US probes Tesla's Full Self-Driving software after fatal crash

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.

> traveled of the median human driver isn't acceptable.

It's completely acceptable. In fact the numbers are lower than they have been since we've started driving.

> Accidents caused by human drivers

Are there any other types of drivers?

> are one of the largest causes of injury and death

More than half the fatalities on the road are actually caused by the use of drugs and alcohol. The statistics are very clear on this. Impaired people cannot drive well. Non impaired people drive orders of magnitude better.

> technology that could save lives

There is absolutely zero evidence this is true. Everyone is basing this off of a total misunderstanding of the source of fatalities and a willful misapprehension of the technology.

> Non impaired people drive orders of magnitude better.

That raises the question - how many impaired driver-miles are being baked into the collision statistics for "median human" driver-miles? Shouldn't we demand non-impaired driving as the standard for automation, rather than "averaged with drunk / phone-fiddling /senile" driving? We don't give people N-mile allowances for drunk driving based on the size of the drunk driver population, after all.

No, that makes no sense, because we can't ensure that human drivers aren't impaired. We test and compare against the reality, not the ideal we'd prefer.