3 ms·

>How safe does a self-driving car have to be before it is allowed on the road? I'd argue that self driving cars just don't have to be safer than average driver

>How safe does a self-driving car have to be before it is allowed on the road? I'd argue that self driving cars just don't have to be safer than average drivers. They should be safer than average drivers with computer driving assistance. It's already happening, but we can take the self driving programs and use them with human drivers. To get a best of both worlds scenario. Of course we'd have to mandate all new cars come with computer driving assistance. The counter argument is that we accept the risk of cars now, why not let self driving cars have the same level of risk. My answer is that the risk of cars is so great we either shouldn't be accepting it or are only accepting it because there isn't an easy alternative. A lot of Americans die on the roads.

maxerickson 11y ago
It depends on the distribution of drivers that cause incidents. If the average (mean) driver is involved in an average number of incidents, then fine, base the safety estimation on them. If the average driver is involved in a below average number of incidents, the safety standard should be tuned to the drivers that are involved in incidents.
- melling 11y ago
  When we calculate averages, are we including the number of drunk driving accidents, for example? 10,000 Americans are killed every year due to that. If we calculate equivalent accident rates that include impaired humans, I'm not sure that's good enough. Computer + human should be able to address this problem, right? Reduce speed, pull over and stop, if someone can't drive between the lines or they are driving the wrong direction on a road.
vvanders 11y ago
That's a good point, there's been some recent stats(don't have them on-hand) showing AEB making serious improvement in collision and injury rates.
stormbrew 11y ago
I think there is a point where assisted driving no longer becomes practical, and either the evolution of autonomous cars has to stop to allow the driver to have a continued say in how the car reacts to its environment or move on to where there is just no place for time-sensitive human input any more. As drivers trust their cars more they will pay attention less (not to mention practice less, an even deeper problem for post-autonomous-car generations than those before), and their ability to meaningfully react to stimulus will be roughly nil. If we chose the former we are probably arbitrarily limiting our safety in order to save the ego of a human driver. If we chose the latter we will reach a point where we won't have a steering wheel for a driver to potentially become a hazard rather than a help.
cfcef 11y ago
Do we expect computer assistance to make much of a difference? Right now they handle the easy tasks like highway driving which don't account for many accidents, as far as I know.
davnicwil 11y ago
You make an incredibly good point - whilst any safety improvement at all is obviously and unquestionably a good thing, we can take this opportunity to step back and analyse the situation we've found ourselves in, and decide that the status quo is far from good enough and we should in fact be aiming to do much, much better. A convenient advantage of regulating for self-driving vehicles is that we can put minimum safety standards into law quite easily, and enforce them meaningfully - because the prize for reaching and adhering to those standards is so great for the players involved, and because we have a relatively clean regulatory slate because of the clear step-change in the technology. As well as the most important factor, safety, it could also be possible to step back and consider the other disadvantageous side-effects of the current status quo with cars, particularly in cities - noise, traffic congestion, wide roads with thin pavements/sidewalks for pedestrians, indeed a general culture of cars having priority over pedestrians in various situations where the number of pedestrians is much greater than the number of people in the cars. These are all things which, depending on the city and the culture, can be really significant problems and which I'm sure would never be tolerated had they not crept up on us over decades. Regulating both for and with the capabilities of self-driving vehicles might give us opportunity to vastly improve the status quo in these areas, too, in a relatively short period of time. It could be quite important to take advantage of the opportunity to realise such optimistic targets now, starting green field, as it can only get more difficult and become much slower to implement after the first set of regulations has been put into effect.

maxerickson 11y ago

It depends on the distribution of drivers that cause incidents. If the average (mean) driver is involved in an average number of incidents, then fine, base the safety estimation on them. If the average driver is involved in a below average number of incidents, the safety standard should be tuned to the drivers that are involved in incidents.

melling 11y ago
When we calculate averages, are we including the number of drunk driving accidents, for example? 10,000 Americans are killed every year due to that. If we calculate equivalent accident rates that include impaired humans, I'm not sure that's good enough. Computer + human should be able to address this problem, right? Reduce speed, pull over and stop, if someone can't drive between the lines or they are driving the wrong direction on a road.

vvanders 11y ago

That's a good point, there's been some recent stats(don't have them on-hand) showing AEB making serious improvement in collision and injury rates.

stormbrew 11y ago

I think there is a point where assisted driving no longer becomes practical, and either the evolution of autonomous cars has to stop to allow the driver to have a continued say in how the car reacts to its environment or move on to where there is just no place for time-sensitive human input any more. As drivers trust their cars more they will pay attention less (not to mention practice less, an even deeper problem for post-autonomous-car generations than those before), and their ability to meaningfully react to stimulus will be roughly nil. If we chose the former we are probably arbitrarily limiting our safety in order to save the ego of a human driver. If we chose the latter we will reach a point where we won't have a steering wheel for a driver to potentially become a hazard rather than a help.

cfcef 11y ago

Do we expect computer assistance to make much of a difference? Right now they handle the easy tasks like highway driving which don't account for many accidents, as far as I know.

davnicwil 11y ago

You make an incredibly good point - whilst any safety improvement at all is obviously and unquestionably a good thing, we can take this opportunity to step back and analyse the situation we've found ourselves in, and decide that the status quo is far from good enough and we should in fact be aiming to do much, much better. A convenient advantage of regulating for self-driving vehicles is that we can put minimum safety standards into law quite easily, and enforce them meaningfully - because the prize for reaching and adhering to those standards is so great for the players involved, and because we have a relatively clean regulatory slate because of the clear step-change in the technology. As well as the most important factor, safety, it could also be possible to step back and consider the other disadvantageous side-effects of the current status quo with cars, particularly in cities - noise, traffic congestion, wide roads with thin pavements/sidewalks for pedestrians, indeed a general culture of cars having priority over pedestrians in various situations where the number of pedestrians is much greater than the number of people in the cars. These are all things which, depending on the city and the culture, can be really significant problems and which I'm sure would never be tolerated had they not crept up on us over decades. Regulating both for and with the capabilities of self-driving vehicles might give us opportunity to vastly improve the status quo in these areas, too, in a relatively short period of time. It could be quite important to take advantage of the opportunity to realise such optimistic targets now, starting green field, as it can only get more difficult and become much slower to implement after the first set of regulations has been put into effect.