> A refrain I hear, and used to believe, is that machine accidents will cause public uproar in a way human-mediated accidents don't. Yet Tesla's autopilot accidents have produced no such reaction. Perhaps assumptions around public perceptions of technology need revisiting.
Have there been any Tesla autopilot fatalities with the right conditions to spark outrage? That's a sincere question as maybe I've missed some which would prove your point.
The only major incident I'm aware of is one in which only the driver of the car was killed. In an accident like that it is easy to handwave it away pretty much independent of any specifics (autopilot or no).
A real test of public reaction would involve fatalities to third parties, particularly if the "driver" of the automated vehicle survived the crash.
I'm surprised you believe this. Drivers run people down every day and nobody even investigates the cause. Motorists kill about a dozen pedestrians every month in New York City and historically only half of those people get even a failure-to-yield ticket. Meat-puppets are demonstrably unfit to operate vehicles in crowded urban environments, everybody knows this, and nobody is outraged when the people die.
Have there been any Tesla autopilot fatalities with the right conditions to spark outrage? That's a sincere question as maybe I've missed some which would prove your point.
The only major incident I'm aware of is one in which only the driver of the car was killed. In an accident like that it is easy to handwave it away pretty much independent of any specifics (autopilot or no).
A real test of public reaction would involve fatalities to third parties, particularly if the "driver" of the automated vehicle survived the crash.