There's an old saying around gun owners: "There's no such thing as a firearms accident. Only negligence."
I think the same thing applies to autonomous things.
I think the same thing applies to autonomous things.
Everyone I've known in law enforcement, especially CHP officers, does this by default (though they tend to prefer “collision”) when referring to an event where a car hit something. As one of them explained, “collision” or “crash” is a readily discernable physical fact; “accident” is a conclusion about the mental state of the participants.
The idea that an "accident" isn't the drivers false is an absurd premise. Drivers are obligated to be diligent. "Crash" is a neutral term that doesn't assign liability to anyone.
Autonomous vehicles are expected to be able to safely navigate a large variety of streets and highways, and possibly trails and countryside in the future, without killing anybody else around or killing the people inside, nor destroying the fixtures and buildings that make up your typical city street. The only problem is cars are inherently deadly, go look up the number of people that have died in automobile "accidents" since the automobile was invented, total it up for just one country. They need to be treated with and afforded the same respect as any other instrument intended to project deadly force, because they do, as do whatever algorithms are controlling the instrument.
So yeah.
Sure, you might shoot yourself because you're just careless with your gun. Or you might be also thinking of an argument you had with your spouse, or you might be tired when you're handling your everyday carry on your way to work, or you might get startled, or a million and one other things that might prevent you from singly focusing your attention the gun you're handling.
Machines exist to serve us, not the other way around. If a product doesn't take human habits and flaws into account, it's a bad product, because over a large enough sample size someone will make a mistake.
It's not, because the basic rules of gun handling are designed in such a way that failing to obey one of them will not result in injury. They are:
* Never point a gun at anything you don't wish to destroy * Keep your finger off the trigger until you're ready to fire * Always assume the gun is loaded * Know your target and what's beyond it.
> Machines exist to serve us, not the other way around. If a product doesn't take human habits and flaws into account, it's a bad product, because over a large enough sample size someone will make a mistake.
Modern firearms are absolutely designed to this criteria - it takes a willful act to discharge them. If someone "mistakenly" fires a gun and hits someone, it requires multiple failures and clearly rises to the point of negligence.
You know what system we've come up with to improve car safety that has only one rule to remember? Always wear your seatbelt.
You know what we've come up with that requires zero effort from the driver? Laminated glass. Crumple zones. Airbags. Automatic braking.
This isn't about whether people use a product negligently — put it in enough hands and it will happen. The point is to design products such that the consequence of negligence is not injury or death.