There are currently ~40,000 traffic fatalities per year. If that could be reduced to ~15,000 does it really matter that much to you that the most humane decision is made in each collision? In other words, what is your metric?
I would say total traffic fatalities would be one very reasonable metric, and if autonomous vehicles could reduce this significantly (e.g. more than 20%, and statistically significant relative to year-to-year variance), then that is a win. Second metric should be average trip time; also a 20% significant reduction in point-to-point travel would be a win. Third, reliability and maintenance cost-- should retain reliability and lifetime cost of ownership should not increase by more than 20%. Given benefits of being able to sleep, or do other things while driving, if autonomous vehicles could also do these three things, it would be an amazing change. All of these metrics would depend of course on having the majority of vehicles on the road be autonomous-- you would have to extrapolate available data to intermediate metrics to see if we are trending towards these goals initially.
There are currently ~40,000 traffic fatalities per year. If that could be reduced to ~15,000 does it really matter that much to you that the most humane decision is made in each collision? In other words, what is your metric?
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It’s all based on emotion. Driverless cars will be held to a standard of perfection. Carnage on the roads is OK as long as it’s traditional.