On 07/14/2016 11:36 AM, Jim Birch wrote:
Brendan wrote:
It's not clear to me that overall lower injuries/fatalities overrides the
manner in which they're suffered/ who they're suffered by.
This sounds a little spooky to me. Are you saying you don't mind being
injured or killed provided there is a good redeeming narrative available? :)
Flying is relatively very safe but plenty of people find it scary. That
doesn't seem to me a valid reason for banning airlines or something.
Seatbelts were considered to have a risk of trapping occupants in an
imperiled vehicle. They have produced an immense reduction in RTA death,
injury and economic loss. Maybe someone was actually trapped in burning
car by their seatbelt sometime. This might be a cause for a seat belt
redesign but it certainly is not a reason to abandon seatbelts. Self
driving cars potentially offer a similar jump in safety.
Can you give an example?
Yes. It's effectively the trolley problem. Do you throw a fat person in the way
of a runaway trolley in order to save 5 other people?
Most people say they wouldn't, even though the number of people killed is
substantially lower (1 v 5).
Presumably, driverless cars are going to disproportionately remove drunks,
suicides and young men from the accident statistics. If there is only a
marginal improvement in _overall_ statistics, then that implies that they're
being balanced by losses from other groups, so you are effectively choosing who
will be killed on the roads.
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