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Comment by the8472 | Hacker News Reader

> you should have strong evidence that driverless cars are substantially safer than cars with drivers.

No. Considering the other benefits of self-driving cars, such as increased mobility for the elderly, you can at most require that they are as safe as cars with drivers, not necessarily safer.

If the benefits were great enough (reduced pollution indirectly saving lives? saved life-years due to more efficient traffic?) one could even accept that they could be a little less safe as far as direct fatalities are concerned.

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I understand your point but I doubt it would work well in reality when it comes to public opinion/backlash.

Humans are disproportionately swayed by proximate causes, so deaths directly attributed to self driving cars are going to be more heavily weighted in the court of public opinion.

  increased mobility for the elderly

decreased, in fact. A self-driving vehicle can't go anywhere a cab or rideshare can't, while the latters have drivers who can assist loading/unloading elderly and their mobility aids.

Somebody with poor eyesight and slow reaction speed is an unsafe driver but doesn't need any particular help loading/unloading from a car. A driver who can help unload is a fine thing, but having somebody drive just so they can help unload seems like a ridiculous waste of resources. A car is ready whenever you need it; a car-and-driver might not be. And yes, you could schedule a car-and-driver to be available at a particular time...but you could similarly schedule somebody to be available to load/unload at the destination.

> If the benefits were great enough (reduced pollution indirectly saving lives? saved life-years due to more efficient traffic?) one could even accept that they could be a little less safe as far as direct fatalities are concerned.

I disagree. I'm finding it hard to come up with an example that would make me think it's ok to have more people hit and killed by cars. I'm more than ready for self-driving cars to be a reality, but not if more people will die. "Saved life-years" is not good enough.

What does it mean to avoid a fatality other than saving that person's remaining life-years?

> I'm finding it hard to come up with an example that would make me think it's ok to have more people hit and killed by cars.

Entirely speculative: Heart failure is the leading cause of death in the US. If 100% self-driving traffic could let EMTs arrive faster at the scene that could save more lives than a slight increase from traffic accidents.

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