On the opposite side of the coin from our fear of new things, if something has been happening for a long time, or even obviously plaguing us for a long time, humans have a separate ability/tendency to just basically accept it. It’s normal. Even if it’s deadly.
If one person per year dies in a crash involving Autopilot, many in the media go crazy, which triggers backlash well beyond the media. Yes, the loss of any life is tragic, but that doesn’t make the calculation 1–0. In 2020, 23,395 passenger vehicle occupants died in the US. That’s more than 64 Americans a day dying in car accidents (just counting the people in the cars, not the many bicyclists and pedestrians hit by cars). Essentially all of those deaths could be called “Humanpilot deaths.”
There are an estimated 328,000 crashes a year in the US caused by sleepy drivers. Autopilot helps to save lives, and we all know that “Humanpilot” is an absolute disaster with a horrible safety record. Fake controversy and manufactured fear from a non-Autopilot accident is not a good enough reason to launch an all-out offensive on an advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) that is saving lives.
Read the article at CleanTechnica.
