Society Will Accept a Death Caused By a Robotaxi, Waymo Co-CEO Says (sfgate.com)
- Reference: 0179900816
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/10/28/2325205/society-will-accept-a-death-caused-by-a-robotaxi-waymo-co-ceo-says
- Source link: https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/society-accept-robotaxi-death-waymo-21123178.php
> The topic of a fatal robotaxi crash came up during Mawakana's interview with Kristen Korosec, TechCrunch's transportation editor, during the first day of the outlet's annual Disrupt conference in San Francisco. Korosec asked Mawakana about Waymo's ambitions and got answer after answer about the company's all-consuming focus on safety. The most interesting part of the interview arrived when Korosec brought on a thought experiment. What if self-driving vehicles like Waymo and others reduce the number of traffic fatalities in the United States, but a self-driving vehicle does eventually cause a fatal crash, Korosec pondered. Or as she put it to the executive: "Will society accept that? Will society accept a death potentially caused by a robot?"
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> "I think that society will," Mawakana answered, slowly, before positioning the question as an industrywide issue. "I think the challenge for us is making sure that society has a high enough bar on safety that companies are held to." She said that companies should be transparent about their records by publishing data about how many crashes they're involved in, and she pointed to the "hub" of safety information on Waymo's website. Self-driving cars will dramatically reduce crashes, Mawakana said, but not by 100%: "We have to be in this open and honest dialogue about the fact that we know it's not perfection."
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> Circling back to the idea of a fatal crash, she said, "We really worry as a company about those days. You know, we don't say 'whether.' We say 'when.' And we plan for them." Korosec followed up, asking if there had been safety issues that prompted Waymo to "pump the breaks" on its expansion plans throughout the years. The co-CEO said the company pulls back and retests "all the time," pointing to challenges with blocking emergency vehicles as an example. "We need to make sure that the performance is backing what we're saying we're doing," she said. [...] "If you are not being transparent, then it is my view that you are not doing what is necessary in order to actually earn the right to make the roads safer," Mawakana said.
[1] https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/society-accept-robotaxi-death-waymo-21123178.php
Perfect is the enemy of good enough (Score:2)
They're right.
Over a century ago, people accepted deaths caused by human drivers. If you reduce fatalities, many people will still appreciate that, even if you don't get it down to zero. Everything else is like that. What doesn't have a nonzero death rate?
Re: (Score:1)
> What doesn't have a nonzero death rate?
must resist temptation to take rhetorical question literally *thinks through long list of things found on earth that have never killed a human*
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Why do you believe Waymo will reduce death rate at all? And what detrimental effects will that have on traffic? We can fully eliminate traffic deaths by eliminating traffic, does Waymo reduce rates like that and if not, why bother?
We know Waymo doesn't give a shit about improving safety, they are interested in getting rich.
Re: Perfect is the enemy of good enough (Score:2)
Capitalizing on convenience is how capitalism works. If you have a better system, why isn't it more popular?
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> Why do you believe Waymo will reduce death rate at all?
Because, unlike most humans, they want to and are trying.
> And what detrimental effects will that have on traffic?
I don't know, but if you or I were trying to solve the problem, I'm sure we would have plenty of opinions about which convenience-vs-safety tradeoffs are the rights ones.
> We can fully eliminate traffic deaths by eliminating traffic
And that convenience-vs-safety tradeoff would have very few advocates, I suspect. Do you think it's a good one?
> We
Re: Perfect is the enemy of good enough (Score:2)
People were tricked into accepting automobile deaths as just the cost of doing business, and the entire business of traffic engineering is dedicated to explaining away those deaths as accidents. Wes Marshall PhD PE published Killed by a Traffic Engineer in 2024 which explains a lot of this. Think about it: if there is a death on an escalator, it results in huge inquiries, lawsuits, and extensive investigation to ensure it never happens again. This does not happen with automobile crashes in most cases, as th
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The perfect vs good argument is the pragmatic one for moral hazards like this. IMHO the best scenario as self-driving vehicles become mainstream technology is probably a culture like air travel: when there is some kind of accident, the priority is to learn from it and determine how to avoid the same problem happening again, and everyone takes the procedures and checks that have been established that way very seriously. That is necessarily going to require the active support of governments and regulators as
Nobody accepted any of that (Score:2)
Car companies forced it on us. Seriously no joke look at the history of car companies. They basically got us all to pay to build the roads needed to use their product while destroying public transportation making us completely dependent on their product.
