Uber Neglected Simulation Testing on Self-Driving Cars, Insiders Say
Given time to market constraints and the potential value of having widely adopted autonomous vehicle software, it&#x27;s not all surprising that vendors will take experimental shortcuts. And it&#x27;s not at all surprising that sometimes, those shortcuts will result in fatalities.<p>That being said, I still want this tech on the road ASAP, not because it&#x27;s perfect, but because human drivers are So. Fucking. Awful. They kill thousands of people a year due to negligence, incompetence, and occasional malice. Plus, the additional sensors available and the software response time mean autonomous drivers can outperform even sober, attentive, skilled human drivers in most situations.<p>A couple of weeks ago, I saw someone talking scary stuff about what someone here called &quot;semi-autonomous murderbots&quot; in a FB post that appeared on my feed immediately after several posts about a local accident, where a bicyclist was killed by a road-raging driver, who then hid&#x2F;destroyed his car (the murder weapon still has not been found, even though his trial is now over). If that jackass had a self-driving vehicle, the bicyclist would still be alive today.<p>So are big corporations going to do kind of a careless job testing live vehicles in a rush to market? Yes. Will people get hurt? Yes. Is it worth it? Yes.