[HN Gopher] Self-driving vehicles against human drivers: Equal s...
___________________________________________________________________
Self-driving vehicles against human drivers: Equal safety is far
from enough
Author : Bologo
Score : 83 points
Date : 2020-12-30 14:33 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
| godelzilla wrote:
| Why not safe, free, and extensive public transportation instead
| of dangerous and unsustainable pipe dreams?
| jedberg wrote:
| This title is awful (but it was copied from the site). What it
| should say is "Study finds that most people surveyed didn't trust
| self driving cars until they were five times safer".
| m463 wrote:
| More like "people who have never owned or been in a self
| driving car..." faster horses.
|
| That said, it will happen. I just wonder what will happen as
| self driving car safety exceeds human drivers. Will people be
| prohibited/disincentivized to drive?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > what will happen as self driving car safety exceeds human
| drivers
|
| Average human drivers, or are you including the drunks and
| other bozos who cause the lion's share of fatalities?
| happytoexplain wrote:
| The comparison between all human drivers and all autonomous
| vehicles is far more complex than "whichever is statistically
| safer, as a whole". Belittling people who feel differently
| than you about it muddies the conversation for no reason.
| m463 wrote:
| I apologize and cannot edit my comment.
| dooglius wrote:
| Based on the abstract, it looks like this is an attempt to
| measure how safe self-driving cars need to be in order for people
| to prefer using them. It is not any sort of requirement from the
| NIH.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| I too was confused. I thought "we" referred to the NIH. It
| should say "people".
| Jabbles wrote:
| I wonder what range in safety we tolerate in human drivers? How
| much worse than the average is a newly-licenced 17 year-old (or
| whatever age) or an 80 year-old?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Well, in terms of overall crashes and injury crashes, you don't
| get safer than the 80 year old until you're 30 [1]. Though the
| rate of _fatal_ wrecks is about the same between 16-17 and 80+.
| I think that may be due in large part to the fact that 80 year
| old humans are far more fragile and likely to die in a wreck
| where a younger person would walk away from.
|
| [1] https://aaafoundation.org/rates-motor-vehicle-crashes-
| injuri...
| Jabbles wrote:
| Very interesting, thank you for the data.
| thedudeabides5 wrote:
| Maybe people want self-driving cars to be 5 times safer because
| they don't trust the people saying the cars are X times safer to
| begin with.
|
| Like you are testing how much they trust machines, and how much
| they trust the people telling them the machine is X% better.
|
| Given 2020, think a little skepticism on both/either is
| reasonable.
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| If it's a subjective matter tied to perception of risk rather
| than actual, statistical risk, such perception can be swayed.
|
| The challenge remains that people will be killed in accidents
| involving autonomous control. And we anticipate that the number
| of people killed will be fewer, hence 'saving lives'. However,
| the lives lost in autonomous accidents will be a different set of
| people than those that would have died in human driven accidents.
| There will be cases where a court determines that the autonomous
| system was the cause. Families of those killed will want justice,
| while those separately saved by autonomous systems may never be
| heard from in the same case.
|
| I expect that in the end it will come down to a business
| decision, and that decision will be informed by an actuarial
| exercise: Will profits and insurance be able to cover the costs
| of defending and settling such cases. Who knows, maybe the
| threshold is crossed at 5x safer.
| xenocyon wrote:
| > However, the lives lost in autonomous accidents will be a
| different set of people than those that would have died in
| human driven accidents.
|
| So far it seems that this is very much the case. Autonomous
| cars do relatively well in highway scenarios whereas they
| appear to do poorly recognizing bicycles, for instance.
| Reducing safety to one single metric would be a big mistake.
| Justsignedup wrote:
| Sensationalism will win out quite a bit. And responsibility.
| Its just a tough problem.
|
| - People developing Bell's Palsy at the same rate with vaccine
| than not. But suddenly only those with the vaccine show up in
| the social media feeds. Because nobody just posts "I just got
| bell's palsy" but now they do because people are paying
| attention. Same will happen with AVs. "I just got into an AV
| accident" will make headlines, while "I just dozed off and hit
| a kid" will barely circulate.
|
| - People inherently trust humans over technology. Just because.
| So they will be quick to distrust autonomous vehicles. I
| already had convos about the fact that yes, teslas do kill, but
| on the whole self-driving teslas do kill far less than non.
|
| - When a human drives, the liability is on the human. When a
| car self-drives, the liability might be on the manufacturer.
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| > Just because.
|
| Maybe they actually read those EULAs and privacy policies and
| made an informed choice.
|
| I mean, I wouldn't want Facebook making a self-driving car,
| and it's not because I doubt their machine learning chops.
| frenchy wrote:
| > People inherently trust humans over technology
|
| I don't think that's generally true, or at least, the
| contrary notion is also true some times. I'm pretty sure that
| if someone asked me the product of 13 x 6, they would trust
| me more if I punched some numbers in to a calculator and gave
| them a result versus if I just did it in my head. I don't
| know, but I think the likelyhood of me mistyping numbers is
| embarrasingly high, and probably about as likely as a mistake
| in easy mental math.
|
| It's also closely linked to your third point though.
| Liability with self-driving cars is difficult. When people
| talk about self-driving cars, they sort of just hand-wave
| away the fact that there will be accidents, so as to avoid
| this difficult problem. This does not instill confidence.
| SkyBelow wrote:
| >When a human drives, the liability is on the human. When a
| car self-drives, the liability might be on the manufacturer.
|
| I think this is a point that needs more emphasis, especially
| on the word 'might'. Without both laws and a history of court
| cases giving evidence for how those laws are interpreted and
| enforced, it isn't possible to tell where liability may end
| up. I wonder if that is part of the reason people are
| hesitant. Liability is being removed from the driver, but it
| doesn't see have have found a place to settle back down at,
| so people are viewing it as if liability is just being
| removed. For initial court cases (and the amount of time and
| money it takes to fight them), this may not be an unrealistic
| expectation.
| ghaff wrote:
| If liability is on anyone, it would seem it has to be the
| manufacturer. And if there's no liability then the options
| are basically set up some sort of vaccine fund-like system
| or just to shrug and say it's between you and the insurance
| company.
| cj wrote:
| > People inherently trust humans over technology. Just
| because.
|
| From the perspective of someone who rides a motorcycle, the
| #1 thing you need to do to not crash is to anticipate what
| all vehicles around you might possibly do.
|
| For example, I always avoid riding in another car's blind
| spot for obvious reasons.
|
| The problem (for motorcyclists) will now be trying to adapt
| to understand what a Tesla might do and where a Tesla's blind
| spots might be - and once you add in the idiosyncrasies of
| other AVs I could see it being really difficult to ride
| safely around AVs.
|
| It's fairly easy to anticipate actions of another human, and
| not as easy to anticipate when actions are decided by an
| algorithm.
|
| FWIW I think the above also applies to cyclists.
|
| (I suppose this becomes a non-issue if the assumption is that
| AVs will be so superior to human judgement as to never strike
| another motorcycle or cyclist - 5x safer sounds like a
| starting point)
| sliken wrote:
| I actually expect the opposite. Motorcycles preferring to
| be near Tesla's and any other car with sensor based safety
| features that are on 24/7.
|
| I'm frequently alerted of a motorcyclist approaching from
| the rear by it appearing on my Tesla display because it's
| detected by the cameras and ultrasound. I've rarely notice
| the motorcycle before the car does.
| ggreer wrote:
| I own a Tesla and I ride a motorcycle. I would _much_
| prefer to deal with 100% autopiloted Teslas than current
| human drivers.
|
| Teslas don't have blind spots. They have eight cameras that
| give 360 degree views around the car. They also have a
| dozen ultrasonic sensors that can detect obstacles up to 5
| meters in all directions. The only way to collide with a
| Tesla on autopilot is by doing something really dumb.
|
| In practice, a Tesla on autopilot tends to drive like a
| human taking a driving test: accelerating slowly, _always_
| signaling before turning or lane changing, _always_
| yielding to pedestrians, always braking or cancelling lane
| changes if an aggressive driver gets in the way, never
| honking. If traffic is too dense to lane change to the
| desired freeway exit, it reroutes rather than cutting into
| traffic (as pretty much any human would).
| foobarian wrote:
| > However, the lives lost in autonomous accidents will be a
| different set of people than those that would have died in
| human driven accidents.
|
| This is a really good point. I drive really conservatively and
| like to think I will never ever cause an accident let alone a
| fatal one. I think if this lever was taken away I would have a
| hard time accepting the automated driving a significant amount
| of time.
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| > There will be cases where a court determines that the
| autonomous system was the cause.
|
| At the moment, manufacturers almost totally escape blame for
| fatal accidents [involving human drivers] - it's understood
| societally and in the legal system that the human driver was
| the one at fault.
|
| That isn't a totally accurate picture of the responsibility.
| The manufacturer provided a vehicle that included a risk of
| fatal accident. (Reducing this wrong and describing it as
| 'lives saved' feels uncomfortable to me)
|
| With an autonomous system, blame for fatalities can no longer
| be placed on a human driver: and yet, there is still a failure
| of responsibility (maybe this will be a more accurate placement
| of blame)
| CuriousPerson23 wrote:
| Hasn't there been only 1 fatal accident? If not, I can't
| imagine there have been >5, so seems unfair and misleading to
| make bold claims like that. I think the courts will rule, and
| if the system misunderstood something, the manufacturer will
| be at fault.
| wffurr wrote:
| >> The challenge remains that people will be killed in
| accidents involving autonomous control.
|
| While that's almost certainly true (and depending on one's
| interpretation of autonomous is _already_ true), some people
| already believe that zero deaths in transport is possible:
| https://visionzeronetwork.org/about/what-is-vision-zero/. If
| it's possible to hold human drivers to that standard, why not
| autonomous systems as well?
| riversflow wrote:
| Well that's a silly vision. I have a vision of immortality
| too. This is a textbook example perfect being the enemy of
| good. I don't want to hold any system to the standard of zero
| fatalities, and further I think this is why "shoot for the
| moon and even if you miss you'll land amongst the stars" is
| faulty. People waste an exorbitant amount of time and fossil
| fuels commuting in passenger vehicles. Anything that
| significantly changes that balance should be considered.
| Progress is progress and letting everybody use the time they
| used to spend commuting is certainly progress.
| wffurr wrote:
| If you read about Vision Zero and its methodology, you can
| see that it indeed celebrates incremental progress and
| indeed encourages simplest improvements first.
|
| Before you dismiss something as silly, perhaps you could
| try understanding it some first.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| You're mocking as silly a vision that some places have
| already achieved.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/16/how-
| helsinki-a...
