image source: RedState
Should Uber and the regulators really be surprised that this happened? My intuition tells me they expect this kind of "collateral damage". I would bet that they even have some sort of threshold or tolerance as to the number of fatalities and a fully hatched plan on how to respond.
I'm not trying to defend Uber but merely citing some historical facts. How many people do you think died as a direct results of driving a car? In the millions I would since if we start the counter in the year 1900 when the first car was allowed in the streets of New York.
When the first cars started to ply the streets, they were looked down as road nuisance. In fact, some states in the US laid down regulations to stop the adoption of cars. One of these regulations was to limit the speed to no more than 5 miles per hour. If you know how the cars at that time looked like, you would understand why many people consider them road hazards. Imagine for example a car with a steering wheel that looks like the stick shift. It's very awkward to maneuver using the stick and you can imagine what happens to a car the driver lost controls of the wheels!. The breaks looks like the breaks of the biclycles that we have right now. The response time for the breaks is in measured in minutes instead of seconds. You can imagine how scary it is to see a car sliding down a steep street full of pedestrians on the side walk!
More accidents will happen as we move to adopt this technology and this is certain. The mainstream adoption of this technology will depend on how smart the response of these companies as well as the number of regulators in their pockets. Excuse the language. I'm not suggesting the Uber, Google and the likes should fill the pockets of Congress and the Senate. I'm merely speculating that the more millennials there are in the Senate and Congress, the smother the adoption of the technology would be.
This scenario of having more millennials enter the political scene is also true for crypto or any new technology. We shouldn't expect old dogs to change their views about an emerging technology just because the younger generation are supporting it. Take the case of Warren Buffet's right hand. He wishes bitcoin and blockchain would crash and burn yesterday. I respect the guys investment decisions and his track record backs up the words that comes out of his mouth but as for new technologies, expect the worst.
The initial police investigation points to the pedestrian being at fault, not the autonomous vehicle. It is good, however, that we are holding autonomous vehicles to a higher standard than humans, because I do believe it is the wave of the future.
How many people are already killed each year by cars?
The reason to even make autonomous vehicles is for safety.
Many people (millions?) will be saved in the long run.
We have to think long-term.