Elon Musk: Negative Media Coverage of Autonomous Vehicles Could be 'Killing people' (theverge.com) 270
On the sidelines of the Tesla announcements, CEO Elon Musk accused media of "killing people" by dissuading consumers from using an autonomous vehicle. Musk said that media is aggressively reporting on autopilot crashes, but does "virtually none" reporting of hundreds of thousands of actual accidents that involve non-self driving cars. He said, via a report on The Verge:Once you view autonomous cars sort of like an elevator in a building, does Otis take responsibility for all elevators around the world? No, they don't. What really matters here at the end of the day is "what is the absolute safety." One of the things I should mention that frankly has been quite disturbing to me is the degree of media coverage of Autopilot crashes, which are basically almost none relative to the paucity of media coverage of the 1.2 million people that die every year in manual crashes. [It is] something that I think does not reflect well upon the media. It really doesn't. Because, and really you need to think carefully about this, because if, in writing some article that's negative, you effectively dissuade people from using an autonomous vehicle, you're killing people.
Some truth... (Score:5, Interesting)
Some hyperbole... (Score:2)
See $subject.
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There does seem to be some logic in that argument
Perhaps so but I was under the impression they were going to die, anyway...
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>> "you effectively dissuade people from using an autonomous vehicle "
The thing is, the Tesla is not an autonomous vehicle.
It needs a driver, reacting fast as soon as the automation gives up, which means the driver needs to go from doing nothing to full awareness of a complicated situation in half a second.
That's dangerous.
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True, but if you set aside Tesla for a moment, as we've debated here before, the negative press is probably going to be a big problem in the future, to the point that even a ten times safer driver assist/autonomous vehicle may be fighting against a generally negative perception.
Everyone knows the mass media is just waiting for an accident to happen so they can write their zOMG! IT'S A DEATHTRAP! story.
With great power comes great responsibility. My old grand mother was afraid to go out in the evenings becau
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"The company said Autopilot-enabled cars had covered 130 million miles without a fatality, compared to a national average of one fatality every 94 million miles."
And, remember, we are talking about a glorified cruise control that simply has to stay within the lines.
We definitely don't have the data Teslas is claiming that we have.
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We definitely don't have the data Teslas is claiming that we have.
Not from Tesla, we don't. You're right about that.
However Google has been much more open with their data. Google's automated car was just past 1.3million miles before its first automated accident: a minor fender bender.
I say "automated accident" because it's actually been in a over dozen other crashes, all minor. Most of them involved getting rear-ended at a red light. That statistic alone should be enough to reinforce Elon's point, but we'll need several million more miles before any definitive conclus
Live by the media hype die by the media hype. (Score:5, Insightful)
So Elon's panties are all up in a bunch over supposedly overblown negative media coverage?
How about all the overblown positive media coverage he's been lapping up for years while running an unprofitable business that caters to wealthy customers getting taxpayer funded bonuses to buy his cars?
Isn't it fair that all of that media coverage should be withdrawn too?
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I don't entirely disagree with you, but I also think his "panties are in a wad" because while the media may have been skewed both for and against him, in this case it's at the expense of peoples lives, not just his ledger numbers.
His premise is pure bull at this time...
There is no demonstrable or concrete evidence that supports the assertion that implementing self-driving cars in the state of the technology today will save more lives than it would end up costing. In my opinion, we still need much more testing and development.
In all reality, Musk is mostly pissed because he views his company as having a lead in this area and it's being eroded by roadblocks enacted through regulations (good or bad), allowing competitors to catch up.
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"Unfortunately "lives saved" is not a measurable statistic"
Um, yes it is! You can measure the number of deaths per distance traveled. If the number of deaths is less than average over the same distance when travelling on autopilot, the you can say that more lives have been saved.
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It's not so much "the media", but that readers solicitously enjoy hearing about pompous rich farts being waffled by their wayward robot toys.
It reminds me of McDonald's failed attempts at selling health-food: nobody wants it; buyers want Big Macs and fries.
(And no, I don't mean this kind of Big Mac [hdnux.com])
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while running an unprofitable business
You mean that unprofitable business which was the only car company to repay the American government? One which did so with interest, and before the payments were due?
Yeah they can have a bit more free media coverage as far as I'm concerned.
Short summary (Score:5, Funny)
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Needlepoint. Old biddy was doing needlepoint on her steering wheel driving down I-50 at rush hour.