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| That was my original hope for self-driving cars. The easiest
| way to ensure that you don't kill anybody is to limit your
| speed to 20mph. At and below that speed a car-pedestrian
| collision is highly unlikely to result in a dead pedestrian.
| Also, at 20mph you can stop on a dime. So I imagined a large
| fleet of robot cars traveling at 20mph and normalizing that
| speed, forcing human drivers to slow down too.
|
| But it turns out that self-driving vendors spend a lot of
| effort on "driving like a human", which includes driving
| faster than the speed limit and faster than vision zero would
| allow on shared streets & roads.
| ghaff wrote:
| Which could be done today. The vast majority of people
| obviously don't consider that acceptable in general.
| porknubbins wrote:
| Somehow the idea of a computer error killing me seems way worse
| than at least having a chance to save myself, since I'm a very
| cautious driver (though unlikely safer than average by 5x) .
| Self driving cars need to get to airline level safety where
| crashes are a rare thing and most people don't think twice
| about giving up control to the pilots/auto pilot. If that takes
| expensive Lidar thats what we should use. I can't imagine ever
| feeling good about trusting my life to a computer vision
| algorithm.
| sliken wrote:
| Problem is, 95% [1] of drivers think they are better than
| average.
|
| [1] citation needed.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| Which could be true, assuming the median skill level of
| drivers is sufficiently higher than the average.
| gifnamething wrote:
| Mean is an average, not the average. Mode is an average.
| Median is an average.
| senko wrote:
| Happy to oblige:
| https://www.smithlawco.com/blog/2017/december/do-most-
| driver...
|
| In summary: in a study done in 1980, 93% of Americans
| thought themselves better than an average driver.
| tjoff wrote:
| _And they are all correct._
|
| Except for when they haven't slept, or aren't paying
| attention etc.
|
| That is not a good baseline to compare self-driving cars
| against. That would be horrific.
| the8472 wrote:
| The average baseline involves a driver that is not paying
| attention or hasn't slept X% of the time. You cannot
| magically wave away all the bad days and pretend only the
| good humans are on the streets. The bad days happen,
| people die. The autonomous vehicle only has to do better
| than that. That's the whole point.
| tjoff wrote:
| Statistically no. But you need to convince people -
| _that_ is the point.
|
| We are not rational. We do not respond well to a car
| running straight into a barrier or stand-still vehicle at
| 100 km/h without even attempting to brake (such as the
| failure modes that Tesla has demonstrated) even if it
| does well most of the time and has better statistics than
| an average human.
|
| And further, as noted in the thread, a good part of
| driving is assessing other vehicles and vehicles behaving
| oddly (even if it is objectively better in isolation) is
| really bad and will increase the risk of collisions.
|
| I think google have experienced this, that people do not
| respond well do the driving technique of their car since
| it doesn't behave as a human - not that it does anything
| wrong.
| the8472 wrote:
| Individuals may not act rationally but regulators and
| insurance companies with their birds-eye view will see
| the hard numbers and hopefully provide incentives aligned
| with the rational choice.
| tjoff wrote:
| I hope not. I expect them to produce cars that are much
| better than the average human before setting them free on
| the road.
|
| That is the rational choice given the human psyche.
|
| We can barely even convince people that vaccines are
| good.
| the8472 wrote:
| Just as with vaccines waiting for better cars means
| letting more people die in the meantime. That is a grim
| hope.
| tjoff wrote:
| If companies rush this (as Tesla and Uber already has!)
| too much the backlash will likely set back self-driving
| unnecessarily.
|
| I believe a more careful approach will get broader
| adoption and likely save more lives.
| the8472 wrote:
| I didn't suggest that the technology should be rushed and
| I agree that a careful approach can save more lives. But
| what constitutes "careful" matters here. For example if a
| city chooses to offer robotaxi discounts to people with
| bad driving records (before some cutoff date to avoid
| perverse incentives) then even an average taxi fleet
| could be a net-benefit even though the taxis do not
| perform better than the general population. And that's
| just in terms of lives saved, not counting the other
| benefits of having cheap transportation.
| nelgaard wrote:
| Which says:
|
| == Obviously, not everyone can be above average. Exactly
| half of all drivers have to be in the bottom half when it
| comes to driving skills and safety. ==
|
| Maybe, but the bottom half is not necessary drivers worse
| than average.
|
| I do not know how you would calculate "average". But
| there are people on the road that could pull down the
| average a lot. So that more than 50 percent are better
| than average.
| adwn wrote:
| In colloquial speech, most people don't differentiate
| between "mean" and "median". My guess is that, in that
| kind of survey, the participants read or say "average"
| and implicitly mean "median" - and exactly 50 percent of
| drivers are better than the median, by definition.
| matt-attack wrote:
| I feel the opposite. The one sensor that is guaranteed to
| have sufficient information to drive in all conditions is
| vision. That's obviously because humans drive exclusively
| with vision (and a single vantage point to boot - modulo
| mirrors).
| beat wrote:
| That's why one place I really want a driving assist is
| automatically backing out of spaces in parking lots.
| Visibility is _terrible_ for the driver. You need to be
| paying close attention in multiple directions at once, you
| often don 't have visibility at all when you need to start
| moving (like a larger vehicle parked next to you), and both
| pedestrians and other vehicles can appear out of nowhere,
| often moving in unexpected directions. It feels very
| unsafe.
|
| Computer vision could be making those go-stop decisions for
| you, much more effectively than human drivers.
|
| Heck, imagine a "smart" parking lot that tracks its
| available spaces and communicates with your car. You enter
| the parking lot and hand over control, and the car and lot
| work together to park you safely in the best available
| space.
| ghaff wrote:
| >The one sensor that is guaranteed to have sufficient
| information to drive in all conditions is vision.
|
| Minor nit but humans can't drive--certainly not safely--in
| _all_ conditions. You can certainly get to a point in fog,
| blizzards, and even very heavy rain where you really would
| like to get off the road if possible. (Not always possible
| of course and in snow particularly, pulling off to the side
| of a highway isn 't a great option.)
| wool_gather wrote:
| Not a nit at all; the parent comment has the cart
| completely in front of the horse. Humans use vision
| (primarily) to drive because _it 's the only sense we
| have_ that's even close to being sufficient.
|
| There are certainly other senses (lidar, ultrasound,
| radio signals) that robots could avail themselves of that
| would be helpful even in conditions where vision also
| worked.
| jschwartzi wrote:
| Kind of. The difference between human vision and computer
| vision is that human vision is stereoscopic. We perceive
| depth in addition to color and shape. And that gives us the
| ability to perceive the 3-dimensional shape of an object,
| which lets us anticipate how it might move. A lot of CV
| algorithms operate on single images from a single camera,
| which makes it impossible to judge depth. In that case
| you'd have to use the size of an object as a proxy for its
| distance and speed, so you'd tend to misjudge how far
| things are from you and where they're going.
|
| The nice thing about LIDAR is that you can gather that
| depth/shape information and with sufficient calibration map
| the shapes in the camera image to the depths in the LIDAR
| image. You can do the same thing with two cameras so I'm
| not sure why LIDAR would be preferred here.
| sliken wrote:
| Tesla as an example has 3 forward looking cameras,
| additionally a single moving camera can sense depth since
| differences between frames relates to the distance from
| the camera.
|
| LIDAR has its advantages, like precise 3D positions under
| ideal conditions. However there are downsides as well.
| Cost is a big one, but that's becoming less of a issue
| over time. Another is sensitivity to rain, fog, blowing
| sand, etc.
|
| A complicating factor is human driven cars will assume
| cars to act like they have human limitations. So higher
| speeds when humans can see well, and low speeds when
| humans can't.
|
| Not sure Tesla's current sensors will do it, but seems
| like camera based systems are likely to be quite
| competitive with LIDAR. Maybe instead of 3 forward
| cameras, 6 or 8 so there's overlapping views (for
| stereoscopic vision), handling failures better, and
| allowing a narrower field of view at a higher zoom.
|
| More range will be a huge help, that way an autonomous
| car can slow more gently when uncertain and drive more
| like a human. After all superhuman reflexes aren't much
| use if you get rear ended all the time.
| yarcob wrote:
| You can get 3D data from a single moving camera. The
| technique is called structure from motion and has been
| demonstrated to work well more than a decade ago.
|
| The biggest problem with relying on visual data is that
| you get very noisy data. Poor lighting and reflective or
| glossy surfaces cause problems (I'm not sure what current
| state of the art is, it's been a few years since I looked
| at the research).
|
| As far as I understand the big advantage of LIDAR is that
| you get nice and clean depth data and it's not so
| computationally expensive.
| tjoff wrote:
| We don't need two eyes to drive. And we don't need two
| eyes to gauge depth. Neither does a machine, but adding
| stereoscopic cameras is not hard.
|
| The stereoscopic effect is very poor on driving
| distances, doesn't help us that much. Primarily we use
| clues form the environment to gauge distances. We also
| have to focus our eyes to the correct distance - that
| also tells us how far an object is.
|
| Primarily we have had an insane amount of training to
| understand our world. An understanding that a self-
| driving car will never achieve unless singularity
| happens. It might not need that, but it will need other
| ways to compensate for it.
| vagrantJin wrote:
| > You can do the same thing with two cameras so I'm not
| sure why LIDAR would be preferred here.
|
| I almost spilled my beer about to comment that a camera
| or two are equally if not more powerful than lidar. To me
| personally, Lidar feels like an incomplete solution to 3D
| mapping when high res images from a smartphone camera can
| provide so many more data points from different angles.
|
| My thinking was vehicles should have an idea where other
| vehicles are without the need for comp viz. Like beacons
| saying "hey Im here." And we can try to calculate
| relative direction and distance. The vision bit should
| ideally come in to validate and confirm other things like
| road signs etc. Ideally we should add that data to
| mapping software andnthe car should know these things
| without "seeing it".
| mankyd wrote:
| While I don't disagree, I will note that most people don't
| think twice about giving up control to bus and taxi drivers.*
|
| I think we trust humans to make a reasonable decision in a
| trolley-problem scenario (rightly or wrongly). Or rather, we
| trust the human we're in a vehicle with to value their own
| life, and thus our own, more than those outside of the
| vehicle in most scenarios.
|
| I expect there is research to investigate this, though I
| wouldn't know where to begin looking.
|
| *I've definitely had a few bad drivers, of course.
| nelgaard wrote:
| Busses are generally much safer because they are bigger and
| heavier. Except in mountains. But I only encounter that on
| holidays and on holidays we take a lot more risks.
|
| And I do think twice about taxis.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| I always sit in the back of the taxi (just like what Waymo
| does), and that already significantly decreases my chances
| of dieing. And with bus it's again easily more than 5x
| safer than a car.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| As cautious as you are, you still get distracted, focus on
| the wrong thing sometimes, and have blind spots. Computers
| don't.
| lemonspat wrote:
| Computers might not get distracted, but have many other
| problems. And I assure you a computer can still focus on
| the wrong thing and have blind spots.
|
| https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-
| think/transportation/sen...
| colechristensen wrote:
| A computer error is going to be scarier by far.
|
| When a human kills someone with a car it is almost always in
| a way we can empathize. When you're around cars you have
| pretty good mental models for the humans that drive them and
| how the car will behave.
|
| When you're around human piloted cars you can look at the
| driver and get a pretty good idea of intent. You can tell if
| the driver sees you, you can tell what their mental state is,
| if they're paying attention, what they intend to do. You can
| sum up a person with a glance, this is the power of
| evolution, we're really good at figuring things out about
| other living things.
|
| Crossing the street in front of a car is a leap of faith, not
| troubling at all when there's a human there, but a robot?
| There's no body posture, no gestures, no facial expressions,
| nothing to go on. There's a computer in control of a powerful
| heavy machine that you're just expected to trust.
|
| Robot cars don't make human mistakes, they make alien
| mistakes like running down kids on the sidewalk in broad
| daylight, things which don't make any sense at all that make
| people feel like they aren't anywhere safe.
|
| It won't take but a couple of cute kids killed in a
| surprising matter to shut down the whole autonomous
| experiment.
| beat wrote:
| The one time I was hit by a car as a pedestrian was a
| driver who wasn't paying attention. He was making a
| perfectly legal left turn at a green light, except for the
| pedestrians in the way (me and my girlfriend).
|
| The danger with an autonomous vehicle is it not seeing you.
| The danger with a driver is not noticing you.
