Human risk tolerance varies drastically depending on control/participation. What is the acceptable casualty rate of elevators?
This accident might have been a fluke, it might have been caused by bad engineering, it might have been caused by many things. We can only compare once we have a sizeable sample of incidents, or a long enough time of non-incidents that we're confident the system works well.
And every software update could change something about it.
On one hand, you are (reasonably) calling out comments for questionable comparisons, but on the other hand...
> What is the acceptable casualty rate of elevators?
...you've made one of your own.
I haven't yet formed an opinion on the underlying question (of what kind of risk aversion is appropriate in the face of automation), but I do notice that it evokes questionable comparisons from all sides.
This is a point I'e been making since the beginning myself. If you want self-driving cars to be accepted, they need to be at least 10x better than the best human drivers. Comments such as "self-driving cars only need to be 50% better than humans on average" are absolute nonsense. Humans will never go for that.
Source by googling a bit (you can find many more): http://www.lifeinsurancequotes.org/additional-resources/dead... (1 in 10,440,000). That said I wouldn't trust an elevator in China or what you would consider underdeveloped countries (incorrectly called 3rd world) (I have heard various stories of cutting corners and lack of inspection).
Self-driving cars don't need to be 10x better, but they are going to be. Humans introduce a delay of 1sec in best cases which is in the same order of magnitude to a car going 60 to 0. Again as mentioned above by others, self-driving cars don't experience fatigue, attention fatigue, emotions, focal vision degradation due to light conditions etc.
Uber tried to cut corners from what is apparent [to me and quite a few others I guess]. I am really trying hard to imagine a scenario where the LiDAR would have missed the pedestrian. From my knowledge there are no stealth-material-dressed pedestrians out there, no matter how cool that idea would be for a movie. Try to check youtube about videos of the Uber car's behaviour in San Francisco and you would see issues a year ago. Driving conditions in Phoenix are much better (personal experience and I have witnessed self-driving cars in both cities). Uber needs to drastically improve their quality assurance and scenarios. (I am not trying to reach any conclusions and pass judgment without having all the evidence at hand. Even though my comments are extremely critical.)
I think it is a good idea we Waymo, Uber, etc propose a standard for adoption with different levels and an independent committee argues and improves on it and we reach a common list of milestones. I think otherwise state governments are making decisions on a whim. Of course that path is a public relation nightmare as they will have to accept existing issues. Nobody wants to write down there is a 0.001% a pedestrian will die in this scenario, even if with a human driver behind the wheel the chance would be higher; for instance 1 or 10% or even 50%.
Similar thing with ladders. No one would ever get in an elevator if it had the same risk profile as a ladder. So why do we use ladders? Because there is a high degree of control. Humans are more comfortable with risk so long as there is a control/participation element.
If every car could match the best that humans can do 24x7 that should prevent almost all casualties.
I imagine the best possible driver to be a world-class rally driver who:
1. never drinks
2. never speeds
3. never drives whilst tired
4. drives without emotion/adrenaline (test pilots talk about the importance of having no adrenaline as the best way to perform)
5. Always keeps a 3-4s distance from the car in front
But I believe that when self-driving cars can match humans which is actually the hard part, then they can become 10x better because similar to airline pilots they can be trained on extreme events and so are able to respond much faster in situations that even the best unprepared human could do.
Autonomous vehicles don't need to beat average human statistics. They need to beat statistics based on the best human drivers.
(not that it applies in this case. Uber's cars compare disfavourably to human drivers)
But can you explain how, if it is statistically true, can have a different real world outcome?
I note elevators used to be controlled by human operators - you don't get much of that these days https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevator#Manual_controls