Technology

I’m not sure your second point is as strong as you believe it to be. Do you have a specific example in mind? I think most vehicle problems that would require an emergency responder will have easy access to a tow service to deal with the car with or without a human being involved. It’s not like just because a human is there that the problem is more easily solved. For minor-to-moderate accidents that just require a police report, things might get messy but that’s an issue with the law, not necessarily something inherently wrong with the concept of self driving vehicles.

https://missionlocal.org/2023/08/cruise-waymo-autonomous-vehicle-robot-taxi-driverless-car-reports-san-francisco/

The fire department in SF has made it very clear that these cars are a PITA for them. They are actively driving through emergency situations, cannot follow verbal instructions, drive over fire hoses, etc.

Also, your first point is on shaky ground, I think. I don’t know why the metric is accidents with fatalities,

Fatalities is just the number we have to compare. Self-driving car companies have been publishing a simulated fatality metric for a while now. I totally agree there are other ways to think about it. My point is that AV companies have a narrative that humans are actually bad at driving, and I think this comparison pokes a hole in that story.

but since that’s what you used, what do you think having fewer humans involved does to the chance of killing a human?

I'm not sure, actually. The vast majority of driving is solo trips, so I'd expect not that much? There are some studies suggesting that people might actually use cars more if self-driving cars become a reality:

https://www.wired.com/story/driving-partially-automated-people-drive-more/

And that really gets to the heart of my problem with the self-driving cars push. When faced with complex problems, we should not assume there is a technological solution. Instead, we should ask ourselves to envision a better world, and then decide what technologies, if any, we need to get there. If self-driving cars are actually a good solution to the problem, then by all means, let's make them happen.

But I don't think that's what's happening here, and I don't think they are. American cities are a fucking disaster of planning. They are genuinely shameful, forcing their inhabitants to rely on cars, an excessively wasteful mode of transportation, all in a climate crisis. Instead of coming together to work on this problem, we're begging our technological overlords to solve them for us, with an added drawback of privatizing our public infrastructure.