| dkobran wrote:
| > When a human kills someone with a car it is almost always
| in a way we can empathize
|
| Nonsense. You can empathize with someone texting and
| killing someone?
|
| This whole post reads like an attempt to appeal to people's
| emotional attachment to human drivers coupled with
| fearmongering about robots.
|
| You are placing far too much emphasis one our ability to
| "read" other drivers intent and the impact this has on
| automobile accident fatalities. Many accidents occur
| without any chance to see the offending driver e.g.
| accidents at night, someone switching lanes when you are in
| their blind spot, a drunk driver suddenly doing something
| erratic, etc. Moreover, this so-called advantage of human
| drivers is statistically meaningless unless you believe
| that the number of deaths due to automobile accidents is at
| an acceptable level and that it cannot be improved with
| technology, in this case, AV. I certainly don't believe
| that. In the not too distant future, I believe this
| position will be laughable. Through adoption of autonomous
| vehicles, many predict we will drastically cut the number
| of fatalities. Will there be issues along the road? Most
| certainly. But as long as the overall number is falling by
| a significant amount, we simply cannot justify our love
| affair with humans "being in control". We've proven to be
| perennially distracted, we have terrible reaction times, we
| have extremely narrow vision, we panic in situations
| instead of remaining calm, etc. and yes, these faults do
| lead to the deaths of children. These are not theoretical
| deaths like the robot scare tactic examples, these are
| actual deaths from human drivers.
| ksk wrote:
| >Through adoption of autonomous vehicles, many predict we
| will drastically cut the number of fatalities.
|
| Who are these many people, and why should we believe
| their predictions?
|
| > We've proven to be perennially distracted, we have
| terrible reaction times, we have extremely narrow vision,
| we panic in situations instead of remaining calm, etc.
| and yes, these faults do lead to the deaths of children.
|
| We've also proven that all software has bugs, and
| developers keep introducing new bugs in every single
| release. There is no reason to think that self-driving
| car software will be any different. Whats worse is that
| when software is updated, these bugs will now be pushed
| out to tens of thousands of cars - instantly.
|
| Bit much to call someones position nonsense when they're
| just skeptical of obvious stuff :)
| dkobran wrote:
| I was referring the absurdity of empathizing with drivers
| who kill people while texting, drunk, etc. (hence the
| quotation). What part of that statement do you agree
| with?
|
| But I'll go further and double down and say the entire
| post is nonsense. Why? Because the author's skepticism
| doesn't extend to the human factor. The position is not
| an accurate representation of the facts i.e what causes
| accidents (humans) and the known data around AVs today.
| If AV risk is so obvious as you claim then why does the
| enormous amount of data show that AVs are involved in the
| less accidents and lead to less fatalities than cars
| operated by humans on a mile per mile basis? And how is
| the negligent human driver not obvious as a source of
| automobile fatalities? The notion that we are safe
| because we can read humans is not substantiated by
| anything. Maybe you believe this number of fatalities is
| acceptable or the best we can do but I certainly don't.
| There will be flaws in autonomous vehicles, no doubt. But
| will there be a net reduction in automobile related
| fatalities as a result? Like anyone else, I can't predict
| the future. But to paint a rosy picture about how our
| ability to read other drivers is somehow safer relative
| to AVs is nonsense. It just is. The data doesn't support
| this argument. And separately, if we're talking about
| will happen in the future, the notion that humans will
| ultimately prevail over AVs because for safety reasons
| seems preposterous. We can debate the "when" in terms of
| AVs but debating the "if" seems pretty out of touch with
| the way society has progressed with respect to our
| willingness to depend on technology.
| ksk wrote:
| >Because the author's skepticism doesn't extend to the
| human factor.
|
| And your over-enthusiasm for AV doesn't extend to the
| human factor. We all have our own blinders ;)
|
| >The notion that we are safe because we can read humans
| is not substantiated by anything.
|
| That is your own misinterpretation. I did not read the
| comment that way.
|
| >If AV risk is so obvious as you claim then why does the
| enormous amount of data show that AVs are involved in the
| less accidents and lead to less fatalities than cars
| operated by humans on a mile per mile basis?
|
| What you mean when you say AV, is actually "AV + Human".
| We're running controlled experiments, limiting the
| unknowns, and we're mandating a human be present -
| because the current AV technology sucks.
|
| > We can debate the "when" in terms of AVs but debating
| the "if" seems pretty out of touch with the way society
| has progressed with respect to our willingness to depend
| on technology.
|
| People used to say that about flying cars 40 years ago.
| mcot2 wrote:
| We can eventually make AI do any of that better than a
| human by a long shot.
|
| We tend to overestimate the power of the human brain. There
| is a lot we don't know yet, but we shouldn't treat it as
| magic and unsolvable by AI.
| panta wrote:
| There is no evidence that AI can reach the level of skill
| and safety of a human driver. I'm not saying that it's
| not possible, only there is no reason to be sure of the
| contrary. IMHO we are extremely far.
| mcot2 wrote:
| And IMHO we are extremely close. There is lots of
| evidence that AI can be much _better_ than a human
| driver, although currently on things like well mapped
| highway driving with clear conditions. Whats going on now
| is just making that general purpose for all different
| types of enviornments.
| tuatoru wrote:
| > When you're around human piloted cars you can look at the
| driver and get a pretty good idea of intent. You can tell
| if the driver sees you ...
|
| This is a key area of driving that has been completely
| overlooked in AVs so far - giving feedback to other non-car
| road users.
|
| Not hard on the face of it (excuse the pun).
| asiachick wrote:
| Honda did an experiment where they added LCD's to the
| headlights to give the car expressive eyes to communicate
| to people outside the car.
|
| Also while it is scary to us and it will take a while there
| are already self driven vehicles we just take for granted
| like elevators and driverless trams/trains. Sure they are
| much easier to make but they weren't trusted at first.
| bwat49 wrote:
| and here I was about to make a joke about adding
| emoticons to the front of self driving cars
| Chyzwar wrote:
| Once self-driving is better we need to do is to create
| moral rules for AI.
|
| There is a car controlled by computer. Pedestrian (child)
| abruptly enter into road from behind cover. The Computer
| knows that with current speed it is impossible to stop. Its
| other choices is to drive into the sidewalk killing an old
| lady, drive into the opposite lane risking the life of a
| car owner and people in another car.
|
| A Human driver can decide on instinct, usually protecting
| themselves. The Computer needs to have an algorithm that
| decide who will live and who dies.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| > The Computer knows that with current speed it is
| impossible to stop.
|
| Then the car was going too fast. Full stop. The rest of
| your scenario is irrelevant.
| beat wrote:
| When a human kills someone with a car because they're
| drunk, or texting, I don't have much empathy for them.
|
| I read a statistic long ago - don't know how true it is,
| but it feels truthy - that half of all traffic fatalities
| happen between 9pm and 3am on friday and saturday nights.
| The fact that autonomous systems will never be intoxicated,
| distracted, or emotional makes me feel _much_ safer.
| staunch wrote:
| That stat seems to be very untruthy. Fatal crashes seem
| to be distributed much more evenly than I would've
| guessed.
|
| https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-
| vehicle/overview/crashes-b...
| beat wrote:
| Maybe not 50%, but there's certainly a strong bias in
| that data toward friday/saturday nights. Since the data
| resets at midnight rather than on bar hours, look at the
| difference in midnight-4am data on saturday and sunday
| mornings, vs the rest of the week.
| ealexhudson wrote:
| It only makes me feel safer if those systems are
| substantially safer than humans.
|
| If the systems are broadly as safe as humans _including_
| a significant set who are drunk / high / distracted, that
| feels subjectively much less safe even though the
| statistical number of accidents is the same.
| beat wrote:
| Oh, I concur. I want it measured against skilled, sober,
| attentive drivers, not "bad" drivers.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| A brick tied to the gas pedal will also never be
| intoxicated. It takes more than inability for
| intoxication to make a system that can drive a car
| safely.
| the8472 wrote:
| > It won't take but a couple of cute kids killed in a
| surprising matter to shut down the whole autonomous
| experiment.
|
| That is sacrificing the counterfactual children that
| wouldn't have been killed if the bad human driver had been
| replaced by an average autonomous car.
| dado3212 wrote:
| > Crossing the street in front of a car is a leap of faith,
| not troubling at all when there's a human there, but a
| robot? There's no body posture, no gestures, no facial
| expressions, nothing to go on. There's a computer in
| control of a powerful heavy machine that you're just
| expected to trust.
|
| This is something that's very solvable though. Robot cars
| should and almost definitely will have a way to communicate
| to pedestrians. I agree with the general point though
| around a greater possibility of very out of the norm
| mistakes.
| wool_gather wrote:
| There's an opportunity for them to communicate _better_
| with pedestrians than the average human driver. Drivers
| tend to assume that their intent to stop or not to stop
| is obvious and don 't bother with a clear signal like
| flashing their lights or waving visibly.
|
| From the pedestrian's perspective, it can be hard to see
| the driver at all (small movements of the hand can be
| invisible in sun glare; direction of gaze likewise), and
| also hard to tell what they're doing. Just because
| they're slowing somewhat as they approach doesn't mean
| they see you or intend to stop.
| jfim wrote:
| Drive AI (now acquired by Apple I believe) used to have
| LED matrix displays that communicated that way with other
| road users. I recall seeing them say things like "waiting
| for you to cross" or "driving autonomously" with an icon.
| toper-centage wrote:
| Good point. But it doesn't matter how carefully you drive if
| the road is full of idiots and intoxicated drivers.
| SoSoRoCoCo wrote:
| > I expect that in the end it will come down to a business
| decision, and that decision will be informed by an actuarial
| exercise: Will profits and insurance be able to cover the costs
| of defending and settling such cases.
|
| I'm seeing type of phrasing occur more and more. Once the
| defendant can be named in a legal action, we'll start seeing
| SDVs. IMHO, the worry isn't that they will kill, but that no
| one is to blame.
|
| Although it will change the day to day narrative of a
| pedestrian. E.g., My thought process will change from this
| person might not see me, to, that car's AI might not see me.
| ... or even "Oh, its a Toyota, they kill more than Hyundai...
| stand back!" But now I'm just writing SciFi.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| > But now I'm just writing SciFi.
|
| I don't think so. Normally whenever I want to cross the
| street (as a pedestrian, but even more as a cyclist) and a
| car approaches I (unconsciously) examine its speed, and if
| it's higher than acceptable I try to make eye contact with
| the driver to make sure they see me and it's safe for me to
| go. How do I make contact with the AI of the car? More
| importantly, how do I get the cue I've been noticed?
| SoSoRoCoCo wrote:
| > I try to make eye contact
|
| That's a really good point. I forget how often when I'm
| walking, running, or biking I will try to make eye contact
| with a car to make sure we're aware of each other.
|
| Now how do I do that with an AI?
|
| More things we need to start thinking about!
| njarboe wrote:
| I can't think of any product that has been developed since 1970
| that can kill people. The exceptions are medical devices and
| pharmaceuticals. I sure hope self-driving cars can be an
| exception, but that will definitely take a federal law limiting
| the liability of manufactures. Similar to how small aircraft
| manufacturers were being pushed to extinction due to very high
| liability costs until the passage of the General Aviation
| Revitalization Act in 1994.
| ghaff wrote:
| Lots of products _can_ (and do) kill people. But drug side
| effects aside, it 's hard to think of modern consumer
| products that, used and maintained properly, might just go
| and kill you some day and people being OK with that.
