[ExI] Tesla autopilot

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Wed, Jan 19, 2022 at 4:13 PM <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:

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> *…*> *On Behalf Of *Rafal Smigrodzki via extropy-chat
> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Tesla autopilot
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> On Tue, Jan 18, 2022 at 9:02 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
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> BillK, it's a critical question: does the car have a steering wheel or does
> it not?  In the USA, it is aaaaalll about liability.  If the car has a
> steering wheel and the autopilot screws up, the driver is liable.  If no
> steering wheel, the company is at fault.
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> I have half a mind to wait until the no-steering-wheel car is available,
> drive my own damn self until then.
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> ### What if independent, reliable, trusted third parties certified this
> car with steering wheel to be 10x safer as a driver than you are?
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> Rafal
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> …then that car is the wet dream of the lawsuit industry.  Currently some
> stupid prole causes an accident, she doesn’t have anything and the car
> company isn’t liable.  The steering-wheel car is way safer but that is
> still a tenth as many accidents, and those have deep pockets behind them.
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### What if the deep pockets refuse to sell the car to proles that don't
have liability insurance that explicitly covers all accidents caused by the
car on a strict liability basis?

Since we know the car is in reality 10x safer, we know that the total
amount of harms caused by the car is 10x lower and therefore the
market-equilibrium insurance premiums will be almost 10x lower as well, at
least as long as the legal system does not differentiate between harms
caused by human-driven vs. self-driving cars (i.e. a leg broken by either
type of car gets paid the same damages). Even stupid proles would choose
the car that's 10x cheaper to insure.

I don't see how in this situation the existence of self-driven cars,
regardless of whether they have steering wheels or not, would be a boon to
the lawsuit industry. There would be 10x fewer accidents to sue about.
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> Rafal being a doctor you know aaaaaalllll about the American lawsuit
> industry.  All doctors are lawyers in a sense.
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### Dunno. The impact of lawsuits on the medical industry in the US is
often exaggerated, except in the case of OB/GYN. I pay about 4k per year
for malpractice insurance. This is a drop in the bucket.

Rafal
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