You're making a classic is-ought fallacy here. Drunk, high, sleep deprived or "crazy wild aggressive reckless" human drivers ought not to exist, but they do, and thus it's absolutely fair to compared autonomous drivers against them.
but eventually when self driving cars are sufficiently advanced, they should be able to drive drunk people home without needing them to provide input (and probably best to forbid them from doing so all together as they’re impaired)
Most people think they're a better driver than average [1], and I bet if you asked 100 people with a history of drunk driving, 90 would say it was a one-time thing, deny it, or argue that it wasn't really that dangerous because they were just going around the block.
The autonomous car doesn't get drunk. It doesn't get tired. It doesn't get road rage. It isn't in a hurry, and it doesn't need to text its girlfriend while going 80 mph. Whatever its flaws will be, they will be consistent.
But that's not the paradigm unfolding here. The reckless drivers will shun self driving because they want to show off and have fun. The drunk driver part could be reduced after sufficient rollout, but we'll have to see how that plays out - the people whonaleays use it would use it when drinking too, but you'll still have people going "I'm fine to drive" and not using it if it's not habit.
It's obvious. Most drunk people can get home without someone having to grab the wheel and help them. A few do require that, and they often get stopped by police.
Since almost any ai system currently needs SOME help on a 100 mile drive, yet most slightly drunk people would complete that drive just fine, you could argue close to that.
You’re going to compare self-driving cars to drunk drivers so you can grade them on a curve?
If you’re drunk you’re going to have pay for a ride either by a person or possible by program or you can break the law. I don’t see anyone who was going to drive drunk not do it because they could pay for a robot taxi over a real taxi.
Here’s my comparison. If your self-driving car kills or maims someone in a situation where a normal sober person driving wouldn’t have it shouldn’t be on the road.
They're a known quantity of death though. Human drivers are going to drive drunk, sleepy and distracted. We've been at this since 2005 with the DARPA Grand Challenge. it's not half-baked, it's not a "tech bro fantasy", and hope is not a strategy. It was, a decade and eight years ago when the shit barely made it across the finish line (and many did not), but in those 18 years, theres been some development work and some money invested in making it work. In those 18 years, some 180k people have been killed by drunk drivers.
There are growing pains, absolutely, but at 2:15 am, crossing the street next to the bars, which driver with a red light are you going to step out in front of, crossing the street.
This is more of an indictment of alcoholism than self driving cars. Anyone who’s routinely getting drunk has a big problem that will cloud their judgement.
> A car you can drive drunk is the only meaningful definition of a self-driving car, imo.
That's kind of a messy definition. A drunk person might start messing with the controls, and a car that is perfectly able to drive itself might not be able to handle that. You could fix that with a breathalyzer but it would be ridiculous if the difference between self-driving and not-self-driving is the presence of a breathalyzer.
So I would say something more like "drive from the passenger seat" or "drive while asleep".
Self driving cars should exist because careless people might not drive safely? That’s interesting. How about we just make it illegal to drive drunk or drowsy?
U give far to much credit to human drivers. Capable human drivers as a subset of human drivers. A large subset to be sure,but nowhere near everyone. At least an av cant get drunk.
True, but they often run into the nearest stationary object because they're texting, or eating, or putting on makeup (an ex-gf of mine caused TWO accidents that way), or arguing with a passenger, or speeding, or driving tired after a long day of work, or driving after having a few beers but I'm totally fine I swear I'm cool to drive home, etc...
You're absolutely right that there are risks. But honestly, I suspect drunk drivers alone cause more fatal accidents than autonomous cars ever could.
But the goal is not exactly to have autonomous driving at their level ...
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