| drjasonharrison wrote:
| Boeing 737 Max? Ikea Malm dressers? Many products listed at
| https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls
| yadaeno wrote:
| Add cars and motorcycles to this list.
| yadaeno wrote:
| Cars?
| tgv wrote:
| Idk about risk: that is hard to establish. There are so many
| conditions in which an automatic pilot hasn't been tested. We
| don't even know the factors involved in estimating the risk:
| e.g., is it dependent on the human co-pilot? And self-driving
| cars may change the car usage patterns, exerting a contextual
| influence on the risk.
|
| Then there's the question of responsibility. Who will be held
| responsible when the automatic pilot is driving? If it's the
| human, then a high risk of causing an accident will be
| unacceptable to many drivers.
| HALtheWise wrote:
| It strikes me that a useful analogy here is the adoption of
| automatic elevators in buildings. In some ways, it's amazing
| that pretty much everyone in industrialized countries is OK
| with being locked in a windowless box controlled entirely by a
| computer, hanging over a hundreds of foot deep shaft, and in
| fact many people were terrified of that when Elevator operators
| were first replaced with computers. Some places even had
| operators employed to simply stand there and push the buttons
| to provide confidence that an trained expert was there, even
| though they didn't actually contribute to safety. Eventually,
| autonomous elevators got common enough that people will look at
| you really funny if you're not willing to ride in one, even
| though they are still responsible for ~20-30 deaths per year.
| ggreer wrote:
| Can you provide more info about people being terrified of
| automatic elevators? I searched around and everything I found
| seems to cite one NPR article from 2015.[1] The interviewee's
| book is out of print and costs $100[2], so that's where that
| trail stops. If public sentiment against automatic elevators
| was as strong as described, it seems like there would be more
| historical evidence available. It's easier for me to find
| articles disparaging self-checkout systems than for automated
| elevators. I realize the change in elevators happened long
| ago, making articles harder to find, but you'd think at least
| _one_ of them would have gotten digitized and indexed.
|
| 1. https://www.npr.org/2015/07/31/427990392/remembering-when-
| dr...
|
| 2. https://www.amazon.com/Ascending-Rooms-Express-Elevators-
| Pas...
| HALtheWise wrote:
| I just spent some time digging, but finding original
| sources from the ~1950s is really hard without a NYTimes
| subscription.
|
| These sorts of things look like promising primary sources,
| but I can't access the full text.
| https://www.nytimes.com/1949/01/12/archives/city-gets-
| elevat...
| https://www.nytimes.com/1949/02/03/archives/tenants-want-
| a-d...
| https://www.nytimes.com/1928/11/11/archives/elevator-law-
| cha...
| dekervin wrote:
| there is some kind of implied machine capability that a
| layman assign to a computer. If a task is culturally (
| through movies , series, ... ) though to be within that
| implied capability people will be comfortable. ( cf automatic
| trains, ... )
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| The difference with elevators is that the safety systems are
| actually in large parts independent of the control. Since the
| Otis safety elevator, you could go so far as to cut the
| elevator cord and it would still be ok.
|
| With self-driving cars, you don't have those type of backup
| safety systems.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| There will always be a long tail where the machines fail in
| scenarios a human can handle. We're just going to write off those
| deaths as an act of nature?
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| This is 100% just an artifact of a system going from human
| control to non-human control. Nobody bats an eye at systems which
| were never human controlled - or transitioned so long ago that
| nobody recalls human control.
|
| I've never seen anyone hesitate when getting on a fully automated
| train system at an airport or an elevator. Even more-so with
| amusement park rides that literally put people in extreme
| situations.
| stkdump wrote:
| In amusement parks you get a much smaller selection of the
| population than on the street or even at an airport. People who
| don't enjoy thrill just have no reason to visit them at all.
|
| Aside from that, all the systems you mentioned are mechanically
| constrained way more than a car. Accidents happen, when these
| mechanical constraints physically fail, not when a computer
| makes a wrong choice because it failed to detect an obstacle or
| similar.
| gremlinsinc wrote:
| Costs aside, what about something like mag-lev tracks for cars,
| that can start/go on a dime, and on freeways go faster, even
| switch lanes to get around slower traffic. Maybe even do away w/
| speed limits just go as fast as you 'feel safe' going with the
| only limit being the max. In cities you'd have sensors/grids
| everywhere to detect non-car traffic, and regular cars could even
| drive over the mag-lev, or it could be a separate track, and you
| can go in/out of mag-lev/drive modes. Maybe it parks you, til
| you're ready to take over control (say you're napping on the
| commute). Alarm goes up, you wake up. Stretch, even get out and
| stand up for a minute, get back in. Buckle up - drive the final
| block to where you want to park at your job, or if it's a country
| side location, up in the mountains, etc you might drive for
| longer then park where ever.
|
| Essentially you could just cover cities and highways to nearest
| gas stations. Car's running out of gas/electricity it routes
| itself to nearest depot.
|
| Going cross country and want to stop at lunch? Program the car,
| and it'll pull to nearest gas station in tim-buk-two and let you
| figure out where to go from there.
|
| Point: A/I self-driving aren't the only way to get autonomous
| cars. 50/50 re-thinking infrastructure, sensors, car-to-car
| communications could get us a lot closer faster.
| jhpriestley wrote:
| this is quite an academic exercise since a decade of intensive
| research hasn't brought us close to working self-driving cars,
| much less 1x safe self-driving cars, much less 5x safe, nor is
| there any clear path to resolving this open research problem.
| c1505 wrote:
| That might be their current stated preference, but I don't think
| it will be most people's actual choices. Imagine if self driving
| was available on every car right now with the press of a button
| and it was as safe or twice as safe as a normal driver. How many
| people would press that button, start texting, and just
| continuing to progress to paying less and less attention ? People
| already don't pay the attention they should when driving or when
| using a driver assistant system.
| franklampard wrote:
| On the contrary, you can argue that button saves lives by doing
| a better job than the reckless drivers who aren't going to pay
| attention in the first place.
| loeg wrote:
| Yeah, not to mention value of time. If I could hop in the car,
| at the same level of safety as my own driving, and spend the
| 1.5 hours to trailheads reading a book or even programming, I'd
| much rather be doing that than paying attention to the road.
| Causality1 wrote:
| Is 5x safer a realistic goal? There are limits to how safe a car
| can be on a road full of human drivers, no matter what sensor
| suite it has and how fast its reactions are. A vehicle can only
| respond so quickly to control inputs. Making a computer that's
| five times as safe as a human might be a thousand times more
| difficult than making one twice as safe.
| sliken wrote:
| Depends how you count. Being is 5x less accidents might be
| unreasonably hard. But causing 5x less accidents seems
| reasonable, especially since most humans are that safe.
|
| I don't have the stats, but I believe the worst 20% of drivers
| cause a large fraction of the accidents. That 20% often
| includes the uninsured, the unlicensed, the drunk, high,
| emotionally distressed, and the physically compromised (senile,
| low blood sugar, tired, etc)
| darksaints wrote:
| What so many autonomous car advocates seem to miss is that it is
| nearly impossible to meaningfully compare relative safety with
| current self driving cars, because we don't have level 5 autonomy
| yet.
|
| In order to compare them with current technology, you'd have to
| be able to answer the question: how safe would human drivers
| actually be if they didn't have to perform their most difficult
| tasks? Because that is what current autonomy does.
|
| I'm willing to believe that current tech is capable of being
| safer than human drivers, simply because they do so many things
| way better than humans do, like stopping for pedestrians and
| safely navigating around cyclists. But to compare them _in
| general_ , that is left to be proven. You can't just compare
| incidents per mile driven, because autonomous vehicles can
| conveniently opt out of driving whenever the task gets too hard.
| Bedon292 wrote:
| It definitely tends to be the already safer driving, like
| highways, that they do well on. I have a Model 3, and trust it
| pretty well on highways. However it does not do turns at all,
| and other 'city driving' type tasks well. It can now do stop
| signs and traffic lights, which seems to be good so far too.
|
| However, not living in an area with many sidewalks, I do not
| trust it for one second to navigate around pedestrians or
| bicycles. I don't think it will actually try to go around a
| bike but, I have never given it the opportunity to either. I
| take full control back and give them a very wide berth myself.
| jjk166 wrote:
| > You can't just compare incidents per mile driven, because
| autonomous vehicles can conveniently opt out of driving
| whenever the task gets too hard.
|
| But isn't that kind of the point? We use autonomous driving for
| the tasks where autonomy is objectively better, and we have the
| human do what the human is still better at. Best of both
| worlds.
| anoyesnonymous wrote:
| This should be calibrated to the risk the top X% of cautious/safe
| drivers, and exclude reckless, inexperienced, or intoxicated
| drivers. As a safe driver, you shouldn't have to accept risk
| calibrated to "average" (i.e. drunk, reckless) driver.
| tgv wrote:
| Exactly. Because now we can punish those individual drivers,
| lock them up, take away their car and license, but are we going
| to pull the plug on all cars with auto-pilot X because X is
| causing accidents? Is a small change in the software enough to
| establish it as a new driver? It's "smoking is good for you"
| all over again.
| grecy wrote:
| > _As a safe driver, you shouldn 't have to accept risk
| calibrated to "average" (i.e. drunk, reckless) driver._
|
| But you already do. Every day you're near a road, there is
| chance the next vehicle around the bend is drunk or reckless or
| using their phone.
|
| It doesn't even matter if you are in a vehicle or not - even as
| a pedestrian you already deal with them every day.
|
| It sucks, but it's reality.
| the8472 wrote:
| Why should it be? In the end the dead bodies count and it
| doesn't matter whether a cautious or inexperienced driver
| killed them. Inexperienced drivers are prerequisite of
| experienced drivers, there's no way to get rid of them.
| Excluding them from statistics is just discounting those deaths
| as... somehow less important?
|
| If a self-driving vehicle is only 1.5x (instead of 5x) as safe
| as the average human driver then you're not trading between
| _death by humans_ vs. _death by machine_ , you're primarily
| trading between _death by human_ and _spared by machine_ and
| only secondly between the former.
| ianhorn wrote:
| Let's say you hire a chauffeur to drive your kids around. You
| find out they've been drinking on the job and speeding
| recklessly. When you confront them, they pull out stats that
| they've been actually less drunk than average. Do you fire
| them and find a new chauffeur?
|
| When it's a robot chauffeur, you have to evaluate it like you
| would a human one.
| the8472 wrote:
| In this quite hypothetical scenario, if the statistics he
| cites are correct and also apply to chauffeurs (i.e.
| chauffeurs are not statistically different from the general
| population) then firing him and hiring a new one may not
| improve your situation. It would be better to invest in a
| breathalyzer or something. So what you're suggesting is an
| appeal to emotion, fire your driver to ameliorate your
| dissatisfaction even if it might result in an even worse
| driver. So to turn the question around, do you prefer false
| sense of of safety for your children or actual safety?
| ianhorn wrote:
| That's only the case if it's entirely statistical, while
| the whole point is that there are factors under your
| control. Hiring someone/something to drive your family
| around isn't a reversion to the mean. You can make
| certain efforts (interviewing, not tolerating bad
| behavior, etc). It's a third person version of the usual
| debate of 'I'm a safe driver' versus 'I only had like
| three beers and that was two hours ago' versus 'robo
| car.' If you bucket the first two together and throw your
| hands up in the air saying humans are humans oh well,
| you're pretending you don't have the agency you actually
| have.
|
| In the third person version, I suppose there's an
| implicit unstated option that while your particular
| chauffeur has evidence they are better than average, you
| have an option to hire someone more responsible. That
| aspect of agency is central here.
