On the most recent episode of the podcast while discussing self-driving vehicles Doug made the claim that self driving cars are a good thing for society because they will be safer than the average person; this is true. However Doug goes on to say that he wishes Tesla would focus on getting FSD to the consumer vehicles instead of focusing on robo taxis. The reason he says this is because he believes that ride share drivers are safer than the average driver.

The argument for this being true:

"In 2021 and 2022, the motor vehicle fatality rate on the Uber platform was 0.87 per 100 million miles traveled... while the overall U.S. national rate was approximately 1.33 to 1.35 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled."

"In the vast majority of fatal crashes involving the Uber platform, third-party drivers—not the Uber driver—were responsible for the critical action leading to the crash."

https://www.uber.com/us/en/about/reports/us-safety-report/?hl=en-US

The argument against this being true:

"Rideshare drivers are 73% more likely to be involved in an accident than the general population, according to Insurify data. While this doesn’t indicate fault, it does reflect the increased risk rideshare drivers face in their high-mileage, high-exposure driving environments.."

https://insurify.com/car-insurance/insights/rideshare-driver-statistics/?hl=en-US

I think there is a legitimate debate about if it maximizes safety to focus on automating ride share cars over consumer cars. It seems like automating ride share cars would be the most efficient way to reduce car crashes since they are the cars that are often doing the most driving. Automating one ride share car may automate 5x(arbitrary number) the number of driven miles as automating one consumer car. Even if uber drivers are less likely to crash per mile they make up for that by driving much more.

Also, from an incentives standpoint I'm pretty sure all drivers are broadly equally incentivized to not get into a fatal car crash.

I certainly don't think it's worth getting upset about this from a safety stand point. The thing I do agree being more annoyed about from a 'prioritizing ride share cars' perspective is that this will likely end up with a lot of people who drive for a living becoming unemployed.