, without breaking everything else.

> but that Waymo's at least are already far safer than human drivers

Is that really true? the only data I can find is published by Waymo or others who are obviously not independent of Waymo. Is there any independent data or investigators in this? Until then I need to be cautious. The big question is are they really safer, or are they just safer if you include a few outliers (alcohol) that among humans are significantly worse.

I'm not doubting the claim, and I've always though it is a matter of time before autonomous cars are statistically safer.

From what I can find, those 7500 are 7500 pedestrians killed by vehicle a year, so we might as well round it up de 50k vehicular death a year and be done with it.

Seems more honest.

People give car fatalities in general a pass because it could be have been them driving.

If Waymo or a concurrent replace drivers, they don't get that free pass anymore, because the jury will not think it could have been them.

That would actually be a better situation to today's "free pass for everyone as long as no drug involved" that rules nowaday.

I think the people expect more from things controlled by a central authority.

They have very low expectations of transportation operated by individuals. Much in the same way we have low expectations of other people in general.

>trains and jets

there's more than a hundred people on those vehicles though.

also I'm sure a lot of the safety is driven in part by customer demand - people would quickly stop buying airplane tickets if airplanes were crashing regularly.

if robotaxis were also crashing regularly people would stop using them at all.

The question wasn't about "corporate cost-benefit analysis", it was simply (and vaguely) will society accepts deaths caused by robots, and the answer simply admitted the reality that no technology is perfect.

What should the answer have been?

Trains and airplanes are fundamentally different from cars. A car accident is unlikely to kill you. A plane crash will. A car accident is unlikely to kill your entire family. A plane crash will.

The standard is higher for these modes of transportation because the consequences of individual incidents are higher. People innately recognize this; we only have one life; one family.

Auto fatalities are insane, and the US focus on build highways at all costs while out of the other side of their mouth parroting talking points about safety is one of the uniquely stupid things we do as a society. The safest car is the one parked in your garage. The safest driver is the one who isn't behind the wheel.

That being said, I think Waymo is spot-on here. The US at least will accept deaths due to these machines - look at how we accept car deaths now - but the problem Waymo faces is that when these machines do kill someone it's not like automobile insurance today but instead it's a lawsuit every single time until/unless we construct a new regulatory framework to divest corporations from having real responsibility for the deaths caused by these machines. We shouldn't fight the technology, IMO, because I think over the long term it will be safer to be in an autonomous car. We should instead ensure that if such deaths occur, businesses don't get to step away from their responsibility and have to pay rather large sums.

All that being said, all of the above is a complete waste of time and civilizational level resources. Most people should be walking, biking, and hopping on an automated rail line to get around. It's cheaper, healthier, and better in every way. And then when you want to take the car for that road trip or Sunday drive you still can.

That's an interesting comparison...I think you may be right in the long-term.

It is kind of nuts that less than half of society accepts that, and yet the problem remains.

It is an emergent property of our political system.

American does not agree on what to do about school shootings, but to claim we accept it is a sever distortion trying to shut down the voice of others who do find guns useful (and would never shoot in a school).

I think you'll find societies are incredibly inconsistent in what they will and will not accept. For instance Europe is currently accepting constant death toll due to drownings of African refugees [1]. Hell, Europe accepted, without much complaint, that North African countries drove refugees into the desert and abandoned them to die, including children [2].

[1] https://ecre.org/mediterranean-rise-in-crossings-on-two-rout...

[2] https://www.dw.com/en/tunisia-thousands-of-migrants-being-du...

Reality check: sounds like "who pays for this, and how much?"

> Make a ballpark, even lowball, estimate for that risk, and simply require the people inside the vehicle to compensate others for the risk being imposed on them.

I see your point but we're all imposing risks on each other all the time. I'm sitting on the 6th floor of a 10 floor building, presumably I'm at some non-zero risk of it collapsing, which would be lower if this building was shorter, but I don't feel entitled to compensation from the owner for the marginal risk because they wanted more floors.

I think we've actually done alot better in reducing the externalities of direct vehicle deaths (insurance, safety standards, vehicle inspections, etc.) than we have in other areas (energy costs, environmental impact, city/street design, parking, etc.)

The "simple" (as distinct from "easy") option is that anything fast gets a dedicated route that's physically separated - maybe by elevation or such - from everything around it.

This seems roughly equivalent to liability insurance.

> externality problems which we could solve or optimize if we really wanted to

We have. We've optimized for economic growth of car companies and full car penetration into every crevasse of the built environment. It fucking sucks but if your goal is to have as much driving as possible the current situation is probably close to optimal. It's a problem of values not execution.

On the other hand we have very lenient punishments for damage, injury and deaths caused by drivers, and are often reluctant to actually apply them. As long as no DUI is involved we are willing to accept a lot of negligence from human drivers

Trolley problems don't really come up in real driving. If there are pedestrians in the way the driver, human or not will nearly always hit the brakes and that is unlikely to kill the occupants.

If society accepts unacceptable things, surely that means they're acceptable?

~20 fatalities per day. Even if you did all 3/4 ton+ trucks I doubt it's 1/day since they're less than 1/20th of the vehicles on the road except maybe in Texas or something.