Are the systemic risks, derived from many or all cars being on autopilot, ignored by regulators? Like in banking?

Sir, Brooke Masters, with respect to the recent Tesla accident that caused a death, writes: “the more a car’s autopilot does, the less experience drivers will have — and the less watchful they will become. It is madness to expect them to seize the wheel and work a miracle in a moment of crisis” “Tesla tragedy raises safety issues that can’t be ignored”, July 2.

That sounds a lot like banking now becoming more and more automatically responsive to regulations, which could be faulty, and less and less reponsive to bankers’ diverse senses.

And Masters holds that “US regulators, who are in the midst of writing new guidelines for autonomous vehicles, need to take this into account before they give blanket approval to partially self-driving cars”. 

That sounds a lot like when our bank regulators are concerned with the risk of individual bank and not with the risks for the whole banking system. If those regulators are just evaluating how autonomous vehicles respond to traffic where humans drive all other vehicles, they will not cover the real systemic dangers. 

Masters informs: “Tesla noted that this was the first death to occur in 130m miles of driving on its autopilot system, versus an average of one death per 60m miles of ordinary driving.”

And to me that is a quite useless and dangerous information considering the possibilities of the mega chain reaction pile up car crash that could result when all or most cars are on autopilot, responding or trusting in similar ways… like when the very small capital requirement against what was AAA rated caused the mega bank crisis.

I can hear many arguing that if all cars are controlled then no accidents could occur. Yes that might be so but for it to occur, as a minimum minimorum, we would need to control all hackers to absolute perfection.

What about bank regulators as scary movie villains?

Sir, Nigel Andrews writes “The spawn of the bankers make the scariest movie villains”, September 27. But since I am much more scared of bank regulators that of bankers I wonder if he could identify some movies were these are presented as villains.

For instance their capital current requirements for banks, based on ex ante perceived risk of their assets, could be likened to traffic allowing cars to speed at different velocities depending on the ex ante perceived value of car safety features, and without considering the driver. Can you imagine what scary disastrous car wreckage scenes could be filmed as a result?

To reduce the too many cars it might be better to eliminate some infrastructure, like some roads.

Sir you use as an illustration for Mathew Green’s report on lacking infrastructure a photo from Lagos from which one could conclude that it is not infrastructure that is lacking but the cars that are too abundant, “Crisis puts the brakes on”, April 2. Have this financial crisis already made us forget the energy and climate change crisis?

Financial traffic jams are also caused by financial Global Positioning System

Sir we are grateful to Christopher Caldwell for drawing our attention to "Traffic" by Tom Vanderbilt, "Caught in the human traffic", August 23. From what we see that book should urgently be made obligatory reading to all bank regulators in Basel, so that they learn what happens when you impose credit rating agencies as the Global Positioning System supposed to direct the financial flows of the world.

That "Predictions about traffic become 'self-destroying'" is exactly what lies behind that systemic risk that brought us the subprime mess. They should have known it!

"Once everyone gets the same reliable real-time information about traffic everyone mobs the same route" questions the whole underpinnings of our current bank regulations, namely that you are able to measure risks without affecting the risks.

When the book quotes German physicist Michael Schreckenberg "telling them the whole truth is not the best way" we begin to understand Angela Merkel's request for a purely European credit rating agency.

What kind of reporting is this?

Sir Benedict Mander reports that “Drivers put cars blame on chávez for Caracas congestion” May 30, and nowhere does he mention that the purchases of cars is subsidized by means of the foreign exchange system and that petrol is sold for about 2 cents of a Euro per litre, and which has made a small country like Venezuela import 750.000 new cars to place on already jammed roads, in just two years. What kind of reporting is this?

Is Benedict Mander trying to hide the fact that this supposedly socialist government is taking way over 10% of Venezuela’s GDP from the poor people who have nothing and giving it to those citizens who have a car?