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How about the dumbass driver that nearly mowed me down while I was cycling in the bike lane? Oh, wait, that was like 3 different drivers this year alone... Last one went through the bike lane to get to the turn lane while I was in it, missing my front wheel by about 2 feet. Yes, I am very visible, wiht multiple lights, light clothes, reflectors, flashers, etc. Let me cry a river for the occasional driver inconvenienced by a bicycle.
Autonomous cars have been getting incredible, and often unbelievable hyp
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I still fear a large increase in the error rate for manual driving by drivers who become rusty and have to take over under the worst driving situations (possibly after being summoned from a nap).
yeah, I think its going to be interesting as autonomous vehicles escalate to the human whenever it runs into somehting it can't handle it's basically setting human up for even more errors.
As in... here' you tune out and let your driving skills atrophy while I do your driving. Uh oh... I know its been 3 years since you've driven the car... but its snowing something fierce and i cant' see... I'm out you drive home today!
And then a guy who hasn't driven in years has to drive in the worst conditions possible. m
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No autonomous vehicles claim to handle dirt roads without markings, snowy conditions that blind lidar, or construction zones all on their own. I still fear a large increase in the error rate for manual driving by drivers who become rusty and have to take over under the worst driving situations (possibly after being summoned from a nap). On the plus side, their pickiness might finally get some money spent to properly maintain the roads.
These fucking cars are going to be just like everything else that comes out of the tech industry these days: It works best in the only place on earth that matters, San Fransisco. Are there any dirt roads in San Fransisco? Probably not, so it doesn't matter if the car can handle them. You know what else it doesn't do in California? Snow.
Everything the tech industry does these days is useless shit tailored to rich techies in southern California. It's so blatantly obvious I don't know why they bother to
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Awesome point! Though I still have to worry about the Trimet (bus system) drivers, one of whom was amongst the list of SOB's that have tried to kill me in my bike lane this year.
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Enjoy your obstructing traffic tickets.
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I would say the same thing if I were envious of the bicyclist passing all that stopped traffic [youtube.com]! Like that scene from Office Space [youtube.com].
But really, what's so dangerous about bicycling past a bunch of stopped cars? As long as the person isn't riding in the door zone [youtube.com]..
waah waah i oversold my product (Score:4, Interesting)
Autonomous driving will be great when it gets here, but he is trying to oversell the current tech as revolutionary autonomous driving tech.
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Re: waah waah i oversold my product (Score:2)
It's Musky's own fault for calling it Autopilot. If he'd called it Driverassist or similar, idiots would be less likely to assume they can watch TV or send texts while driving.
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If he'd called it Driverassist or similar, idiots would be less likely to assume they can watch TV or send texts while driving.
Pls stop trolling. (You can't call it "driverassist" because it is part of a class of features known as "driver assists".) Nature always makes a better idiot, it doesn't matter what they call it, there will always be an idiot out there to get it wrong.
We will use the DMCA to remove any video showing (Score:3)
We will use the DMCA to remove any video showing any of our auto driver cars doing unsafe stuff or even just mock up's just like Samsung!
https://news.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
obligatory car analogy (Score:2)
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Incidents vs. population? (Score:2)
Yes, there are fewer incidents with self driving car. There are, though, also vastly fewer self driving cars. Does anyone have a "Accidents per 100.000 vehicles" statistics out there? Else, it's about as useful as saying that Model Ts have the best contemporary accident records.
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http://newatlas.com/google-rev... [newatlas.com]
for Property damage only Google appears to be higher than average *but* only ~54% of property damage only accidents get reported while Google reports 100% of accidents, so... Likely a push.
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They match the statistic for all human driving. But automated cars only drive in the safest circumstances. Where human drivers also have about 1/4 the overall accident rate.
Best data is: Current 'automated' cars are about 4x as dangerous as the average driver.
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To be fair, being only 4x more dangerous at this early stage of experimental testing sounds pretty impressive.
The Horror (Score:3, Funny)
So, by extension, Musk making this argument has caused more media coverage, which results in killing more people, and these Slashdot postings kill more people, around and around...
It's a bloodbath.
He's totally right (Score:5, Interesting)
The fact of the matter is, every day, millions of commuters drive to and from work while distracted. If I'm going to be driving anywhere near somebody who's surfing the net on his phone while driving, I'd sure as HELL prefer that his car have some kind of autopilot capabilities paying attention to the road when he's not. At the very least, cars with limited autonomous driving have the potential to eliminate most rear-end collisions and accidents caused by drifting out of a lane.
