WIRED: Uber's Self-Driving Car Just Killed Somebody. Now What?

[Jason]

This incident may set back driverless cars years (my guess is probably a decade) because it will awaken fears by people toward technology and legislators will react by putting more restrictions on testing and approval of them. That may not be a bad thing, though. Read the full article at WIRED magazine. And let us know what you think. Are driverless cars ready for the roads? Do they need more testing? Would you get in one as a passenger or driver?

[ssfc72]

I would be more worried about any driverless big rig, transport trucks being on the highways/roads. :-)

Imagine the destruction one of those would do, if they went haywire!!  And I think driverless transport trucks, are probably going to be hitting the highways before driverless cars, because there is mega bucks to save by not having to pay a person to drive the truck or being able to find drivers.

[fox]

A very tragic event, but put in perspective, there are lots of pedestrian fatalities caused by cars driven by individuals. I do hope that this unfortunate incident enables the software engineers to reprogram the cars to prevent this kind of accident in the future. But none of this addresses my biggest worry; that a hacker will be able to reprogram these driverless cars to wreck all kinds of havoc.

[Jason]

A very tragic event, but put in perspective, there are lots of pedestrian fatalities caused by cars driven by individuals.

The article addresses that and compares the number of fatalities using total miles driven vs. number of pedestrians killed and noticed that driverless cars are much higher, however it's a much tinier dataset since this is the first fatality.

I do hope that this unfortunate incident enables the software engineers to reprogram the cars to prevent this kind of accident in the future. But none of this addresses my biggest worry; that a hacker will be able to reprogram these driverless cars to wreck all kinds of havoc.

That's interesting. I would hope that the cars wouldn't allow outside access to their OS other than through a mechanic (i.e. no wireless, at least no incoming connections) but I don't know if that's the case.

[Jason]

I would be more worried about any driverless big rig, transport trucks being on the highways/roads. :-)

Imagine the destruction one of those would do, if they went haywire!!  And I think driverless transport trucks, are probably going to be hitting the highways before driverless cars, because there is mega bucks to save by not having to pay a person to drive the truck or being able to find drivers.

Good point. I'd be concerned about that, too. I don't know if they'd hit the highways first, at least not in most jurisdictions, but it seems like Arizona has a very loose approach to regulations for driverless vehicles there. And money talks.