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How so you feel about the 30k people who die each year the tech is delayed? Or do you really think the litigation system (where currently car manufactures almos

How so you feel about the 30k people who die each year the tech is delayed? Or do you really think the litigation system (where currently car manufactures almost are never liable) is properly tuned to minimize the time until that is achieved?

pjc50 9y ago
This all hinges on the unknowable of how safe the competing system will be. And how long it will take to roll out - a decade at absolute best before 50% of journeys are done with no human attention. Launching unsafe self-driving cars will delay the rollout as soon as the first big accident happens.
iainmerrick 9y ago
How do you feel about the 30k people who die each year the tech is delayed? I'd say, let's ban using your phone while driving and drinking before driving like many other countries did 10 and 20 years ago. That could save 15k of those people right away.
- curioussavage 9y ago
  I’m pretty sure we have laws for that everywhere in the US
- jessriedel 9y ago
  Over the past decades, phone usage has surged while deaths have fallen or stayed flat (modulo the miniscule uptick that was all over the news). Distracted driving is dangerous, but phones aren't contributing nearly that much (and it's mostly illegal). Drunk driving is super deadly, but it's already illegal. More importantly, self-driving cars will be vastly more effective at getting drunk drivers out from behind the wheel than all the legistlative in the world.
  - iainmerrick 9y ago
    Driving while using a phone is illegal in most areas, but still very common, just like speeding -- it clearly isn't being addressed very seriously. And standards for "drunk driving" vary a lot; sometimes you're allowed two or even three drinks before driving. Another commenter here linked to an excellent NYT article exploring this: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/19/opinion/america-is-now-an-outlier-on-driving-deaths.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/19/opinion/america-is-now-an... The US had one of the world's lowest rates of driving deaths in 1990, but since then other countries have pulled ahead significantly. Why is that?
    - jessriedel 9y ago
      I could imagine a million reasons. Maybe the US has a higher natural rate of accidents but deaths have fallen earlier because we implement sophisticated safety tech earlier. But once safety tech reaches diminishing returns, other countries pass us.
      - iainmerrick 9y ago
        Maybe the US has a higher natural rate of accidents Natural?? Roads and cars are all human-made! Are you saying the "deaths per road mile travelled" metric is wrong or biased somehow?
        jessriedel 9y ago
        "Natural" in this context is just shorthand for "at fixed level of safety tech". You can substitute "baseline" if you want.
        iainmerrick 9y ago
        Why would the US have roughly the same baseline safety as everywhere else in 1990, but be 2x worse today?
        jessriedel 9y ago
rhino369 9y ago
One way to roll out the tech is to do a hybrid system. Instead of selling self-driving tech as a convenience, the tech could be used to backup human driving. If the car sees I missed a stop sign, it could stop. The goal shouldn't be a self driving car better than humans, but a self driving car better than a human driven car with automated safeguards.
- Caprinicus 9y ago
  This is the case with a lot of implementations, and it’s really lot a good idea if you want people to actually use it that way. Ignoring the effect that kind of system has had on pilots, in the automotive industry it’s just going to put poor systems into use under the guise of “well you shouldn’t be counting on it anyways” Either something works well enough to be used throughout an entire use case with less failure than a human (driving on a stretch of highway, switching lanes, getting off at an exit, etc) or it isn’t

pjc50 9y ago

This all hinges on the unknowable of how safe the competing system will be. And how long it will take to roll out - a decade at absolute best before 50% of journeys are done with no human attention. Launching unsafe self-driving cars will delay the rollout as soon as the first big accident happens.

iainmerrick 9y ago

How do you feel about the 30k people who die each year the tech is delayed? I'd say, let's ban using your phone while driving and drinking before driving like many other countries did 10 and 20 years ago. That could save 15k of those people right away.

curioussavage 9y ago
I’m pretty sure we have laws for that everywhere in the US
jessriedel 9y ago
Over the past decades, phone usage has surged while deaths have fallen or stayed flat (modulo the miniscule uptick that was all over the news). Distracted driving is dangerous, but phones aren't contributing nearly that much (and it's mostly illegal). Drunk driving is super deadly, but it's already illegal. More importantly, self-driving cars will be vastly more effective at getting drunk drivers out from behind the wheel than all the legistlative in the world.
- iainmerrick 9y ago
  Driving while using a phone is illegal in most areas, but still very common, just like speeding -- it clearly isn't being addressed very seriously. And standards for "drunk driving" vary a lot; sometimes you're allowed two or even three drinks before driving. Another commenter here linked to an excellent NYT article exploring this: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/19/opinion/america-is-now-an-outlier-on-driving-deaths.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/19/opinion/america-is-now-an... The US had one of the world's lowest rates of driving deaths in 1990, but since then other countries have pulled ahead significantly. Why is that?
  - jessriedel 9y ago
    I could imagine a million reasons. Maybe the US has a higher natural rate of accidents but deaths have fallen earlier because we implement sophisticated safety tech earlier. But once safety tech reaches diminishing returns, other countries pass us.
    - iainmerrick 9y ago
      Maybe the US has a higher natural rate of accidents Natural?? Roads and cars are all human-made! Are you saying the "deaths per road mile travelled" metric is wrong or biased somehow?
      - jessriedel 9y ago
        "Natural" in this context is just shorthand for "at fixed level of safety tech". You can substitute "baseline" if you want.
        iainmerrick 9y ago
        Why would the US have roughly the same baseline safety as everywhere else in 1990, but be 2x worse today?
        jessriedel 9y ago

rhino369 9y ago

One way to roll out the tech is to do a hybrid system. Instead of selling self-driving tech as a convenience, the tech could be used to backup human driving. If the car sees I missed a stop sign, it could stop. The goal shouldn't be a self driving car better than humans, but a self driving car better than a human driven car with automated safeguards.

Caprinicus 9y ago
This is the case with a lot of implementations, and it’s really lot a good idea if you want people to actually use it that way. Ignoring the effect that kind of system has had on pilots, in the automotive industry it’s just going to put poor systems into use under the guise of “well you shouldn’t be counting on it anyways” Either something works well enough to be used throughout an entire use case with less failure than a human (driving on a stretch of highway, switching lanes, getting off at an exit, etc) or it isn’t