Maybe South Florida is unique, but I've noticed an EXPONENTIAL increase in both gridlock, phone use while driving, and rear-end collisions over the past few years. The moment traffic slows down to 5mph or less, you can literally see every driver around you reaching for his or her phone (or already using it). Even a PRIMITIVE system that's only capable of "stay in the current lane, follow the car in front of you if the lane becomes ambiguous, and maintain speed while braking if necessary to avoid a rear-end collision" on limited-access roads would be a net improvement over what we have today.
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Nope thats not unique to Florida. Its here in AZ too. Part of my commute home from work involves a 20 minute stretch of freeway, and Its gotten so bad that its unusual not to pass at least one accident where some moron has rear-ended someone.
A few days ago I saw some dumb bitch in a Lexus (illegally) driving alone in the HOV lane during rush hour at maybe 75-80 mph past traffic doing 40 or so, texting with both thumbs (so both her hands off the wheel), not even hardly glancing up from her phone.
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Even a PRIMITIVE system that's only capable of "stay in the current lane, follow the car in front of you if the lane becomes ambiguous, and maintain speed while braking if necessary to avoid a rear-end collision" on limited-access roads would be a net improvement over what we have today.
No, no it wouldn't, because you can already buy a car that has that. Pretty much every manufacturer sells at least one model with radar-adaptive cruise control, and today all of these systems will run right down to 0 mph and apply the brake for you.
Think I've heard this one before (Score:4, Insightful)
The proponents boldly claim how the new technology is going to be completely safe and how it'll be available for everyone everywhere at virtually no cost.
Then mistakes are made and there is a minor accident. Nothing too bad in the big scheme of things, but a serious accident nonetheless.
Then the accident is followed by attempts to cover it up by lying to the public about minor details about the accident, followed by more bold claims about how the technology is so absurdly safe that the opponents can only be evil. The media has field day after field day exposing the lies. Soon, there is a public outcry, which causes the government to step in with draconian regulation.
And then it's all over. The regulations make it impossible to build and operate the technology at a reasonable cost.
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If nuclear policy had favored the sane approach [energyfromthorium.com], opposition would have had much less to work with. Scaling up a submarine reactor was a terrible idea, and the accident scenarios that have since played out were forewarned. When the inventor of the technology is firmly opposed, and advancing another option, a sensible person might give it some thought. Instead they fired Alvin Weinberg, for daring to voice safety concerns. Fortunately, even if nuclear technology is 50 years behind, it is still the most ca
You've heard this one before? (Score:3)
You've heard this one before?
Please give an historical example that follows your timeline.
He may be right. (Score:2)
The summary does not do justice to Musks argument.
If autonomous cars do indeed have fewer fatalities per km then retarding their dissemination through fake polemics is indeed causing the deaths of more people than pushing for their general adoption would.
The rub is in determining whether or not AV's are indeed safer than human drivers. Elon has his idea of that but in the absence of a serious non-biased study that doesn't exist yet I'm not convinced that he is right (yet).
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Tiny chance? 1.3 million people die in car accidents a year, along with nearly 50 million injuries a year. Carnage in Aleppo and Mosul is nothing by comparison.
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It's true but for any individual driver, the risk of being involved in a fatal car accident is still fairly low. 1 death per 200 million km approximately in the USA and Europe. Most people drive for far less than 1% of that distance in their entire lifetime. The risk of death by road accident is way down the list of causes of death [ipa-world.org] in the western world.
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He has a right to having his own opinion and also has access to Tesla's data so EM probably does have a good idea of whether AVs are indeed already better than human drivers. The problem is in proving it.
mean, median and cautious intelligence (Score:2)
Remember that both the median risk exposure is a lot different than the high risk drivers who blow up the averages vs someone who has intelligently eliminated risk in their
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And it has to be able to do that by another way than the current Google approach: to completely stop the car if the situation becomes difficult. That's even annoying in a country like the US where most drivers drive slow and predictable and the traffic situation favors cars, but try that in the inner city of Paris, Rome or Manilla. You won't get very far then.
That's just how the media works (Score:2)
He has a valid point, to some extent. On the other hand, that's just how the media works - it's also more likely to report deaths by plane crashes, or terrorism, or mass shootings, because that's what people want to read about. Also, those other things have a long history of causing only a small relative number of deaths, while autonomous vehicles are new, and deserve some higher level of scrutiny in the early years.
