
Remembering When Driverless Elevators Drew Skepticism (2015) - jonbaer
https://www.npr.org/2015/07/31/427990392/remembering-when-driverless-elevators-drew-skepticism
======
oldgradstudent
Another idiotic comparison.

Elevators existed. Driverless car do not.

No company has yet to demonstrate a driverless car to a skeptical audience
without an NDA (no, PR videos don't count).

~~~
moate
Did you read the article?

It's a very reasonable comparison: A mindless machine that can pose a mortal
danger if it doesn't function as intended.

Cars are used much more complex environment, and the mechanisms needed to
automate them are substantially more complex than those used in automating
elevators, but it doesn't mean it's an idiotic comparison. Nobody is saying
"automating a car is as easy as automating an elevator"

At a certain point in history, manual elevators exited. driverless elevators
did not.

People are initially skeptical of most automation, but often times these
things become commonplace and we take them for granted. That's what I took
away from this. Keep up the good fight tilting at windmills sir.

~~~
oldgradstudent
> Did you read the article?

Unfortunately, I did. Did you?

The article claims that even after all the safety mechanisms were installed,
people were still irrationally afraid of automatic elevators, and that a PR
campaign was required to help people to stop fearing automatic elevators.

The implication is that people are similarly irrationally afraid of self-
driving cars.

I claim that this is an idiotic comparison because people should be afraid of
self-driving cars until they are proven to safe and reliable. So far, all we
got is PR.

As you so sensibly pointed out, building a self-driving car is orders of
magnitude more difficult than automatic elevators.

