Silicon Valley's Anti-Autonomy Backlash Is Afraid Of The Wrong Things

Humans are good at a lot of things, but when it comes to assessing risk in the modern world we have some serious limitations. It's not uncommon to be plagued with fear and anxiety while flying, for example, but the same people who quake at the thought of trusting their life to an airliner will often treat the far more dangerous task of driving with baffling nonchalance. It should be no surprise then, that people are also wildly off the mark when it comes to assessing the risks presented by public road testing of autonomous vehicles. This misperception of risk is dramatically illustrated in a recent story by Washington Post reporter Faiz Siddiqui, which uncovers a kind of NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) backlash against AVs in the heart of Silicon Valley. Siddiqui spoke with a number of Valley residents, most of whom work in the tech sector and believe in the long term potential of self-driving cars, who object to being what one terms "the guinea pig" for this new technology.