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Comment by KingOfCoders | Hacker News Reader

89% of horse riders were afraid of riding a train.

In that analogy, though, what we have now isn't a train: it's a half-finished engine that usually works as expected but sometimes spontaneously derails.

Plus, trains (and cars and planes and buses and taxis and limos and horse buggies and ... and ...) are generally under the control of an entity with a sense of self-preservation, and actually cares about getting home tonight. Contrasted with an auto-auto, which will cheerfully drive into a wall when you least expect it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rail_accidents_(before...

89% of horse riders afraid to ride autonomous horses

If an autonomous horse is a wild horse, bump that to 100%.

A locomotive is a lot like an autonomous horse, comparing a rider to a passenger.

I think state of PA tried to ban automobiles by saying they were too dangerous. They said in order to drive a car it should be manned by a driver, a mechanic, one guy to run in front of the car and one guy to walk behind the car and god forbid they see a horse rider they must disassemble that car and hide the parts in bushes until the horse has passed.

It was the UK that passed the Locomotive Act, aka the Red Flag Act in 1865, and Vermont passed a Red Flag Law in 1894. Both were repealed in 1896.

Vermont's law required a "person of mature age" to walk an eighth of a mile ahead of the vehicle with a red flag in the day or a red lantern at night.

The UK's law had additional requirements such as the number of people who had to drive the locomotive.

Neither law required anyone to disassemble the locomotive or automobile and hide the parts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_flag_traffic_laws

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