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Comment by lesuorac | Hacker News Reader

Same as when you're in an uber?

In the event of an emergency, the Uber driver is also a human who would take action (possibly extreme or illegal) to get out of a life-threatening situation. The self-driving car will not.

You have control in that instance. Apples and oranges.

What control over the human Uber/Lyft driver, whom you've never met before, do you have?

Ostensibly, the Uber/Lyft driver is also feeling threatened and will gun the throttle in an attempt to escape the situation, even if an attacker is directly in front.

Sure, but that wasn't the question.

Self preservation.

You control someone else's self preservation? That doesn't make sense to me unless you're suggesting the passenger also threaten the driver. Did you answer the question they actually asked?

Or an airplane.

On an airplane, the pilot has skin in the game. If he screws up, he will pay with his own life.

What happens to the developers/manufacturers of a driverless car that kills a passenger or a pedestrian?

I thought we were talking about the feeling of powerlessness? Still seems like an apples-to-apples comparison in that regard.

> how do you overcome the slight powerless feeling

I don't have any "feeling of powerlessness" when I am on a plane, or a taxi, or a bus or train or a boat, because I believe that whoever is conducting those vehicles have interests aligned with mine: to get safely and uneventfully to the end of the journey.

There is no such alignment on a driverless car, plane or boat. No engineer or executive will get punished in case the car gets double parked, let alone if it runs over a pedestrian crossing the street.

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