> Why this car, and not all cars? If I fail to assume control of my steering wheel, I will also crash.
The short answer is because this isn't a deterministic "if". The probability matters too.
The thing is in a normal car you're forced to be alert all the time. With autonomous driving, 99%+ of the time you have nothing to do. Humans simply cannot pay as much attention all the time when they're not actively forced to. It's much easier to lose attention (drowsiness, chatting with people, etc.) than if you're physically already driving.
And moreover, regaining control of a car requires some context switching time that isn't there when you're already in control.
If my car is going to disengage and at a random point (whether due to my fault or otherwise), I'd rather just be in control the whole time.
> If my car is going to disengage and at a random point (whether due to my fault or otherwise)
But it's not at a random point. If you push the disengage button, it disengages and tells you it's disengaged. I don't understand why you keep mischaracterising what happened.
> But it's not at a random point. If you push the disengage button, it disengages and tells you it's disengaged. I don't understand why you keep mischaracterising what happened.
I'm not mischaracterizing anything. To the driver who dozes off and presses this completely unintentionally, this did happen at a random point. He certainly didn't intend or expect it to happen.
You have to realize, dozing off in a situation that's boring 99%+ of the time is a human thing. If you design your car such that a driver is prone to pressing the disengage button unintentionally when he dozes off, you get to share the blame when that happens. It's not something reckless like DUI where you get to put all the blame on the driver for it.
> To the driver who dozes off and presses this completely unintentionally, this did happen at a random point
That's not the only perspective, though. It's possible to doze off when driving a normal car, and that doesn't suddenly become the car's fault, despite from the driver's perspective, he/she didn't mean for it to happen.
> If you design your car such that a driver is prone to pressing the disengage button unintentionally when he dozes off
But again - how do you know it's been designed that way? This still seems like editorialising without any additional info.
The short answer is because this isn't a deterministic "if". The probability matters too.
The thing is in a normal car you're forced to be alert all the time. With autonomous driving, 99%+ of the time you have nothing to do. Humans simply cannot pay as much attention all the time when they're not actively forced to. It's much easier to lose attention (drowsiness, chatting with people, etc.) than if you're physically already driving.
And moreover, regaining control of a car requires some context switching time that isn't there when you're already in control.
If my car is going to disengage and at a random point (whether due to my fault or otherwise), I'd rather just be in control the whole time.