<story><title>Uber will not re-apply for self-driving car permit in California</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/27/uber-will-not-reapply-for-self-driving-car-permit-in-california/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Consultant32452</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m going to say something that I suspect many will quietly agree with but may not be willing to say out loud.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m confident that self-driving cars will eventually be safer than human driven ones.  I&amp;#x27;m not confident that this can be realistically achieved without killing some unfortunate bystanders in the process of getting to that point.  That doesn&amp;#x27;t mean we should accept these cars running amok killing people all over the place.  It doesn&amp;#x27;t mean I think this specific case involving Uber is &amp;quot;reasonable&amp;quot; either.  I just think, in a general sense, a realist has to be able to try to find some balance between short term lives lost and long term lives saved.</text></item><item><author>CydeWeys</author><text>Self-driving cars have to be &lt;i&gt;at least&lt;/i&gt; as safe as human-driven ones for them to ever become accepted and thus widespread.  Realistically, they need to be many times safer than human-driven cars for acceptance.  It doesn&amp;#x27;t matter who&amp;#x27;s technically at fault; they cannot cause more deaths than human drivers.  Everyone makes mistakes and they don&amp;#x27;t deserve to be killed by an algorithm for it.</text></item><item><author>Rapzid</author><text>If Uber is not found legally at fault which seems likely given the circumstances and based on opinions from people with legal expertise in these cases, I highly doubt they will let themselves got derailed completely by this. Too much money is at stake.&lt;p&gt;Further, we don&amp;#x27;t stop using trains, or buses when a pedestrian makes an error and gets killed because they &amp;quot;could have not been hit, maybe&amp;quot;. For those who have paid attention to those other accidents(even though the local transit isn&amp;#x27;t as sexy to hate on as Uber, and they didn&amp;#x27;t involve AI), it can actually be quite shocking how little of a blip it causes in the transportation system.</text></item><item><author>keyle</author><text>Well it&amp;#x27;s not like they made a booboo, and some bugs caused some inconvenience to a few or many people. Someone died.</text></item><item><author>jballanc</author><text>I enjoy hating on Uber as much as the next person, but this honestly just sounds like shrewd focusing of effort in light of recent events on Uber&amp;#x27;s part. Their permit was expiring, and there was going to be a load of paperwork along with probably lengthy boardroom meetings with authorities explaining what went wrong and why it won&amp;#x27;t happen again, if Uber wanted to renew.&lt;p&gt;I see no reason (in this article, at least) to suspect that Uber won&amp;#x27;t re-apply at a later date when they have a better handle on what went wrong in Tempe.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gambiting</author><text>The thing is that any other industry that works like this(we have to accept some people will be hurt&amp;#x2F;die to achieve progress) - like the medical testing industry - is extremely heavily regulated and most crucially, all participants in testing are consenting to being tested. Letting autonomous cars on public roads is testing it on people who have not consented being tested on. If I get hit by an autonomous car I really don&amp;#x27;t care that thanks to this Uber&amp;#x2F;Google&amp;#x2F;Waymo&amp;#x2F;Whoever gets to improve their algorithm. I don&amp;#x27;t care how they want to do it - but I don&amp;#x27;t want them testing this stuff on public roads.</text></comment>
<story><title>Uber will not re-apply for self-driving car permit in California</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/27/uber-will-not-reapply-for-self-driving-car-permit-in-california/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Consultant32452</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m going to say something that I suspect many will quietly agree with but may not be willing to say out loud.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m confident that self-driving cars will eventually be safer than human driven ones.  I&amp;#x27;m not confident that this can be realistically achieved without killing some unfortunate bystanders in the process of getting to that point.  That doesn&amp;#x27;t mean we should accept these cars running amok killing people all over the place.  It doesn&amp;#x27;t mean I think this specific case involving Uber is &amp;quot;reasonable&amp;quot; either.  I just think, in a general sense, a realist has to be able to try to find some balance between short term lives lost and long term lives saved.</text></item><item><author>CydeWeys</author><text>Self-driving cars have to be &lt;i&gt;at least&lt;/i&gt; as safe as human-driven ones for them to ever become accepted and thus widespread.  Realistically, they need to be many times safer than human-driven cars for acceptance.  It doesn&amp;#x27;t matter who&amp;#x27;s technically at fault; they cannot cause more deaths than human drivers.  Everyone makes mistakes and they don&amp;#x27;t deserve to be killed by an algorithm for it.</text></item><item><author>Rapzid</author><text>If Uber is not found legally at fault which seems likely given the circumstances and based on opinions from people with legal expertise in these cases, I highly doubt they will let themselves got derailed completely by this. Too much money is at stake.&lt;p&gt;Further, we don&amp;#x27;t stop using trains, or buses when a pedestrian makes an error and gets killed because they &amp;quot;could have not been hit, maybe&amp;quot;. For those who have paid attention to those other accidents(even though the local transit isn&amp;#x27;t as sexy to hate on as Uber, and they didn&amp;#x27;t involve AI), it can actually be quite shocking how little of a blip it causes in the transportation system.</text></item><item><author>keyle</author><text>Well it&amp;#x27;s not like they made a booboo, and some bugs caused some inconvenience to a few or many people. Someone died.</text></item><item><author>jballanc</author><text>I enjoy hating on Uber as much as the next person, but this honestly just sounds like shrewd focusing of effort in light of recent events on Uber&amp;#x27;s part. Their permit was expiring, and there was going to be a load of paperwork along with probably lengthy boardroom meetings with authorities explaining what went wrong and why it won&amp;#x27;t happen again, if Uber wanted to renew.&lt;p&gt;I see no reason (in this article, at least) to suspect that Uber won&amp;#x27;t re-apply at a later date when they have a better handle on what went wrong in Tempe.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kayoone</author><text>The problem is that the general public will not accept deaths caused by machines even if they are statistically safer. As an example, the German government gave in to public pressure after Fukushima and decided to shut down all nuclear power plants even though total death rate of coal power is A LOT higher and this event did not even happen in their own continent.&lt;p&gt;If stuff like this continues to happen, i can see some government banning self driving tech for the foreseeable future.</text></comment>