Don't Overreact to Uber's Self-Driving Car Death

It was inevitable, and so was the outcry.

Uber’s self-driving car crash in Tempe, AZ wasn’t the first fatality associated with autonomous vehicles, but it’s apparently the first time a driverless car struck a pedestrian. Regardless, the crucial factor is our (over)reaction to it.

Autonomous vehicles take human error out of the equation – computers can’t make mistakes, and people make bad decisions under pressure.

“There’s reason to believe that driverless cars could actually be safer because they do not depend on operators who can easily be distracted by texting, crying babies or the radio controls, or impaired by alcohol, marijuana or lack of sleep,” notes the Mercury News’ and East Bay Times’ editorial boards.

So driverless cars ought to be perfect, right?

One problem – AI is still young. It’s still more competent than people, but we expect machines to be flawless. Obviously, we wouldn’t be having this debate if the Uber vehicle had a human driver – traffic accidents are the 4^th leading cause of death in the US, behind heart disease, cancer, and lower respiratory diseases.

But we judge autonomous cars by much higher standards. And overreacting to setbacks like this can put a serious dent in technological progress.

Dr. Timothy Carone, a former astrophysicist and an associate teaching professor at the University of Notre Dame, nails it:

“Calls to stop all self-driving cars from operating on the roads until they are proven safe demonstrate a true lack of understanding of how complex systems are made operational. This approach would have slowed down progress with aviation safety in the 20th century so that we would not now have the safe skies we do.”

Never mind the fact that Tempe police chief Sylvia Moir claimed the accident was unavoidable.

“It’s very clear it would have been difficult to avoid this collision in any kind of mode (autonomous or human-driven),” Moir said. The victim, Elaine Herzberg, 49, strolled into traffic at the last second, and the Uber car made no attempt to brake.

We expect autonomous systems to avoid the unavoidable and prevent crashes that humans can’t. And it’s a very shortsighted demand. Driverless cars could dramatically reduce traffic accidents, but some primal instinct within us is repulsed by the thought that machines could kill, accidents notwithstanding.

Uber has pulled all its self-driving cars from the roads, and those of us who appreciate the long, painful march of technological progress are left praying that government regulation or a self-imposed stoppage doesn’t end (or seriously hinder) the development of autonomous vehicles.