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Comment by magicalist | Hacker News Reader

> I think it's pretty clear that the bar for safety must be much higher (10x) than human-level for these to be accepted by consumers.

Will it? Think about the recent Toyota brake pedals that didn't work or the GM faulty ignitions. Both of these caused a number of deaths, and the Toyota one was especially scary because it didn't even need accident-like events to cause a problem, your brakes would just stop working.

It'll hit the news (like Tesla battery fires vastly disproportionately reported on over other, much more common auto fires), but it's not clear at all that it will cause some massive panic or backlash.

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About the Toyota's unintended acceleration (UA) incidents. From Wikipedia: "On February 8, 2011, the NHTSA, in collaboration with NASA, released its findings into the investigation on the Toyota drive-by-wire throttle system. After a 10-month search, NASA and NHTSA scientists found no electronic defect in Toyota vehicles.[27] Driver error or pedal misapplication was found responsible for most of the incidents.[28] The report ended stating, "Our conclusion is Toyota's problems were mechanical, not electrical." This included sticking accelerator pedals, and pedals caught under floor mats.[29]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009%E2%80%9311_Toyota_vehicle...

If this was true, then the self-driving car may have prevented the accidents. If it was really a software problem, then fix the software. It may be much more easy to fix the software rather than to fix human behaviors.

The NASA audit wasn't nearly as comprehensive as you may have expected: http://embeddedgurus.com/barr-code/2013/10/an-update-on-toyo...

NASA didn't find a software defect, this is not the same as NASA finding that there is no software defect.

Toyota absolutely built and sold dangerous vehicles with software and hardware defects. This was not only a matter of gas pedals sticking to floor mats.

Importantly in this context Toyota did not put customer safety first and decided to suppress the truth of the problem rather than own the solution. This is cause for concern as we move toward self-driving systems which have to be perceived to work in order for the product to remain economically viable.

I am already aware of the Barr Group team and I know their claim.

>NASA didn't find a software defect, this is not the same as NASA finding that there is no software defect.

Read my post carefully. I haven't claimed such a thing and I offered two possibilities.

>Toyota absolutely built and sold dangerous vehicles with software and hardware defects.

You have to be careful with this. The Barr Group team haven't proven the relationship between the accident, and the software defect which they claim to found of.

The important thing is that software, hardware, system, and the whole design for car safety can improve significantly better than the current situation, which is much more better than just relying on human drivings.

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