And there's still no proof that self-driving cars are safer than humans when confronted with novel situations, i.e., the situations most likely to result in injuries and fatalities. If anything, the evidence thus far is that self-driving cars are more dangerous than ones driving by humans.

So this argument of humans don't need it, is sort of, well yes. We're trying to do better than humans.

I'm not the one making a claim that self-driving cars are safer. The burden of proof is on whoever does.

In 2019 in California, there were 1.06 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled. Any self-driving automobile technology that doesn't have at least 1 billion vehicle miles of data is in no position to claim that it is safer than human drivers and less likely to kill people.

Self driving cars don't make the same kinds of mistakes as human drivers do, but they make different kinds of mistakes. Some of these can be fatal.

Human driving has basically capped out at its potential to improve. It may even be starting to get worse...

Automated driving, has barely begun and even if it is less safe today, it will clearly be much safer than human driving soon. And will only continue to get safer and safer as the technology improves.

Do you we need to be so micro-focused as to have an exact day/model/release where autopilot is safer than human drivers?

I for one have been hit by a drunk driver. My wife was in an accident where the other driver was ACTIVELY playing candy crush. We can all see that automated driving will make the roads a safer, better place even if that takes 20 years.

Considering other utility unlocked by autonomous cars (e.g. less stress, life-hours freed up, helping the disabled) they could even be marginally less safe than human drivers and still provide a net benefit.

Yes, self-driving cars will save lives if we assume that the self-driving technology is superior to humans in every way. That's almost a tautology though.

Self-driving cars don't get bored, but they don't seem to see white tractor trailers either. Technology has different shortcomings than people do. Whether tech shortcomings result in fewer lives lost than human shortcomings remains to be seen.

It's astounding to me that HN stories about self-driving cars sit right next to stories about iPhones and anti-virus software, and tone of the comments are diametrically opposed. If you read the comments on self-driving car stories, you'd think that technology can do everything better than people. If you read the comments on stories about iPhones and anti-virus, you'd think that everything has terrible bugs, vulnerabilities, and shortcomings.

Therefore, companies that want to sell self-driving cars are pitching them as safer. The fact of the matter, though, is that it remains to be seen whether self-driving cars are in fact safer.

While a self-driving car will not suffer from some of the shortcomings of a human, like getting drunk or sleepy, it will suffer from other shortcomings that humans don't, like bugs and getting hacked.

Ultimately the one thing we can trust about fellow humans in cars is that they want to survive their trip too. This is true with very few exceptions. The scary thing about self-driving cars is that they don't care if they survive.

You start with a common, but controversial hypothetical, that in the future self-driving cars may be safer than humans, and then conclude with that opposing self-driving cars today, which of course are not the hypothetical safer than humans car, is advocating for actual humans to be injured or killed.

That’s some real undergrad level bullshit.

They do NOT need to be perfect. They need to be BETTER than humans. That means less accidents, and by extension, less deaths and injuries as a result of automobile errors.

There's no proof yet that self driving cars are safer than human drivers. And more importantly there's a big difference between being safer on average than a human driver, and being safer than the average human driver.