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410 points jjulius | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.202s | source
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AlchemistCamp ◴[] No.41889077[source]
The interesting question is how good self-driving has to be before people tolerate it.

It's clear that having half the casualty rate per distance traveled of the median human driver isn't acceptable. How about a quarter? Or a tenth? Accidents caused by human drivers are one of the largest causes of injury and death, but they're not newsworthy the way an accident involving automated driving is. It's all too easy to see a potential future where many people die needlessly because technology that could save lives is regulated into a greatly reduced role.

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1. jillesvangurp ◴[] No.41895039[source]
The key here is insurers. Because they pick up the bill when things go wrong. As soon as self driving becomes clearly better than humans, they'll be insisting we stop risking their money by driving ourselves whenever that is feasible. And they'll do that with price incentives. They'll happily insure you if you want to drive yourself. But you'll pay a premium. And a discount if you are happy to let the car do the driving.

Eventually, manual driving should come with a lot more scrutiny. Because once it becomes a choice rather than an economic necessity, other people on the road will want to be sure that you are not needlessly endangering them. So, stricter requirements for getting a drivers license with more training and fitness/health requirements. This too will be driven by insurers. They'll want to make sure you are fit to drive.

And of course when manual driving people get into trouble, taking away their driving license is always a possibility. The main argument against doing that right now is that a lot of people depend economically on being able to drive. But if that argument goes away, there's no reason to not be a lot stricter for e.g. driving under influence, or routinely breaking laws for speeding and other traffic violations. Think higher fines and driving license suspensions.