|
| > if the statistics he cites are correct and also apply
| to chauffeurs
|
| I meant compared to the general population. As in self
| driving versus general population stats.
| the8472 wrote:
| Ok, I see what you're going for. But then the question is
| how much safety is that agency buying you? And how many
| people even have an option to exercise such agency? You
| do not have it when it comes to other drivers that may
| cause accidents or run you over (or your children if you
| wish) as pedestrian. You have far less of it for taxi,
| rideshare or public transport services. And how many
| parents will drive their children even when they're
| stressed or haven't slept because the children simply
| have to go somewhere and they can't afford other options?
|
| In aggregate we can probably buy more safety by having
| policies that encourage replacement of bad drivers with
| merely average autonomous vehicles rather than attempting
| to rely on individual behavior to improve safety.
|
| If you want to still exercise personal options you could
| choose an autonomous car plus safety driver.
| [deleted]
| degrews wrote:
| > In the end the dead bodies count and it doesn't matter
| whether a cautious or inexperienced driver killed them
|
| It matters to the safe drivers. Bad drivers are mostly a
| danger to themselves. At only "1.5x as safe as average", it's
| a good deal for the bad drivers, but there are probably a lot
| of "2x as safe as average" drivers that are getting a bad
| deal. They are in more danger than before.
|
| Edited for clarity.
| beat wrote:
| I am a safe driver. (My measure: two moving violations in
| nearly 40 years of driving, the last one 16 years ago. No
| accidents in 19 years, no injury accidents ever. And I've
| driven daily for the whole time.)
|
| In the past couple of weeks, I've narrowly avoided hitting
| pedestrians three different times. Each time, the
| pedestrian was somewhere other than a valid crosswalk (once
| was on a highway exit). In each case, I think an autonomous
| vehicle could have handled it better than me.
| dunefox wrote:
| > Bad drivers are mostly a danger to themselves.
|
| Source? It seems only logical that the number of accidental
| deaths goes up with the number of bad drivers on the road -
| not just because they kill themselves.
| degrews wrote:
| I just mean that a disproportionate amount of the danger
| created by bad drivers is to themselves. I don't have a
| source, but I think this is obvious.
|
| My point is that, even if we lower the total death count,
| the safest drivers could still end up at greater risk,
| because a disproportionate amount of the reduction in
| deaths will go to bad drivers.
| sliken wrote:
| The most common accidents are a car hitting a non-car.
| dunefox wrote:
| Source?
| sliken wrote:
| IIHS says "Nationwide, 53 percent of motor vehicle crash
| deaths in 2018 occurred in single-vehicle crashes." The
| other categories being multi-vehicle and property only.
| the8472 wrote:
| How does that factor in pedestrians? Do they count as
| deaths in signle-vehicle deaths?
| jjj1232 wrote:
| This person is saying that on an individual level, they are
| not willing to cede control to an "average" AI when they know
| (or believe) themselves to be above average.
|
| You're talking about it at a societal level, as if everyone
| switched over to robot cars at the same time.
| the8472 wrote:
| We don't need to switch everyone over at the same time. For
| example we could start with young (more likely to be drunk
| and inexperienced?) or known-bad (traffic offenses) drivers
| where perhaps even sub-average autonomous vehicles could
| make a difference.
| Nimitz14 wrote:
| The people who will have money to buy new cars which can
| drive by themselves are not young.
| jjj1232 wrote:
| You're right, I shouldn't have said "At the same time"
| but the point still stands: your other comment was
| talking past the OP, not addressing their point.
|
| You're talking about it as a macro optimization problem
| while the OP was explaining a rational decision at the
| level of the individual.
|
| Edited for clarity
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| I've questioned the lack of driving experience as a risk factor
| since the pool of experienced driver excludes those who died
| becoming experienced.
|
| Assuming someone has a certain (constant) probability of
| excluding himself from the driving pool every year, over time
| the average percentage will drop as folks most susceptible from
| excluding themselves will have already done so.
| dunefox wrote:
| No, on the contrary: deaths through those drivers can be
| eliminated. It only makes sense to look at total number of
| deaths, including by alcohol, drugs, inexperienced drivers,
| elderly drivers, distracted drivers (smartphone, etc.).
| Isinlor wrote:
| Nobody will be forcing you to buy self-driving car for quite a
| while. But as a safe driver, you should care about eliminating
| the most unsafe drivers from the roads.
| falcolas wrote:
| As a self-identified safe driver, no action I am capable of
| taking will put an unsafe driver in a self-driving car.
|
| I'll even go so far to say that many unsafe drivers can't
| afford a self-driving car. They're often unsafe because their
| car is on balding tires, the brakes don't work, and the tail
| lights are busted.
|
| The rest, well, they simply enjoy driving unsafely and thus
| have no reason to get into a self-driving car.
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| "We arbitrarily chose a number so we could feel like we were
| making improvements. Nothing justifies 5 over, say, 3, or 10.
| When cars are in fact 3x safer, all those saved lives won't be
| saved, because our arbitrary 5 has yet to be reached."
|
| This is meaningless and bad.
| manfredo wrote:
| Why, though? Even in the case that it's the same safety self
| driving cars would yield huge productivity gains as people can
| work or sleep while commuting and truckers can have 1 or 2 self
| driving trucks following them cross country. And transportation
| for the elderly or disabled who cannot drive themselves.
| segmondy wrote:
| What's so magical about 5? Why not 4x or 6x. 2x safer will be
| 500,000 lives saved yearly. We can see that even 1.25x safer is
| very significant. Just weird seeing that magic number 5x...
| sliken wrote:
| Not magical, but you have to pick something. I suspect the goal
| is to pick a number that most would think is better than an
| experienced, awake, attentive (not looking at a phone) human at
| the wheel. So even the safest drivers would be safer on the
| road as the number of autonomous driven cars increases.
|
| At only 1.25x it might well be worse than you. Keep in mind
| that the average safe human driver includes people that are
| tired, high, drunk, unlicensed, mentally ill, physically
| compromised, etc.
|
| While common, someone getting killed because someone is drunk
| or asleep is much more acceptable than having a computer make a
| mistake.
|
| If we want society as a whole to accept autonomous cars it's
| best to show a clear benefit to society, not just better than
| 51% of drivers.
| Traster wrote:
| I don't think it's useful to talk about global traffic deaths
| in this context. Since obviously regulation will change by
| country, the difficulty of developing self driving will change
| by country, and road safety varies enormously by country. The
| US is likely to get self-driving first, but is already way
| safer than the average country, and the countries where deaths
| are higher are less likely to be able to afford the roll out of
| self-driving cars.
|
| In the US there are ~36,000 deaths from motorvehicle accidents.
|
| To give some context, America could improve their fatality
| right by 5x by bringing themselves into line with the safety
| standards observed in Western Europe whose fatality rate is
| already at around 2.7 per 100,000 people.
|
| It's also important to remember that self-driving is likely to
| represent the safest journeys - highway commutes etc.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| Something psychological I guess? Or maybe one group said 2x and
| another said 10x?
|
| > psychological mechanisms influencing the decision-making
| regarding acceptable risk
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| One issue that is often overlooked is that humans are pretty
| robust to unforeseen situations vs AI. Take for example the
| recent fires in California and the smokey skies. Many of the cell
| phone pictures did a horrible job of capturing the photos,
| because their AI had been trained that the daytime sky is blue.
|
| And with such a failure, all the cars with similar software would
| be affected at once.
| comeonseriously wrote:
| I want to know who is responsible when the AI makes the wrong
| decision and someone gets hurt. I want that to be fleshed out
| first.
|
| Beyond that, if SDCs are even _just_ as safe as HDCs, I 'm good.
| stkdump wrote:
| > if SDCs are even just as safe as HDCs, I'm good
|
| You might be a safer driver than the average human driver, in
| which case a SDC increases risk for you personally (and
| overall, in case the less safe drivers keep using non-SDCs). In
| that regard, we should wait until SDCs are safer than almost
| all human drivers.
|
| Most drivers believe to be above average drivers, which is of
| course impossible. But there might be interesting correlations,
| for example with social status. Lower social status does
| disadvantage people in many regards. I am sure that insurance
| companies have data on the question if they have more (fatal)
| crashes as well.
|
| And it does stand to reason that people with higher social
| status drive newer and better cars as well, so we could end up
| with a situation where the better drivers are replaced by
| computers before the worse drivers.
|
| Interestingly, I think an ethics committee said a few years ago
| that once SDCs are safer than human drivers, it becomes a moral
| imperative to outlaw non-SDCs. I am wondering, if they will
| explore the human driving safety 'distribution' before inacting
| such rules. Waiting for the 5x margin could solve that problem,
| because then you will probably have SDCs that are safer than
| almost all human drivers, and it could be an incentive for
| companies working on the technology to get to that level
| faster, than they would in case they start selling them en
| masse earlier.
| bumby wrote:
| Algorithm aversion is real and shows we prefer humans even in the
| face of statistical evidence that humans are sub-optimal decision
| makers. [1]
|
| I suspect it's because we inherently dislike the idea of handing
| control over to a complex black box. Barring sociopaths, we can
| reasonably assume to interpret how a person thinks. This isn't
| necessarily the case for algorithms, which leads to trust issues.
|
| [1]
| https://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=139...
| ogre_codes wrote:
| The big problem with numbers like this is how do you measure it?
|
| Tesla claims their system is vastly safer than human drivers, but
| currently it only engages in situations where it's already fairly
| safe to use. So should that system be 5 times safer than all
| human-driving, or safer than human-driving under the conditions
| the Tesla is able to engage?
| kstrauser wrote:
| I have an older friend whose driving terrifies me, but who lives
| in an area with effectively zero public transportation or
| reliable cab service. While I don't want to see this person on
| the roads, the alternative is literally moving into a senior
| community (which would probably be the death of this person).
|
| Frankly, if self-driving cars became .75x as safe as the average
| human driver, it would still a net safety improvement if got this
| person out from behind the wheel.
| Scandiravian wrote:
| So to speed up the adoption of self-driving cars, we could simply
| make human-driven cars more prone to accidents :p
| xibalba wrote:
| This is just the sort of outside-the-box thinking for which I
| read HN.
| Zigurd wrote:
| An oft overlooked factor in acceptance of AVs is that the
| evolution of technology from driver-assist to autonomy will alter
| perceptions:
|
| First, human drivers using driver assist will become safer
| "drivers" even though the added safety is properly the result of
| the technology that is evolving toward AVs. For example, it
| should become very difficult for a human driver to hit a
| pedestrian or cyclist. Not impossible. Just exceedingly unlikely
| to be the fault of the driver.
|
| Secondly, driver assist will habituate drivers and other road
| users to the performance characteristics of AV technology. The
| upshot is that AV technology will not be benchmarked against the
| way drivers and other road users behave and perform today. In
| some ways the expectations for incrementally better safety will
| be higher. In other ways, the "flavor" or road risks will change
| in a way that converges on how AVs perform.
| gamerDude wrote:
| A lot of comments are focusing on safety via driving better. But
| with self-driving vehicles, can't we make the layout of the car
| safer, and thus accidents cause less harm to the people inside?
|
| For example, right now because we need to see the road, I assume
| there is significantly more danger from the windshield vs. a
| padded back on both sides of the car with passengers facing each
| other like in a train car.
|
| It seems likely that we can make self-driving vehicles much
| safer, even with the same number of collisions, by just changing
| the layout.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| This seems pretty reasonable and also very possible to achieve.
