Hacker News Reader

Comment by heptathorp | Hacker News Reader

I cannot wait to be killed by some idiot putting 100% faith in his Tesla to do his job of driving for him.

If you're worried about getting killed by other drivers, you should simply avoid driving a car. Hundreds of thousands of people die that way every year, and 0% of those cases have involved Teslas so far.

Unfortunately, opting out of driving is no guarantee of not being killed by an automobile. Roughly 15% of fatalities resulting from US auto accidents are pedestrians[1].

1: http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/812124.pdf

Would you prefer an 18 year old snapchatting at 107 MPH in a Mercedes with a pregnant passenger? Resulting in permanent brain damage for her crash victim?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/04/2...

The point is no matter how many accidents autopilot gets into, its safer than human drivers. And it will only improve.

Autopilot could kill ~30K people a year, and that's still less than the number of people killed by people driving in the United States alone.

I'm not sure how this story is relevant, it's well known that human drivers are more dangerous than self driving car. This particular case, while tragic, is not unique.

But this isn't a self driving car - it's automated cruise control. It's not going to let you snapchat and drive safely. You still need to be aware, and rhetoric that presents it as a solution to distracted driving is dangerous, leading to situations exactly like this one.

Sure it's still safer; that's not the point.

> Sure it's still safer; that's not the point.

That's entirely the point.

When it is safe enough you can operate the vehicle without also being a responsible driver, then I'd agree with you. But it's not, as demonstrated by this thread.

> Snapchat has a filter that allows users to record their speed of travel, and she wanted to see how fast she could go. So McGee accelerated, then accelerated some more

Really? Snapchat has a feature that is basically designed to get people to use their phone while driving/moving?

Probably less likely than being killed by an idiot putting 100% faith in their driving ability.

I'm sure it will eventually be safer than human drivers once the technology is there but for a time there are going to be deaths that could've been prevented had the driver not overestimated the autopilot's abilities.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com