I’m saying that our basis right now is whether or not driver assistance systems are making driving safer or less safe.

Driverless cars are currently only used in specific areas under tight regulation. They are not generally available and this article is about Teslas which are not self-driving, they have driver assistance features.

The original commenter above was making a remark about how the driver assistance features in a Tesla are “unsafe” due to a highway barrier accident.

I was making the counter argument that the driver was acting in an unsafe fashion by using driver assistance features as “self-driving”

I agree that if driver assistance features with a human driving are safer than driverless cars, driverless cars are not ready.

The point I was trying to make is that rather than talking about a single traffic accident, we have to look at the data. This is a law or large numbers thing, not penny press headlines.

I don’t think this a choice between driverless cars or not. We should be looking for the solutions which reduce traffic fatalities and injuries and also those which reduce the amount of hours wasted in traffic. Driver assistance features or self driving is only one angle for that. Improving road design patterns, building roads that actually follow the principles of psychology and fluid dynamics related to driving, properly maintaining roads, and other non technology related solutions are also potential factors for improvement.