We all grew up playing with toy cars and surrounded by cars has the most normal thing imaginable but they're one of the most bizarre and aberrant things humanity has ever come up with if you actually can step outside our society and look at them objectiv
Weird quotes (Score:2)
The articles quotes are strange, but he is not wrong.
It is obvious that robot drivers will not be perfect. They will at some point make a decision that will result in human death.
But if they reduce total deaths no one will be particularly concerned. I certainly won't. And if they do not tremendously reduce total deaths they will not be allowed on the road.
The only reason they are being tested is that humans are horrible drivers and kill many people all the time.
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"But if they reduce total deaths no one will be particularly concerned."
Bullshit, I will be. No one accepts that computers occasionally take money out of your bank account, and everyone would be concerned if that happened. Losing a buck is nothing compared to losing a life, so can you explain your casual sociopathy?
"I certainly won't."
Yes, that sociopathy.
"And if they do not tremendously reduce total deaths they will not be allowed on the road."
Bullshit, they are already on the road. How ignorant are you
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It's not the public, but insurance companies that matter. At least in sane societies that do not have the notion of punitive damages,
Once it is clear that robo-taxis, or self-driving cars, are safer than human-driven vehicles, insurance companies will take note and lower premiums for self-driving cars even if the operators are held responsible for whatever mayhem they are causing. In such a scenario, it is likely that your insurance premium will go up by a fair bit, if you insist on having a steering whe
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Well, that, and when people are driving your taxis, they're going to expect things like wages, bathroom breaks, meal breaks, reasonable shifts, tolerable working conditions...
Not Cool (Score:2)
I for one would be very upset if a robot car killed me, YMMV.
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Just make sure you always have a note ready saying "It wasn't an accident. I knew too much, and the premeditation came directly out of the CEO's mouth."
Re: Not Cool (Score:2)
You would not be upset, or anything else, dead. And dying from self-driving car vs a speeding distracted driver really doesn't matter. If the general numbers go down, even if nonzero and have complications, then society will absorb it. Every single advance in civilization follows this path. Electricty, Petroleum, Pasturization, Power tools, Skyscapers, etc. In fact, defly navigating the new dangers of a technological advance are considered a sign of ability by the young generation. Over time, acceptin
Who will be held responsible is the question (Score:3)
Of course technology will never be perfect. The question is who'll be held responsible for death and injuries resulting from product defects, and how they'll pay to compensate for them.
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It'll be no muddier, and perhaps somewhat less muddy, than today. Assigning blame is a messy business in auto accidents, and often you're starting with "he said, she said", a couple of damaged cars, and no witnesses.
At least there will be boatloads of telemetry to tell part of the story.
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"At least there will be boatloads of telemetry to tell part of the story."
To tell the pro-self driving part. We're already seeing the manipulation, even if an occasional DOGE effort is needed to destroy evidence.
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That's not the nature of telemetry. There's no log message that says, "Ball in roadway, brake applied". That's why analysis of the raw data should probably become a specialty service from independent providers for legal stuff. You can create obvious gaps to hide things, but creating whole fake streams of data to imply different real world behaviour of the vehicle, and having it remain consistent with the physical crash evidence is one hell of an ask.
I think you're much more likely to see planned fakes than
Re: Who will be held responsible is the question (Score:2)
In the age of real-time audio and video deepfakes, telemetry deep fake doesn't seem like such a huge stretch, especially if there are no witnesses, human or machine, to contradict the data. Of course, we are still talking about conspiracy theories here, but technologically, it seems feasible.
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We have an expectation that technology IS perfect when lives are at stake. That's why medical technology is expensive, and it's why mission critical systems are redundant. But with lethal driving technology, it's OK to use neural networks when we don't even know how they work. People have lost their minds with this crazy apologetic.
"The question is who'll be held responsible for death and injuries resulting from product defects, and how they'll pay to compensate for them."
Not the companies responsible, t
and when and robo truck wipes out an school bus? (Score:2)
and when and robo truck wipes out an school bus.
Who will do hardtime?
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IMHO the only sensible answer to is separate responsibility in the sense that a tragedy happened and someone has to try to help the survivors as best they can from responsibility in the sense that someone behaved inappropriately and that resulted in an avoidable tragedy happening in the first place.