| It would be insane to allow a technology on the streets that
| makes as many mistakes as humans are making. I certainly wouldn't
| use self driving cars if they killed 30000 people per year like
| humans are doing right now. How would you assign responsibility
| for crashes? Our current system is far from perfect but at least
| it's something people understand and know how to navigate. And
| there are drivers that are better and more cautious than others.
| So it's not just an illusion of control.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| I think the insurance companies will have a different and much
| more financially based standard.
|
| More importantly, I doubt NIH will trump that conglomerate and
| its influence on NHTSA
|
| Also, you could argue that restricting a technology that will
| result in 20% less deaths on the road is the opposite of the
| public health.
|
| To underline that, that is potentially 10,000 people in terms of
| death or major disfigurement. PER YEAR.
|
| And self-driving could be, in a targeted/situational manner FAR
| safer if it took drunk/drugged/tired drivers out of the equation,
| which are responsible for around 33% of deaths.
|
| If someone is drunk, a technology 2x an alert driver will be 10x
| a drunk driver.
| sreekotay wrote:
| Engendering trust and reducing materially regressive
| liability/litigiousness is a good call - and something that
| SHOULD be set as a standard by an external body.
|
| IMHO this is typically a good role for government regulation -
| setting a standard measurement of outcome for the public good,
| but not dictacting HOW that should be achieved.
|
| Now, we're just haggling over the price... __
|
| ( __as not-churchill infamously didn 't say...)
| dash2 wrote:
| On the face of it, the delay in accepting self-driving cars
| till they are 5x safer would cost thousands of lives in the
| interim (while they are only twice as safe, three times as safe
| etc.) Is there a reason ordinary people's views should have
| prescriptive force here? Maybe they're just flat wrong.
| jrockway wrote:
| Indeed. Why would 1.00000001x safer not be a no-brainer?
| renewiltord wrote:
| Because human lives are not fungible. If some guy somewhere
| else was gonna die and you make an intervention where I'm
| more likely to die then that doesn't work for me. I will
| oppose it to the end of my being (after all, the
| alternative is the end of my being).
|
| That is, if you take all the deaths from sleepy drivers,
| drunk drivers, angry drivers and replace them with random
| chance then I can no longer increase my chances of survival
| by not driving at night, not driving on holidays, not
| driving during commute hours, and avoiding shoals.
|
| Instead now you've taken my ability to increase survival
| and moved it into the base rate. Nope, I think I'd accept
| maybe a thousand other arbitrary people dying before I'd
| accept myself dying.
| nmca wrote:
| Sure, but in a democratic system with perfect information
| you should expect to lose the vote on your hypothetical
| "me vs 1000" trolley problem right? And in the absence of
| perfect information you'd I guess you'd mount a special
| interest lobby and hope for the best...
| renewiltord wrote:
| If it were me vs random one thousand and obviously so,
| yes. But fortunately, the Wobegon Effect makes it so that
| anyone can conceive of themselves being me (or even
| better, of themselves being better than me - considering
| I'm not particularly a safe driver).
|
| It is precisely because it is democratic then that makes
| it possible for any individual to exploit human cognitive
| errors. An authoritarian meritocracy would not fall for
| those tricks.
| dash2 wrote:
| It sounds like you agree that 1.0001 is a no-brainer, but
| that democracies may be tricked into rejecting it.
| sliken wrote:
| Well that 1.00000001x would include all drivers. Including
| those that are tired, on their cell phone, drunk, see
| poorly, senile, high, distraught, unlicensed, pissed off,
| etc.
|
| Do you really want more cars on the road driving worse than
| an average awake driver that's not drunk or looking at
| their cell phone?
| ianhorn wrote:
| Why don't we mandate that people submit themselves to a
| mandatory medical experimentation lottery? We'll do so much
| better if we go through as many people as we do lab rats, and
| it'll save unimaginable lives in the long run.
|
| Utilitarianism via taking current lives to save future lives
| is the wrong perspective here.
| dash2 wrote:
| There may be good reasons for the approach the article
| suggests, but this is not one of them. Nobody takes any
| lives, and there is no question here about experimentation.
| This is not a trolley experiment. It is a choice of two
| regulatory regimes. Under both of them, some people will
| die. If we choose the regime "ban self-driving cars until
| they are five times safer", then more people will die.
| msandford wrote:
| Arguing that people should do what you want, irrespective of
| what they themselves want leads to all kinds of pain, on all
| sides.
|
| "Why are people voting against their own self-interest?" is
| an analogous phrase. It seems awfully condescending to me.
|
| Nobody's bound to your perspective of what's rational. Better
| to just accept that this is the kind of hurdle that self-
| driving will have to jump over and work on getting there
| ASAP.
|
| Elon realized that the best way to get people to buy electric
| cars was to make electric cars that are better than gas cars,
| not to tell people they're wrong and stupid for not wanting
| to buy some inferior electric car. Once self-driving cars are
| obviously better than all but the best race drivers, people
| will accept them as a matter of course.
| dash2 wrote:
| I didn't say people should do what I want. I said that a
| random focus group's opinion does not necessarily override
| objective reasoning about what will save lives. Would you
| use this approach to decide whether the 737 should fly
| again, or what is the appropriate price of carbon, or how
| strictly to restrict activities during the Covid pandemic?
| davidmurdoch wrote:
| I rented a 2019 Mercedes last week and drove it for over 1200
| miles, most of which was driven with the cars driving assist
| technologies enabled.
|
| My guess is that because this car drives so "carefully", such as
| automatically following at a safe distance (leaving maybe a 3
| second gap between the car in front of it), human drivers will
| end up causing many more accidents. There must have been more
| than 50 drivers (with many annoyed stares into my window as they
| passed) that made unnecessary lane changes to go around me just
| to then closely follow the car in front of me.
|
| This large gap may make it seem like the car is going slower than
| it is, as so many drivers tried to overtake me but failed as
| slower traffic in the other lanes blocked them.
|
| Human drivers may just become worse over time as more law-abiding
| autonomous vehicles hit the road. "5x" might not be as much of an
| improvement in the future.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| I like the adaptive cruise control, because it drives more
| carefully than me. I have the same experience as you when I use
| it, regarding other drivers, but then I realize they're going
| to drive that way whether I'm using it or not. Therefore, I'm
| of the opinion that human drivers other than myself will cause
| the same amount of accidents, but I may cause less using while
| using it, so in the end there will be less accidents caused by
| human drivers as more people use adaptive cruise.
| [deleted]
| renewiltord wrote:
| I hope people aren't driving with cruise control in the left
| lane. I think I'd probably pass on the right to get clear of
| them.
| davidmurdoch wrote:
| This is _much_ more than just your classic speed-only
| "cruise control".
|
| You certainly couldn't drive with classic cruise control in a
| center or right hand lane (USA) for any extended period of
| time, at least not in normal highway-speed traffic where cars
| are merging in and out every few miles.
| opportune wrote:
| On the contrary, I think as AV and other semi-autonomous
| driving tech becomes more frequent on the road, people will be
| more easily able to recognize it and won't behave irrationally
| as you mentioned.
| davidmurdoch wrote:
| I don't share the same optimism. Many people already stare at
| their phones while driving on the highway (I especially enjoy
| jolting them back to attention with a friendly honk), I'm not
| so confident they'll pick up on the subtleties of autonomous
| driving.
| sliken wrote:
| My Tesla has a user settable distance, which I do change based
| on conditions to avoid becoming a hazard as people constantly
| try to fill the gap.
| davidmurdoch wrote:
| Interesting that a feature intending to increase safety ends
| up being a hazard.
| sliken wrote:
| It would be cool if the car defaults to my preference
| (which is a large gap) but adjusted it downward as more
| people fill the gap.
| Bostonian wrote:
| I think this related to the "illusion of control". People feel
| safer when they are driving, rather than a machine, even when
| they are not safer. I hope government regulators do not impose 5x
| safety requirements on self-driving cars.
| mlthoughts2018 wrote:
| If they are setting an objective measurement, how is that an
| illusion of control? In fact it seems like exactly the opposite
| - they are putting hard numbers on the level of risk they
| consider tolerable. They are making that available to everyone
| so they can debate and dispute it.
|
| If anything, this is _removing_ the illusion of control. The
| illusion of control would be to say you would _never_ trust
| self-driving cars. Saying you will trust them at a level of 5x
| measurable safety criteria above human drivers is totally
| different.
|
| Now we can make actuarial arguments about whether it should be
| 5x vs 2.6x vs 0.9x and debate how to measure the safety
| criteria - that's a completely different world from one where
| people "feel like" human control of the car is safer.
| dash2 wrote:
| For sure it is good to seek a measurable criterion. The
| question is whether laboratory subjects' views on the right
| level should have normative force. An alternative take is:
| these are just not-very-informed people, and unless they can
| give reasons for their views, we shouldn't take them
| seriously as inputs into the policy-making process.
| [deleted]
| VHRanger wrote:
| It's inertia rather.
|
| People can drive tomorrow because people can drive today
| macintux wrote:
| I think we also want someone to blame for an accident, and it's
| not at all obvious who to blame when a self-driving vehicle is
| at fault.
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| It may be easier to find fault in an autonomous vehicle.
| Assuming it has a black box that records sensor data, you can
| replay the algorithm and see what went wrong.
| ghaff wrote:
| Assuming the system is properly maintained and used, if
| anyone's responsible it has to be the manufacturer. Certainly
| the _passenger_ isn 't any more than if an Uber gets in an
| accident today.
|
| And, with the possible exception of drug side effect (and
| even there there are lawsuits), we don't really see consumer-
| facing products that, even if used as directed, kill a fair
| number of people and we just go oops. Let's say autonomous
| vehicles kill 3,000/year in the US, i.e. 10% of the current
| rate. (In reality, human-driven cars will take a _long_ time
| to be phased out even when self-driving is available but go
| with the thought experiment.) Can you imagine any other
| product we accept killing thousands of people a year and we
| 're fine with that?
|
| ADDED: As someone else noted, you could argue that tobacco
| etc. fall into that category but we're mostly not OK with
| that and is reasonably thought of as in another category.
| (And pretty much no one is smoking because they think it's
| good for them.)
| the8472 wrote:
| > Can you imagine any other product we accept killing
| thousands of people a year and we're fine with that?
|
| Unhealthy foods?
| ghaff wrote:
| Just about any food is potentially unhealthy if not
| consumed in moderation. A bag of potato chips and a Coke
| now and then isn't going to kill anyone. But a couple
| bags and half a dozen cans a day sure isn't good for you.
| And a porterhouse steak every day probably isn't that
| great for you either.
| the8472 wrote:
| You asked for accepted products that kill people, not for
| products that kill unconditionally. Foods are
| conditionally unsafe (if consumed in excess) just like
| cars are conditionally unsafe (if not operated
| carefully). Deaths by cardiovascular diseases (partially
| caused by inappropriate diet) exceed vehicular deaths.
| And yet they're accepted.
| ghaff wrote:
| There is no shortage of products that can injure or kill
| you if you operate them unsafely including cars. But you
| won't "operate" an autonomous vehicle at least while it's
| autonomous. An autonomous vehicle causing an accident due
| to a software mistake is the equivalent of a regular
| automobile suddenly losing steering control because of a
| design defect on a highway--and the latter would
| absolutely be a liability issue for the car maker.
| the8472 wrote:
| Right, I forgot that this was an argument about
| responsibility. In the case of food I guess there's some
| shared responsibility. The customers of course have a lot
| of choice here, but the manufacturer still optimizes for
| tastiness (increasing consumption) without necessarily
| optimizing for healthiness. That could also be considered
| a design defect.