For as smart as he is (Score:2)
Musk once in a while misses a trick. The media reports on NEWS. Regular people dying in regular auto crashes is normal - it happens every day, so unless it's a particularly bloody or strange crash it's not new.
Autonomous cars are a brand new thing, and when a brand new thing kills people, it's news.
He may or may not be right (I actually think it'll have little to no real effect), but it's hardly surprising.
And it's perfectly OK ! (Score:2)
While negative media coverage of autonomous vehicles could be 'killing people' , one of these potentially killed people could be the next Hitler. Who would be so irresponsible to take the risk ?
Prove it (Score:2)
The onus is on him to show that his new technology is actually safer than human drivers. So far the only arguments I've seen from him are hand-wavy approximations.
This isn't a web app, you're dealing with people's lives, you can afford to publish some proper research to demonstrate how the AI compares to humans.
Take the initial fatal crash that caused all the uproar. It turned out the car couldn't see the white truck because of the sunlight and time of day. Is that a scenario they examined during testing? W
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Teslas are doing just fine killing people (Score:3)
yes they would (Score:2)
> does Otis take responsibility for all elevators around the world? No, they don't.
If one failed in such a way that its design caused deaths yes they absolutely would.
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Only if it was made by Otis. There are other elevator manufacturers [wikipedia.org] in the world and they would be responsible for their own equipment.
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Well Duh.
You can bet Musk isn't going to take any responsibility for non-Tesla car accidents too.
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Well Musk was the one stupid enough to ask if Otis was going to take responsibility for all elevators around the world in the first place.
This man believes there is no spoon... (Score:2)
...so why should he believe in us? I don't take advice from him. You guys are killing people by not doing what I want. Right. Safety versus freedom, blah blah blah slashdot modmedown call me a troll, i'm practically falling asleep from boredom after reading these comments.
No hypocrisy here (Score:2)
Negative Media Coverage of Autonomous Vehicles Could be 'Killing people'
Whereas sending people to Mars, that won't kill anyone. If anything it will result in a baby surplus.
Let him put his money where his mouth is (Score:2)
When Elon Musk is willing to let me pick any place in the United States, accessible to road, get into a car he built with no manual controls, and bet his life he will arrive there safely, in the rain, at night, then I'll accept that there are self driving cars in existence.
Until then, they are, at best, an experiment in the earliest stages, but mostly, some rich guy's toys.
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Rain? Why not during a blizzard?
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Let's keep the test fair. Most people shouldn't drive in a blizzard, either.
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Most people shouldn't drive, to be fair.
Impractical (Score:2)
Same for small plane crashes (Score:2)
The media are all over small plane crashes much the same way, giving a highly distorted view of just how safe aviation is. Aviation organizations like AOPA [aopa.org] have started to get on the media's case about this.
If they reported car crashes with the same enthusiasm the "news" would be nothing but car crashes.
...laura
Yes and No (Score:2)
1) Musk is basically correct
2) Yet Musk should not be saying this himself. He needs to act very humble about the capability of the technology until it really is proven out and accepted, because people will smell a businessman wanting to make a profit at there expense.
You are wrong. Elon is right. (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope Elon continues to take the press to task for this.
The news media is deplorable for their reporting. Virtually nothing you see in the media has any chance of killing you.
The news media reports on home invasions and shootings, but the chance of you being shot in your home by a stranger is incredibly low.
The news media reports on terrorist attacks, but the probability that you will die in a terrorist attack is less than 1 in a million.
The news media does not report on the 1.2 million people who die in car accidents, nor the tens of millions who die from cancer, nor the tens of millions who die of heart disease.
IF YOU SEE IT ON THE NEWS IT WILL NOT HAPPEN TO YOU. Unfortunately most people do not understand this.
Re:You are wrong. Elon is right. (Score:5, Insightful)
When I started reading this post, I thought you were being sarcastic or ironic, and I was looking forward to the punchline. Then I realized you were actually serious. The thing is, the news media report on what is unusual and what is likely to attract consumer attention, not necessarily in that order. You know: man bites dog, rather than dog bites man; it doesn't matter that dog bites man happens a lot more frequently than man bites dog. You're free to consider this deplorable, but that's the way it's always been and it's very unlikely to change.
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Aside from this, anyone who watches local TV news sees frequent stories along the lines of "Entire family wiped out in car crash." This type of reporting is extremely common.
