If we're going to fully enclose and automate them anyway, we can probably have the cars going much faster and closer together, and save energy (and make it easier and safer to keep them that close together) by having cars going the same direction attach together. And the automation would be easier if we just had like different sets of cars on fixed tracks, with splits for when people need to go different ways. And at that point why do you even own your own car, they should probably be owned and operated by the government or a large public corporation. And...

Why do you think cats would be safer? That's a confusing leap of logic. I think engineers tend to extrapolate from data, even in messy real world scenarios where the extrapolation doesn't make intuitive sense. It's an enormous social flaw that leads to bitterness between them and normal humans (autopilot vehicles are in fact the perfect storm that best exemplifies this problem).

Also note that there is an enormous issue of trust and dignity.

By "trust" I mean: We have seen how data and statistics are created. They are useful on average, but trusting them on very important, controversial topics, when they come from the private entity that stands to benefit from them, is an unrealistic ask for many normal humans.

By "dignity" I mean: Normal humans will not stand the indignity of their beloved community members, family, or pets being murdered by a robot designed by a bunch of techies chasing profit in silicon valley or wherever. Note that nowhere in that sentence did I say that the techies were negligent - they may have created the most responsible, reliable system possible under current technology. Too bad normal humans have no way of knowing if that's the case. Especially humans who are at all familiar with how all other software works and feels. It's a similar kind of hateful indignity and disgust to when the culpable party is a drunk driver, though qualitatively different. The nature of the cause of death matters a lot to people. If the robot is statistically safer, but when it kills my family it's because of a bug, people generally won't stand for that. But of course we don't know why exactly, as observers of an individual accident - maybe the situation was truly unavoidable and a human wouldn't have improved the outcome. The statistics don't matter to us in the moment when the death actually happens. Statistics don't tell us whether specifically our dead loved one would have died at the hands of a human driver - only that the chances are better on average.

Human nature is the hardest thing for engineers to relate to and account for.

> it's undisputable that self-driving technologies that have been deployed commercially are dramatically safer than human driving

This is really only true for Waymo, who appear to be the only folks operating at scale who did the work properly. Robotaxi, Cruise and all the others are in a separate bucket and should be statistically separated.

Undisputable? Let's see what happens with the average "accidents per km" these firms keep touting once we let a bunch of self-driving cars drive on the ring around Paris or Antwerp.

> Legally, who is liable for a self-driving car which makes a mistake?

Waymo? How is this ambiguous. Waymo makes the car, writes the software and operates the vehicle.

The only option is the owner of the vehicle, who would hopefully have insurance like any other vehicle owner.

In California, at least, Waymo is required to have $5 million in liability insurance. And the state has a law holding the manufacturer responsible in lieu of a driver. Though this setup has barely been tested since there have been so few incidents and the only "major" one (in CA) is still in court.