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Humans To Blame For Most Self-Driving Car Crashes In California, Study Finds (axios.com)
cartechboy writes: Turns out computers are better drivers than humans after all. Axios compiled a study that found the vast majority of crashes in California involving self-driving cars were not caused by the autonomous vehicles themselves. Of the 54 incidents involving 55 companies holding self-driving permits in California, only one crash could be blamed on a self-driving car in autonomous mode. Six crashes were when the self-driving cars were in conventional driving modes, while the majority of the accidents were to be blamed on other drivers or pedestrians. Maybe self-driving cars aren't such a bad thing after all, it's humans that are the problem.
Now that's an interesting theory.
So if I cross into the oncoming traffic lane and a Tesla in autopilot can't avoid hitting me. It's the software's fault? If I try to change two lanes to the right, cut off the car in the middle lane and the autonomous vehicle in the right lane hits me as I come out of nowhere, it's the software's fault?
Now I can understand skepticism at the claim that over 98% of autonomous vehicle accidents are the human's fault, but the claim that humans in principle automatically bear no responsibility for mishaps involving software seems even more extreme.
The thing about huimans is that they *are* amazingly good at things, except when they're not. Somebody can be a model drive nine days in a row and on the tenth day do something stupid, because that's how people are.
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But the onerous conclusion that we have to modify our behavior for the needs of some god-forsaken coder's neural network is something to be actively rebelled against.
The alternative is to even more onerously modify our behavior for the needs of other human drivers. I'd rather share the road with the computers.