It should be adversarial. An independent body should administer test suites provided by the manufacturers. Everybody has to pass 99% of the union of all test scenarios before being allowed on the road. The tests are run monthly.
While I appreciate the spirit you're being overly glib, and we should all be wary of overly simplistic answers since reality can have surprising emergent effects. Like, your proposal as written would give behind manufacturers who cut corners and were bad an effective veto over companies doing well. If say Tesla finds they have to pretty much start from scratch, that they're 5 years behind Waymo now because they took a shoddy haphazard approach, well they might as well create a bunch of impossible tests that Waymo can't pass. It doesn't matter that they can't pass them, because they couldn't pass the ones Waymo proposes either, so this way they could throw a spanner in the works and pull back on the leaders. You could alter your suggestion to be that manufacturers can only propose tests that they themselves can pass with ready-to-ship vehicles, so everyone has to meet each other's standards. But what if there really are tests that everyone should pass but that no one can yet? Or what if there is explicit or tacit collusion in the other direction, where everyone low balls the tests because ultimately it's more profitable to get stuff shipping?
Basically I don't see any reason to not just have the government continue to be involved here and come up with independent road safety standards as advised by their own experts, with public comment and rationale. Ultimately it's the public interest at stake and the rules are about use of public infrastructure. Why not just have an aggressive federal standard course and set of tests that everyone must meet?
I also think in terms of incentives that FSD car manufacturers should be fully liable for any accidents caused by the car while FSD is active, simple as that.
See the millions of examples of trolley problems, for example.
How to crash an airplane – Nickolas Means
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=099cHWSbAL8
Reflecting on the video, they don't need to save everyone, but it certainly should be the first time when not everyone dies.
Long after self-driving systems are superior to human drivers on average, the headlines will still scream about humans being killed by self-driving tech. The sensationalism will still sell and people will still be very outraged about it.
The expectation will be no mistakes. Anything short of that will always draw a hyper emotional negative response, which will lure in political/regulatory responses.
For starters, that's not the correct metric. Self driving systems have to at least surpass the median driver, not the average (mean). Auto-related fatality stats are heavily skewed by a small subset of drivers who engage in very risky habits.
> Auto-related fatality stats are heavily skewed by a small subset of drivers who engage in very risky habits.
Right and it would be great if those people used self driving cars instead.
Because you have to convince people like me to buy a self-driving car, and as long as that car is more likely to get me killed than I am, my family will remain in a car that I drive. I do not drive drunk, I avoid driving in inclement weather when not required, or at night, or when I'm really tired. I don't race, I don't road rage, I am a very defensive driver. I have not had an at-fault accident ever (in 30 years and counting since I got my license) and the only accidents I've ever been in at all were minor fender-benders.
So convince me why I should endanger myself so that you can have an unsafe computer driven auto on the road?
> Right and it would be great if those people used self driving cars instead.
So make a self-driving car for them. You will need to subsidize it, since these types of drivers are more likely than not unable to afford a fancy new toy. When the technology can finally cross the median point, then we can talk again about regular, good drivers hanging up their keys.
Will they?
I mean for example Tobacco companies lied and the truth that we know today is that smoking is very very detrimental to their health. It's also detrimental non-smokers in society via second hand smoke, and secondary effects like cigarette butt litter. It doesn't even provide any solid utility like transportation does, it just feels good.
Not only do people still smoke today, people _start_ smoking today given all the information we have.
So when I see behavior like that, I'm not confident that people won't want FSD just because it's 'dangerous'.
FSD will be incredibly convenient, which means humans will always be motivated to come up a reason, valid or otherwise, that justifies their own use of the tech while allowing themselves to condemn others for mishaps incurred doing the exact same thing.
"They didn't maintain it correctly." "They didn't listen to the warnings." "They bought the wrong brand." "They weren't current on software updates."
Someone posted upthread that current fatalities on something stupid like 1.5 per 100000 miles.
Humans are currently ahead in the safety stats game.