frontrangeleaf
Well-known member
Oils4AsphaultOnly said:LeftieBiker said:The metric "It is better than a drunk or inattentive human" is insufficient. The very minimum standard should be "It's better and safer than the median human driver."
I'm not advocating that the system is good and ready for actual self driving. I'm pointing out how quickly we need autonomous vehicles to be fully developed. Don't let the fear of failure inhibit the development of viable solutions. Much like how covid vaccines were fast-tracked because millions of lives were on the line. The side-effects were much more severe than other vaccines developed in the past, but the risks were accepted to save more lives down the line.
To Leftie's point, I would still define "viable solution" as "better and safer than the median human driver". Drunk or inattentive is not the right standard. There is still a huge range around median and below where we would see improvement. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, but don't let the merely good be the enemy of the great. We are aiming for great here.
As to side-effects of the Covid vaccines, they were quite minor, no worse than other vaccines in the past, at least for those approved in the States. There is also the issue of Covid representing a vastly larger threat over time than car accidents, assuming that the virus will continue to mutate into more aggressive forms, and faster than otherwise, given how broadly it has spread. Might not be your best example. 36k dead in car accidents in 2019 in the US.