Sooner or later it had to happen: it occurred in Florida, on May 7, the first fatal road accident of a self-driving car in the United States. The victim was the driver of a Tesla S, which had activated the automatic steering system on a highway near Williston.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Tesla crashed into a truck coming from the opposite direction. Blame? The sky is too bright.
Tesla explained on his website that neither the driver nor the autonomous driving system saw the white side of the truck, due to the too bright day: the system would have confused the side of the white truck with the clear sky. But this "mistake" that cost a person his life is not the only problem with self-driving cars.
According to the journal Science and a team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), most respondents would never buy a self-driving car, as self-driving cars could endanger the life of the "pilot-passenger"in the event that the vehicle was in front of a group of pedestrians who suddenly emerged.
That is, self-driving cars would prefer to save the life of pedestrians at the expense of that of the passenger. How many people would buy a self-driving car knowing that they can die if a group of pedestrians suddenly cross the roadway?