|
| Perhaps for an owned autonomous vehicle the equivalent
| shared responsibility would be a user-selectable
| conservative ("comfort") vs. aggressive ("sporty")
| driving style. Or the option to drive yourself and only
| let the software intervene if it thinks what you're doing
| is unsafe.
|
| So, back to the question
|
| > We don't really see consumer-facing products that, even
| if used as directed, kill a fair number of people and we
| just go oops.
|
| The only very nebulous other case that comes to mind are
| unsafe computer systems in general. When a hospital or
| critical infrastructure gets hacked then this is treated
| almost like an unavoidable natural disaster rather than
| the responsibility of the operator or manufacturer.
| philipov wrote:
| If corporations are people, you should be able to bring
| criminal murder and manslaughter charges against them, with
| the top-level executives acting as proxies to serve the jail
| sentence.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| You may have to sue the manufacturer and prove that their
| system is at fault. Which is pretty much impossible
| considering the legal resources these big corporations have
| versus the little guy. This would end up like tobacco or junk
| food where companies were able (and still are) able to
| deflect any kind of responsibility.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| The illusion of control is a thing, but actual control is a
| thing as well. One possible reason to avoid self-driving cars
| is that there actually are safe and unsafe drivers, and fatal
| accidents in self-driving cars will presumably be a much
| flatter distribution among those drivers than the one we have
| now. Which means that even if they're safer overall, they could
| still be less safe if you're a good driver.
| brighton36 wrote:
| Doesn't this 5x requirement hurt more people than (say) 1.00001x?
| What am I missing here...
| toolz wrote:
| I think this high level of certainty is basically just the
| governments way of acknowledging they are terrible at
| gathering/defining useful metrics and so with a wide margin
| there's very little room for error on the politicians part. I'm
| unsure if this is overly cynical, but I don't expect
| politicians today became career politicians by worrying about
| safety more than protecting their political status. Further, I
| suspect media would look for any definition possible to blame
| politicians for deaths so politicians feel it necessary to be
| blameless before allowing interesting, progressive ideas to
| materialize.
| zebrafish wrote:
| I would say that we tend to reduce human flourishing to
| exclusively being alive. I think the 5x multiplier maybe covers
| things like loss of liability in an accident, a sense of
| ownership of the vehicle, loss of privacy or obscurity,
| regulatory or operational infrastructure costs associated with
| a switch to self-driving, freedom of choice, etc. All of these
| have some ultimate impact on human flourishing beyond just a
| binary dead or alive definition. My opinion is, if these aren't
| included in the 5x, they should be.
| notatoad wrote:
| This is not the government saying "we the government
| require...". It's the results of a study of what people
| believe. people's risk tolerance is almost never rooted in a
| rational calculation. Risk tolerance is based on emotion, and
| self-driving cars currently trigger an emotional response.
|
| As soon as self-driving cars become a regular part of people's
| lives and not an exciting new thing, the calculation will shift
| to a much more rational one
| Slartie wrote:
| This calculation is actually very rational. What you seem to
| ignore is that, with conventional cars, there is a relatively
| small amount of "known unknown" risks. There are of course
| significant risks, but almost all of them are known not only
| in kind, but also in quantity. Drunken drivers, dumb people,
| broken brakes, whatever. We have several decades of data
| regarding these risks. The amount of "unknown unknowns" can
| also be assumed to be relatively low, given that the concept
| of humans driving cars has quite a history now and largely
| stayed the same for a good number of decades.
|
| With autonomous cars, even once you have a few years of
| safety data from a large enough number of cars to be able to
| make the call of them being 5x less dangerous than human-
| driven alternatives in that data, you will still end up
| having much more "unknown unknowns" (of which I can't tell
| you any, because they are by design unknown) in addition to
| also having much more "known unknowns" like the possibility
| for large-scale software bugs potentially causing thousands
| of casualties at the same time. These risks will only go down
| slowly with enough time, there's practically no way of fast
| tracking getting these down, hence you have to incorporate a
| large enough risk buffer in your assumptions for
| rationalizing to even start using that fancy new tech, and
| the only place where this risk buffer can come from is having
| a much bigger difference in the "known knowns" department of
| risks.
| the8472 wrote:
| Those unknowns already are being elucidated by experimental
| fleets. Self-driving cars won't be deployed en masse before
| the vendors can already demonstrate solid statistics worth
| hundreds of millions of passenger-miles, which will be
| sufficient to get the fatality rate.
| Slartie wrote:
| How much does that tell me about potential software
| failure modes that don't kick in until a significant
| scale (speaking of double-digit percentages of all
| traffic, these test fleets are not even close to that)
| has been reached? Or about weird, but potentially fatal
| side effects of incorporating rules put up by regulators
| into the software that cannot be tested with today's
| alpha testing fleets because these rules might not even
| exist yet? Or about how good all these different AI
| vehicles of different vendors in very different software
| and hardware revision states interact with each other
| (think of situations like HFT trading algorithms that run
| each other into a doomsday spiral, just with vehicles at
| an intersection twitching around quickly in weird ways,
| trying to interpret each others actions)? Or about the
| hackability of future robotic cars (think for example of
| those slightly modified fake traffic signs)?
|
| Nothing. That's why regardless of how impressively big
| these test fleets are, there will be a lot more of these
| unknowns.
| the8472 wrote:
| Some of them seem like tail risks to me that are unlikely
| to dominate fatality statistics even if they were to
| occur and will be quickly patched or recalled if needed.
| Many of these hypothetical concerns could also affect
| existing driver assistance systems and aren't unique to
| autonomous vehicles. Hacking can also happen with human-
| operated vehicles. Interaction between multiple self-
| driving ones can also be tested with experimental fleets
| by concentrated local deployments.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| You are correct.
|
| However, how many people get hurt is not the only thing that
| needs to be considered. It's very likely that when a self-
| driving car would be equally safe as a human driver, the people
| who die in accidents caused by the car would be different than
| those who would die in accidents caused by human drivers, and
| so you'd end up with situations where individual next-of-kin
| could make entirely legitimate claims after accidents that
| their loved ones would be alive if not for the hellspawn car.
|
| Trying to convince juries that it's alright because for every
| person who die in the cars, two other people who would have
| otherwise died got to live would probably be tough. Especially
| as the accidents that the self-driving cars are most apt to
| prevent are ones that could at least partially be considered
| caused directly by bad choices made by the driver (DUI,
| distracted driving, falling asleep at the wheel).
|
| Once the data gets good enough that you don't need to do
| statistics on it[0], it becomes a lot easier to sell the idea
| to the public.
|
| [0]: Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2400/
| opportune wrote:
| 1.0001x is definitely not acceptable because dangerous drivers
| bring the total-human-safety metrics down. The "average"
| (median, or even maybe 25%ile) driver is probably much less
| likely to be in an accident (or fatal accident)than the drivers
| who drive most dangerously, e.g. frequently texting while
| driving or driving while intoxicated. So for most drivers,
| 1.0001x the average human rate would actually be worse than
| driving themselves, although they may find the risk acceptable.
| nextaccountic wrote:
| This is a psychological experiment. People aren't rational.
| rstarast wrote:
| How far do we think human drivers' safety level ranges? Like most
| drivers I'm falsely convinced I'm a safer driver than most, but
| still I expect quite a large range (say a factor 10 between 10th
| and 90th percentile?). It seems reasonable for self-driving cars
| to be expected to improve safety over human driving for the large
| majority of drivers, not just half of them.
| [deleted]
| dougmwne wrote:
| But how false is that impression that we are safer than
| average? I don't drive drunk, drugged, tired or distracted. I
| avoid driving in bad weather. I make sure I have good tires and
| brakes. I don't intentionally speed. I bet most accidents are
| caused by the above. I'm not interested in a self-driving car
| that drives like it's checking its cellphone after 3 beers.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Exactly this. Some people think that Tesla's autopilot is
| just great, better than a human driver much of the time. As a
| Tesla owner, I am flabbergasted by that. At best, AP drives
| like I do. That is, perfectly straight and between the lines
| down a straight road. With any curves, and sometimes just on
| straight roads, it drives like a high-functioning alcoholic.
| I can't imagine how some people drive normally where they
| think that qualifies as 'good driving.' Some of us are very
| attentive drivers -- I never look at my cell phone, I never
| drink and drive, I don't drive when I'm tired, I avoid
| driving in inclement weather or at night unless strictly
| necessary, I am a very defensive driver. I don't get tickets,
| I don't get in wrecks, and this is by design -- I take great
| pains to reduce my exposure to these risks.
|
| Personally I think the old joke about how 90% of drivers
| think they're better than average is both true, and also just
| a funny joke. We see a lot of perfectly good drivers on the
| road, but we don't notice them ... because they're perfectly
| good. There's only a few lanes on any given road, though, so
| if 10% of drivers in near proximity are crappy drivers then
| it practically shuts down the road. We notice that, and
| assume that most drivers are crap. Wrong.
| sliken wrote:
| I have a Tesla and I agree that it drives somewhat poorly
| compared to a Human ... when there's no surprises. Handling
| lanes and turns just moderately well, but not great.
|
| However it frequently notices things before I do. Lane
| splitting motorcycles approaching for the rear for example.
| Or a car in front of me slowing down, but not using the
| brake lights.
|
| It also does quite well when a car brakes in front of me,
| especially if it's a surprising slow down like on an onramp
| where I'm looking over my shoulder to merge.
|
| So while I've not had an accident of any kind in over 25
| years, I do appreciate the car noticing before I do.
|
| So while I don't let the Tesla drive autonomously, I do
| feel like I'm a much safer driver with the active
| assistance from the car and that the Tesla (even with the
| same sensors) will continue to improve. Not sure if they
| will hit full autonmous on the current hardware, they might
| need another revision (to add CPU and better sensors)
| before they drive better than most humans.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I don't disagree that at times AP has been helpful to me.
| The sensors do pick up on things, and if you are actively
| paying attention and ready to take over at a moment's
| notice, it is probably a net positive. Though on average,
| for me, things like the forward collision warning tend to
| be more nuisance than help. Startling, and of the half
| dozen times it's activated for me, once was me needing to
| notice that traffic ahead and suddenly stopped, the rest
| are things like right-turning drivers that are way out of
| the way but the car panics about them. Even on 'late'
| mode.
|
| The technology will certainly improve, however. Probably
| going to be quite a while, if ever, before I let it do
| _all_ the driving, though :). At least partly because I
| enjoy driving.
| the8472 wrote:
| > It seems reasonable for self-driving cars to be expected to
| improve safety over human driving for the large majority of
| drivers, not just half of them.
|
| Depends, do you want to save lives? Then self-driving cars only
| need to be a little safer than the drivers they replace. Which
| means if infrequent drivers with little experience that get
| replaced by robotaxis of average reliability could be a net-win
| in saved lives. Delaying their deployment until technology
| arrives that beats the most conservative drivers just means
| accepting a higher death toll.
| stkdump wrote:
| > if infrequent drivers with little experience that get
| replaced by robotaxis of average reliability could be a net-
| win in saved lives.
|
| I don't know if frequent drivers are inherently safer drivers
| than infrequent drivers. There might be the negative effect
| of reduced attention due to more 'routine'.
|
| But I seriously doubt that frequent drivers drive so much
| safer that they negate the effect of being exposed to the
| risk so much more. Is a person that drives 10x more than the
| average driver more than 10x safer? Why replace cars first,
| that don't get on the street a lot? And how do you organize
| deploying SDCs to infrequent drivers first? Unless those
| people don't own the cars anymore, but rent them, in which
| case I agree. That would increase utilizations of these cars.
