4 ms·

Not disagreeing, but is there any hard, independent third-party research to back up this claim? As an engineer, I tend to lean this way. As a father of two, I w

Not disagreeing, but is there any hard, independent third-party research to back up this claim? As an engineer, I tend to lean this way. As a father of two, I want to see some numbers to back up statements like "still safer than a human driving alone, period."

jfoutz 10y ago
Hard to find current statistics. This [1] seems pretty believable. Not sure if it's "good" or not, but there you go. It's interesting that, just eyeballing it, mass seems to be the dominating factor. The crown vic is discontinued, but was fairly inexpensive, looks like it was originally $25-30,000. Compared to a C Class, $30-35,000, which had more fatalities. Of course, this is all 5 years old, so maybe there are better safety features available now. There are a couple of things that may or may not be believable. Maybe it's possible for one or a few drivers to greatly improve the global traffic system [2]. I believe it, but i can't find a real study that proves it. I do think a handful of self driving cars can smooth out those compression waves, just by driving sanely. Finally, purely anecdotally, a friend of mine is a truck driver. We get to catch up over dinner every few months. He sees people doing crazy things multiple times a day. He sees the helicopter ambulances on a weekly basis, passing by wrecks in either direction. His assertion, if people would just stay calm and consistent, a lot fewer people would die. It's either someone not paying attention, or being super aggressive. I, also, would like to see a study. I would bet quite a bit of money, that a highway with only autopilot drivers would have zero wrecks. I guess the real question is, does sensor failure (device failure, snow, things like that) dominate wrecks? or is it interaction with unpredictable (aggressive, inattentive) drivers? [1] (pdf) http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/Driver_DeathRates_sr5001_emb.pdf http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/Driver_DeathRates_sr5001_e... [2] http://trafficwaves.org/ http://trafficwaves.org/

jfoutz 10y ago

Hard to find current statistics. This [1] seems pretty believable. Not sure if it's "good" or not, but there you go. It's interesting that, just eyeballing it, mass seems to be the dominating factor. The crown vic is discontinued, but was fairly inexpensive, looks like it was originally $25-30,000. Compared to a C Class, $30-35,000, which had more fatalities. Of course, this is all 5 years old, so maybe there are better safety features available now. There are a couple of things that may or may not be believable. Maybe it's possible for one or a few drivers to greatly improve the global traffic system [2]. I believe it, but i can't find a real study that proves it. I do think a handful of self driving cars can smooth out those compression waves, just by driving sanely. Finally, purely anecdotally, a friend of mine is a truck driver. We get to catch up over dinner every few months. He sees people doing crazy things multiple times a day. He sees the helicopter ambulances on a weekly basis, passing by wrecks in either direction. His assertion, if people would just stay calm and consistent, a lot fewer people would die. It's either someone not paying attention, or being super aggressive. I, also, would like to see a study. I would bet quite a bit of money, that a highway with only autopilot drivers would have zero wrecks. I guess the real question is, does sensor failure (device failure, snow, things like that) dominate wrecks? or is it interaction with unpredictable (aggressive, inattentive) drivers? [1] (pdf) http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/Driver_DeathRates_sr5001_emb.pdf http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/Driver_DeathRates_sr5001_e... [2] http://trafficwaves.org/ http://trafficwaves.org/