It is inevitable that technology like this will result in harm to human beings sooner or later. Maybe one day we'll evolve a system that really is close to 100% safe, but I don't expect to see that in my lifetime
He's not wrong. (Score:3)
His point is nuanced, carefully considered, realistic, honest, and well put. Damn shame. People want none of that.
What people want for real is blame and retribution. They'll put up any number of lives to the sacrificial alter of transportation just so long as they can nail somebody to the cross when something goes wrong. And automatic cars don't provide that, so it'll always feel unsatisfying and questionable, no matter how good it gets from a safety perspective.
Re: He's not wrong. (Score:2)
Advances still need to prove themselves safer. Deep investigation of each incident has vastly improved air & sea travel, for example. So while blame is the catalyst, the money is actually moving to pay for the deep statistics to be gathered. Lawyers want details, and the advance needs to die by debt if it's the wrong direction.
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"His point is nuanced, carefully considered, realistic, honest, and well put. Damn shame. People want none of that."
His point is self-serving and dishonest. And yeah, I want none of that.
And self-driving is already causing deaths. Those deaths are because of greed and gross incompetence, coupled with dishonesty about how much the technology improves safety. But rubes like you are easily lied to.
"They'll put up any number of lives to the sacrificial alter of transportation just so long as they can nail so
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"By they, do you mean self-serving CEOs? Talk about a sacrificial alter!"
NO. I mean people in general. We have collectively decided that the thousands of lives it costs every year for the current system to function is an acceptable price. We tolerate it because of the somewhat illusory promise of accountability.
"Sure will kill some people but that's a good thing!"
You said that. Nobody else did.
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> What people want for real is blame and retribution. They'll put up any number of lives to the sacrificial alter of transportation just so long as they can nail somebody to the cross when something goes wrong. And automatic cars don't provide that, so it'll always feel unsatisfying and questionable, no matter how good it gets from a safety perspective.
This will go for a while. But not long. Because even with the pathetic-level of car insurance you need in the US, insurances will not have it and premiums for robotic cars will be orders of magnitude lower and then the hate and revenge fueled primitives will simply seem themselves ignored.
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He's wrong. People aren't going to accept robotaxis that make mistakes that a normal human wouldn't.
Will they use EULA's to keep stuff out of court? (Score:2)
Will they use EULA's to keep stuff out of court?
the owner of the car that has little control over (Score:2)
the owner of the car that has little control over the code will be the one out of pocket fighting it out in court?
As if they'll give us any choice (Score:2)
billionaires have had it with us peon making decisions. You can have your moral panics and your Thanksgiving rants. Everything else is theirs.
Yes, no one wil care (Score:2)
Until a loved one dies.
Obviously (Score:2)
Society accepts about 45k deaths from avoidable car crashes per year in the US. Robotic cars will have far lower numbers per distance travelled than human drivers. It just takes a bit of getting used to the idea, but the naysayers really have noting. Or rather a lot less than nothing.
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Maybe this will be an area where the US simply gets left behind because of the pro-car and litigious culture that seems to dominate discussions there.
Reading online discussions about driving -- admittedly a hazardous pastime if you want any facts to inform a debate -- you routinely see people from the US casually defending practices that are literally illegal and socially shunned in much of the world because they're so obviously dangerous. Combine that with the insanely oversized vehicles that a lot of driv
...And you'll like it (Score:5, Insightful)
What he's really saying is they have a crisis PR firm on retainer, wargamed several different scenarios, and have detailed plans for when it happens.
Because he's right, it will.
And because it would be incompetence for them not to foresee and plan for it.
The event that'll be really interesting is when some remote driver snaps and goes on a remote rampage. That'll freak out people in multiple different ways all at once.
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We will *actually like* the steep *reduction* in fatalities that occur as robotaxis become more common. Some studies already show robotaxis being safer than human drivers. Even if those are arguable now, as robotaxis get better, they will very much outperform humans on safety. There is nothing to dislike about that.
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However for the cases where there are accidents where the robotaxi is considered at fault then someone has to take the penalty.
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Of course, the liability issues will have to be worked out through court cases and appropriate laws. Automated vehicles besides robotaxis aren't new, there are automated bus and train systems everywhere. Liability is a thing for them too.