Uber vs. Ralph Waldo Emerson

There's an old saying "Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door." Whether it's a direct quote or a paraphrase of Ralph Waldo Emerson is immaterial - I'm convinced that the quote is pure B.S.

Exibit A: Uber is starting to use self-driving cars. 

Exibit B: People are very skeptical of self-driving cars. 

For the sake of completeness, I'll say that there probably isn't enough data yet to definitively answer whether self-driving cars are safer than their human-driven cars. Still, I personally feel like one could make a strong anecdotal case that there is a lower rate of fatalities among self-driven cars.

I personally think Uber's approach to the problem is brilliant. Instead of spending buckets of cash on advertising and putting the statistics out there, they're spending it to give free rides using the technology. Uber customers get to opt-in to the service, the rides are free, and they come with a driver who is only there to override the car in the event of an emergency. 

This has several key benefits:

1. It helps Uber to improve their autonomous driving technology by testing it and gathering more training data. This is something that all players in this space will need a lot of, and Uber stands to gain a huge lead over their competition. 
2. It replaces fear of the technology with concrete experience - probably among tech savvy early adopters who are the most likely to talk to their friends about it. 
3. It validates the market in a way that nobody has accomplished yet. 

I applaud Uber for their initiative. Whether the technology is safer or not, if they waited for people to beat a path to their door, they'd likely be waiting for a while.