5 ms·

Wow, and I must think we're looking to squeeze ~3 more orders of magnitude or more of the reliability before going full driverless ~(1m miles/disengagement)

notatoad 9y ago
is there a specific reason you think that, or is a million just a sufficiently impressive-sounding number?
- nopinsight 9y ago
  Motor vehicles are interestingly less fatal than our intuition suggests: "only" 11.3 deaths per billion vehicle-miles. [1] To my surprise, railroad travel is more fatal at 29.0 deaths per billion miles traveled. [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_United_States#Traffic_safety_by_mode_by_traveled_distance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_U... [2] http://www.caranddriver.com/features/safety-in-numbers-charting-traffic-safety-and-fatality-data http://www.caranddriver.com/features/safety-in-numbers-chart...
  - Judgmentality 9y ago
    Does that mean trains are more dangerous than cars? It seems that way, I just wonder if I'm missing something.
    - waqf 9y ago
      Looking at the BTS statistics: https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_02_01.html_mfd https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pu... you can see that 95% of railroad fatalities are classified as either "Trespassers" or "Highway–rail grade crossing". In both of those cases it seems likely that the victims are generally not actually passengers on the train, but rather are people doing something obviously dangerous near railroad tracks. (Also the denominator wasn't clear for the quoted statistic: is it per passenger-mile, or per vehicle-mile? In any case here is a sensible denominator: https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_01_40.html. https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pu...)
    - abainbridge 9y ago
      It's hard to tell. 1. I can't find the 11.3 billion statistic on the Wikipedia page. 2. The stats seem to be per vehicle mile. An average train carries maybe 100 times as many people as a car. If the people on the train were driving cars there'd be 100 times more vehicle miles. 3. Are people who commit suicide by jumping in front of a train counted in the statistics? It seems that if there were no trains, some of those people would find an alternative, so it might be unfair to include them.
kylegordon 9y ago
I wonder how many disengagements per unit of distance your average human has...
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  If you ignore low speed, low visibility parking lot stuff many people will go their whole lives without being in an accident that they are at least partially responsible for.
  - organsnyder 9y ago
    A "disengagement" isn't defined as an at-fault accident, though—it's a situation where the AI is unsure what to do, so it reverts to human control. I think the equivalent for a human driver would be a situation where they're unsure what to do, so they freeze up, or proceed extremely cautiously. I'm not prone to freezing up, but I've definitely encountered situations where I'm uncertain to the point that I proceed with the utmost of caution.
    - dsfyu404ed 9y ago
      My point was that an at fault accident is an obvious case of a situation a human cannot handle and that it at least tells us something about the rate at which humans "disengage". Human disengagement isn't easy to define. People don't just say "well this is too confusing, I'm just gonna turn control over to someone else". To define disengagement you need to define a performance minimum. An accident is about the lowest floor you can set to I used that. I would personally say that if you hit the brake on an on ramp while traveling slower than the highway traffic you're "disengaged." People and AI generally travel as fast as they can while maintaining a sufficient safety factor (e.g. people generally don't tailgate each other at triple digit speed and drive slower in snow). If someone's personal safety factor/comfort level requires several minutes of everyone else honking while they wait for a space fit for a semi-truck before pulling their Prius into traffic that may be acceptable to them but if an AI did that I think most people would say that's a failure even if the AI didn't turn control over to a human.
ilaksh 9y ago
Those were the numbers for a year ago.

notatoad 9y ago

is there a specific reason you think that, or is a million just a sufficiently impressive-sounding number?

nopinsight 9y ago
Motor vehicles are interestingly less fatal than our intuition suggests: "only" 11.3 deaths per billion vehicle-miles. [1] To my surprise, railroad travel is more fatal at 29.0 deaths per billion miles traveled. [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_United_States#Traffic_safety_by_mode_by_traveled_distance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_U... [2] http://www.caranddriver.com/features/safety-in-numbers-charting-traffic-safety-and-fatality-data http://www.caranddriver.com/features/safety-in-numbers-chart...
- Judgmentality 9y ago
  Does that mean trains are more dangerous than cars? It seems that way, I just wonder if I'm missing something.
  - waqf 9y ago
    Looking at the BTS statistics: https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_02_01.html_mfd https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pu... you can see that 95% of railroad fatalities are classified as either "Trespassers" or "Highway–rail grade crossing". In both of those cases it seems likely that the victims are generally not actually passengers on the train, but rather are people doing something obviously dangerous near railroad tracks. (Also the denominator wasn't clear for the quoted statistic: is it per passenger-mile, or per vehicle-mile? In any case here is a sensible denominator: https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_01_40.html. https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pu...)
  - abainbridge 9y ago
    It's hard to tell. 1. I can't find the 11.3 billion statistic on the Wikipedia page. 2. The stats seem to be per vehicle mile. An average train carries maybe 100 times as many people as a car. If the people on the train were driving cars there'd be 100 times more vehicle miles. 3. Are people who commit suicide by jumping in front of a train counted in the statistics? It seems that if there were no trains, some of those people would find an alternative, so it might be unfair to include them.

kylegordon 9y ago

I wonder how many disengagements per unit of distance your average human has...

dsfyu404ed 9y ago
If you ignore low speed, low visibility parking lot stuff many people will go their whole lives without being in an accident that they are at least partially responsible for.
- organsnyder 9y ago
  A "disengagement" isn't defined as an at-fault accident, though—it's a situation where the AI is unsure what to do, so it reverts to human control. I think the equivalent for a human driver would be a situation where they're unsure what to do, so they freeze up, or proceed extremely cautiously. I'm not prone to freezing up, but I've definitely encountered situations where I'm uncertain to the point that I proceed with the utmost of caution.
  - dsfyu404ed 9y ago
    My point was that an at fault accident is an obvious case of a situation a human cannot handle and that it at least tells us something about the rate at which humans "disengage". Human disengagement isn't easy to define. People don't just say "well this is too confusing, I'm just gonna turn control over to someone else". To define disengagement you need to define a performance minimum. An accident is about the lowest floor you can set to I used that. I would personally say that if you hit the brake on an on ramp while traveling slower than the highway traffic you're "disengaged." People and AI generally travel as fast as they can while maintaining a sufficient safety factor (e.g. people generally don't tailgate each other at triple digit speed and drive slower in snow). If someone's personal safety factor/comfort level requires several minutes of everyone else honking while they wait for a space fit for a semi-truck before pulling their Prius into traffic that may be acceptable to them but if an AI did that I think most people would say that's a failure even if the AI didn't turn control over to a human.

ilaksh 9y ago

Those were the numbers for a year ago.