Re:You are wrong. Elon is right. (Score:5, Insightful)
This shows the the level of media attention does not correlate to the appropriate levels of concern. Just like the terrorist attacks. Tobacco companies kill far more Americans than terrorists. Do not ramble on on the argument that smokers choose to risk their health and life, I'm talking about second hand smoke [cancer.org].
Tesla's autopilot will save many lives on the motor ways. It doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be statistically better than you or I. Even though this technology is in its infancy, it is already a better than you are, statistically.
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"This shows the the level of media attention does not correlate to the appropriate levels of concern."
No, you can't go from what you consider appropriate to what is appropriate.
Re:You are wrong. Elon is right. (Score:4, Interesting)
Aside from this, anyone who watches local TV news sees frequent stories along the lines of "Entire family wiped out in car crash."
That isn't quite the same. People drive cars everyday. So when they see a story about a car crash, they can weigh it against their personal experience. People are also familiar with men and dogs, so they can dismiss a story about a man biting a dog as an anomaly. But people don't have personal experience with terrorism or self-driving cars, so when the media reports on rare events involving them, they should provide some context.
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The problem isn't that the media wants to report the out of the ordinary, the problem is that they are conveniently leaving out facts to make it appear worse than it really is.
It reminds me of the anti-cigarette commercials there are plenty of good reasons to not smoke but they are running commercials that say there is methane in cigarettes just like poop when in actuality you would have to smoke for multiple lifetimes just to get enough methane out of a cigarette to equal the amount of methane an average p
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The problem isn't that the media wants to report the out of the ordinary, the problem is that they are conveniently leaving out facts to make it appear worse than it really is.
It reminds me of the anti-cigarette commercials there are plenty of good reasons to not smoke but they are running commercials that say there is methane in cigarettes just like poop when in actuality you would have to smoke for multiple lifetimes just to get enough methane out of a cigarette to equal the amount of methane an average person pays to have pumped into their house each month to their furnace, water heater, and stove cook with.
Yeah, that sort of things falls under "what is likely to attract consumer attention".
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The thing is, the news media report on what is unusual and what is likely to attract consumer attention, not necessarily in that order
I think the reasoning here is that while a "watch a dog make an amazingly complicated trick" news attracts news consumers as successfully as "watch an imperfect self-driving car cause an accident", only one of them is potentially harmful by means of feeding normal people's irrationality.
What matters is what people understand. (Score:2)
U.S. Auto Crashes [iii.org]: About 35,200 in 2015.
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IF YOU SEE IT ON THE NEWS IT WILL NOT HAPPEN TO YOU. Unfortunately most people do not understand this.
It's more accurate to say 'seeing something on the news does not make it any more or less likely to happen to you. Unless you are watching tsunami coverage in a zone that's expecting that Tsunami, or you're watching reporting on a giant fire that's heading for your community.
The tone of your post suggested that all I have to do to protect myself from a forest fire is to watch it on the news. Then it won't happen to me.
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I disagree with your "Unless" sentence, unless you add the clause "instead of running away".
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Re: You are wrong. Elon is right. (Score:2)
Re:Indeed (Score:5, Insightful)
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You think Clinton bashing will stop when the election is over?!
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We get it, people. You think you're topical and clever. You have feelings and ideas and stuff about current events. We just don't want to hear them.
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or G) someone else was doing one of the above...
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That's a bullshit argument.
When a schoolbus hits your kid, you don't just sue the driver, you sue the driver, the drivers union, the school, and the school district... 'cause this is 'murica, the must litigious place in our entire solar system. Do you think for a second that if someone gets hurt while hailing an autonomous Tesla, that they're not going to sue Tesla, regardless of whether or not the hailing service is operated by Tesla? So as long as Tesla is forced to take some risk, they're going to want
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Reasonable People Distrust Computers (Score:2)
Any normal person who uses computers on a day to day bases doesn't have to have a Newspaper tell them that they should be suspicious of any software.
Software is only as good as the software authors. Fly By Wire software has killed several pilots in the past, despite millions and millions of dollars in development. The resources Musk has devoted to this task and the testing done pales in comparison.
It will be a long time before I take my hands off the wheel.
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When there are several million Tesla's on the road, and you control for the fact that people who can afford them might have particular driving habits, among other factors, you might have a point.
Re: Go to hell Elon (Score:2)
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Which is much higher than the human driving on divided highways stat. This has been beat to death. You are wrong.
Re: Go to hell Elon (Score:2)
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