Perhaps the same standard should be applied to human drivers: if a human makes a mistake and kills somebody, the rest should be taken off the road for retraining.
I wonder how the issue developed when the automobile was first introduced. I remember something about needing to have a guy walking in front of the vehicle waving a warning flag, but apparently that didn't last long.
Yeah, possibly. On one hand, the Uber setup should be examined for flaws. On the other hand, we shouldn't get paranoid about the occasional traffic death when we've already decided (for human drivers) that this is acceptable collateral damage in the transport system.
The entire pitch for autonomous driving is that it's safer than human drivers. If that's false it's not clear why we should continue to allow Uber to test their work on public roads.
It could be safer than human drivers and still cause quite a few deaths. We can't evaluate such statistics from one accident. We don't even know if this particular accident would have been avoided by a typical human driver (there was apparently one behind the wheel of the vehicle).
That's reasonable while the system is in testing and in small scale use. If it ever becomes a major part of the transportation system, it won't be desirable to shut it all down every time there's an accident.
I wonder how the issue developed when the automobile was first introduced. I remember something about needing to have a guy walking in front of the vehicle waving a warning flag, but apparently that didn't last long.
Found it - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_flag_traffic_laws