| the8472 wrote:
| > Unless those people don't own the cars anymore, but rent
| them
|
| Yeah, that was the idea (hence robotaxis, not owned ones).
| It seems feasible especially in urban areas where car
| ownership is not essential so the remaining uses could be
| replaced by rented autonomous ones.
| rozab wrote:
| Would this baseline include all the accidents from distracted
| drivers, drunk drivers, drug drivers etc.? Or is it referring to
| an average human driver who isn't intentionally breaking the law?
|
| If the baseline includes all these sorts of human error, I see no
| issue with holding robots to a higher standard. Imagine if we
| rolled out robot policemen who only executed black people for no
| reason at the same rate as humans do.
| nelsonenzo wrote:
| Sadly, the news around facial recognition and AI seems to imply
| the government has been happy to roll out exactly that.
|
| I guess when the government contractors can profit off self-
| driving murders we will be good to go. /s
| maxerickson wrote:
| Without meaning to comment on how possible it would be to carry
| out on a policy level, replacing the worst human drivers with
| robot drivers that match average human drivers should be an
| improvement for everyone.
|
| It also potentially opens up policy options, or at least makes
| them easier to choose.
| lftl wrote:
| Interesting idea. I think there may be feasible political
| routes to accomplishing that. Tighten up the points system
| that basically every state uses for deciding when to suspend
| your license, and simply force those who would normally lose
| their license into robot driving.
| ksk wrote:
| What does "worst" mean? Did they get into an accident once or
| twice, but drive just fine on otherwise? Do they drive bad
| every single day? etc etc.
| aaaxyz wrote:
| >Imagine if we rolled out robot policemen who only executed
| black people for no reason at the same rate as humans do.
|
| Human cops still have to do the killing for now, but that's
| called predictive policing
| superkuh wrote:
| Behaving as a human would is often more important than staying
| strictly in line with absolute and relative positioning with a
| road.
|
| The semi-permanent snow cover on many roads in 1/3 of the USA
| that lasts weeks if not months in duration. Humans driving on
| these snow covered roads form emergent lanes having little to
| do with absolute positioning or even relative positioning of
| the curb. They form lanes based on what other humans do.
|
| Self-driving cars that depend on knowing absolutely where they
| are and relatively where they are simply don't and won't
| function. We need self-driving cars that can behave as a human
| will for that. And that is a _long_ way off.
|
| No autonomous car has shown it can handle these common
| situations. Until then self-driving cars should not be approved
| nationally and probably be restricted to the arid and warm
| states that do not have winter.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I think this is a good point. The best lesson my dad ever
| gave me back when I was learning how to drive was to 'be
| predictable.' People don't get in wrecks when everyone
| behaves as expected. And the rules of the road are largely
| aimed at guiding that predictability. But in the end,
| regardless of the written rules, humans behave as humans and
| a robot driver should behave like other drivers. And it may
| change based on locality.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Yes, exactly, this is always the same example I give (in my
| case the 401 here in Ontario, Canada) -- blizzard in the
| middle of February, lane markings covered, highly
| unpredictable road surface, spontaneous temporary lanes, cars
| working at a crawl, snow plows coming through that you have
| to move over for, and can't pass, cars or trucks jack-knifed
| or half in the ditch. This kind of thing happens to varying
| degrees at least once a year, and I honestly don't think that
| these scenarios are actually properly in the imagination of
| the primarily-California-based engineers who work on self-
| driving.
|
| For context, the greater Toronto region is 6 million people,
| and Great Lakes region from here over to Chicago is multiples
| of that. Winter is 4-6 months. This is not an insignificant
| edge case for a small population, and if self-driving can't
| handle it, no thanks from this driver.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Why not just drive manually during the blizzard?
| renewiltord wrote:
| Yeah, you will be last in line. An insignificant market
| with high entry costs. You won't have to decline, you won't
| get the chance.
|
| You're probably behind Tahoe in the line.
|
| Just like you don't get Google Fi or Google Fibre. And just
| like some countries don't get YouTube Premium or whatever.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Nice snark, but what I said applies to the bulk of the US
| northeast and midwest as well.
|
| (As for Google Fibre, that's a fun one as I actually
| worked on that product, though of course I couldn't get
| it...)
| renewiltord wrote:
| It isn't snark. It's just blunt truth. Those places won't
| get it first either. If self driving cars come about,
| their full feature set may well be geo-limited. Even
| covering just California, Arizona, and Texas would make
| the technology amazing.
|
| Not to speak of the Chinese, who will simply build their
| cities to include road beacons or whatever is necessary
| to keep AVs effective.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I'm sorry but it's troll-level behaviour to slap the
| "insignificant market share" label on the entire
| northeast and midwest which includes 6/10 of the largest
| "urban agglomerations in North America": https://en.wikip
| edia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_urban_aggl...
| smnrchrds wrote:
| "It is the arrogance of a giant American corporation
| which considers the correct spelling of the names of
| millions of Dutch people an edge case."
|
| https://medium.com/@hansdezwart/how-the-dude-was-duped-
| by-bi...
|
| Unfortunately, troll behaviour or not, that's how SF
| companies behave in the real world. The usability of
| their products tend to be proportional to how close you
| are (physically or otherwise) to the bay area. I live in
| Calgary and I would be very surprised (and happy) if I
| see self-driving cars here before the end of the century.
| renewiltord wrote:
| You're just not important enough for how hard it is. Why
| is that so offensive to you? You don't even _want_ it and
| you 're upset no one cares to offer it to you? Bizarre.
|
| Is this like not being invited to a party you didn't want
| to go to? Okay, then, maybe Tesla's snow driving test
| will give you the chance to ostentatiously decline.
| ksk wrote:
| Not the OP, but personally I don't want other self-
| driving cars on the road with me risking me and my
| family. We know how easily, and plentifully, software
| bugs get introduced every single release, I would imagine
| developers being the last set of people who are willing
| to risk their life on software.
| albntomat0 wrote:
| Does self-driving have to handle all weather conditions right
| away? A sensible implementation needs to take the current
| conditions into account, such as the weather and the status
| of the road and car. If those are bad, it would refuse to
| active itself, similarly to how a responsible human would
| choose to not drive in bad conditions.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| No, they do not need to operate in those conditions, but we
| have people seriously making proclamations about the
| imminent end of the truck driving employment industry as we
| know it, because "trucks will have no need for drivers."
|
| Those people are fantastically wrong. And that's just one
| example.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Yeah, but an autonomous truck could pull over to the side
| of the road and wait for better weather
| albntomat0 wrote:
| Definitely not all truck driving, but an autonomous truck
| that's able to handle highway driving in good weather is
| a much easier problem that would put a significant number
| of truck drivers out of work
| gremlinsinc wrote:
| Yeah, all you need is one truck to lead a 'train' of
| autonomous trucks.. Think of the conductor/engineer being
| the truck in front, all other trucks ride so close to
| each other they cut down wind-sheer to save gas. At
| specific exits one truck will detach from the group, go
| to a staging area where a local driver finishes the last
| mile while the train keeps on going.
| jjk166 wrote:
| More likely the truck-driving model would change. Instead
| of having one employee who goes where the truck goes,
| you'd have employees who reside in or near shipping
| destinations and meet up with the trucks for
| loading/unloading/fueling/maintenance/etc. On the one
| hand a given number of employees could service many more
| trucks along a single route, decreasing labor
| requirements, but at the same time covering large numbers
| of routes may take more people, or companies may focus on
| a narrower set of routes, offering more opportunities for
| smaller shipping companies. Odds are the number of people
| doing truck-driving related work would stay roughly the
| same, but the total volume of shipping would go up.
| ghaff wrote:
| Driving in a whiteout blizzard is one thing. But people do
| need to get around in northern states in the winter and
| they absolutely sometimes have to drive in snow (and
| sometimes snow happens mid-trip or you have to get home
| from another location). I certainly don't go out of my way
| to dive in substantial snow (and fortunately I don't need
| to commute any longer) but it sometimes happens.
|
| If it's just the autonomous system that doesn't work that's
| fine but now you really can't depend on the car unless
| there's a competent licensed driver who can take over.
| albntomat0 wrote:
| I think we're in agreement. My comment was in reference
| to a more advanced version of what exists currently: a
| car that can be driven manually and always requires a
| licensed driver, but can activate its automation on
| command.
|
| I think we'll have versions like that for a long while
| before we arrive at autonomous vehicles that do not
| require a licensed driver at all.
| randmeerkat wrote:
| Tesla just dropped a snow driving beta:
| https://www.teslaoracle.com/2020/12/29/fsd-beta-8-tested-
| for...
| kube-system wrote:
| Exactly. For the benefit of passengers, self driving cars
| should drive as well as a sober, attentive, well-behaving
| driver.
|
| When I get into a car as a passenger today, I already get the
| benefit of riding with a better than average driver -- I can
| identify and choose not to ride with people who are drunk,
| inattentive, reckless, etc. That's the comparison that is a
| more reasonable baseline expectation.
| ianhorn wrote:
| I think I read that ninety something perfect of driving deaths
| or accidents are people being irresponsible in the manner you
| said, but can't find a source again, so take it with a grain of
| salt.
|
| I was able to find one that of the 37k driving deaths in 2016,
| 10-11k involved BAC over .08 and about the same involved
| speeding. Not knowing the overlap, 10-22k/30k is 27-59% of
| deaths involving drunk driving or speeding.
|
| If it was on the high end of that, then to do better than
| speeding and/or drinking alone, you have to be at least 2.5x
| safer than human.
|
| I wish there were better stats on the safety of the sort of
| driver you would let drive you around (e.g. you wouldn't get in
| the car with your drunk friend behind the wheel).
| vincentmarle wrote:
| I find it weird that nobody seems to talk about the national
| security implications of self-driving cars. Imagine the Russian
| cyber attack we just experienced happening on millions of self-
| driving cars...
| errantspark wrote:
| This is already a risk with normal cars.
|
| https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-hig...
| xmodem wrote:
| To be fair with the amount of computer control and always-
| online features in current cars, this is already a huge risk.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Why would a state actor do this? It's a clear declaration of
| war, and probably wouldn't kill more people than suddenly
| launching missiles. Even if they could somewhat hide it, the US
| is prone to retaliate on fairly flimsy pretexts.
|
| There may be some terrorism risk, but any truly terrifying
| scenario requires a multitude of incredibly stupid design
| choices. Like constant internet connection, remote updates, no
| manual override, and a single widespread system. Hacking
| stoplights is roughly as scary.
| tgv wrote:
| It will cripple a country and its economy.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| So will bombs
|
| _edit_ particularly as an attack on self driving cars
| would be an intentional targeting of civilians, and would
| likely be considered similar to using chemical weapons.
| renewiltord wrote:
| If you do that we will launch missiles. You will not
| survive the attempt. See, this is the thing with stuff like
| this. "You can't prove it!" doesn't work.
|
| If a Russian terrorist cell (state sponsored or not) did
| this to American vehicles on the road, Putin will be on the
| phone begging to not be blown up. The leaders of a dozen
| countries will be on the phone begging us not to blow him
| up.
|
| It's like America's power supply. Notoriously easy to
| destroy, but if you _do_ destroy it, hell will rain down
| upon you.
|
| Because it turns out the devices that make the peace don't
| operate like the devices that operate in the peace. So you
| can't break them that easily.
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