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One study by RAND says: "Autonomous vehicles would have to be driven hundreds of millions of miles and, under some scenarios, hundreds of billions of miles to c

One study by RAND says: "Autonomous vehicles would have to be driven hundreds of millions of miles and, under some scenarios, hundreds of billions of miles to create enough data to clearly demonstrate their safety... Under even the most-aggressive test driving assumptions, it would take existing fleets of autonomous vehicles tens and even hundreds of years to log sufficient miles to adequately assess the safety of the vehicles when compared to human-driven vehicles" https://www.rand.org/news/press/2016/04/12.html https://www.rand.org/news/press/2016/04/12.html That being said, RAND released a study this month, targeted at policymakers, that models how many human lives would be saved given the introduction of non-perfect autonomous vehicles, including a little javascript widget to try out various settings: https://www.rand.org/blog/articles/2017/11/why-waiting-for-perfect-autonomous-vehicles-may-cost-lives.html https://www.rand.org/blog/articles/2017/11/why-waiting-for-p... Crucially, this study models scenarios such as AVs being _half_ as safe as human drivers, yet still resulting in saving more lives over time. I think the question then becomes, who will be responsible for the missing 50% of safety when somebody gets killed by one? Edit: Another question: if somebody you loved was killed by a self-driving car, would you be comforted in knowing that the technology was in aggregate saving the lives of other people? I have no answers to these questions... it's a hard problem.

gowld 9y ago
> including a little javascript widget This is great. You can make any model say anything you want by tuning the parameters, so we needs researchers to stop forcing their preferred parameters, and let consumers check the robustness of the conclusions against ranges of parameters > if somebody you loved was killed by a self-driving car, would you be comforted in knowing that the technology was in aggregate saving the lives of other people? and if somebody you loved was killed by a human-driven car, would you be comforted in knowing that the technology was in aggregate was being held back for further testing?
- nerfhammer 9y ago
  > if somebody you loved was killed by a self-driving car, would you be comforted in knowing that the technology was in aggregate saving the lives of other people? with a handful of centralized systems responsible for every accident everyone will be permanently panicked and outraged at its purportedly uncaring, greedy overlords. > if somebody you loved was killed by a human-driven car, would you be comforted in knowing that the technology was in aggregate was being held back for further testing? counterfactuals need to be near and specific for people to give them much thought, see: http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~schaller/Psyc590Readings/Roese1997.pdf http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~schaller/Psyc590Readings/Roese1997... http://www3.canyons.edu/faculty/rafterm/0%200LLI%20LOVEandLOSS/Day%206%20Files/1986%20-%20Norm%20Theory%20-%20Comparing%20Reality%20to%20Its%20Alternatives.pdf http://www3.canyons.edu/faculty/rafterm/0%200LLI%20LOVEandLO...
taneq 9y ago
> Another question: if somebody you loved was killed by a self-driving car, would you be comforted in knowing that the technology was in aggregate saving the lives of other people? I have no answers to these questions... it's a hard problem. We already have analogous situations with things like airbags. Airbags unarguably save lives, and yet they've also unarguably killed kids.
- gatmne 9y ago
  How many of those deceased children would have survived the collision if no airbags were installed? Self-driving cars preform predictably under a set of conditions. The primary problem arises when the car, for whatever reason, doesn't correctly detect that it's in an unfamiliar condition and continues moving as normal. Humans are intelligent enough to notice when something is "off". For a machine as heavy, large, fast, and close as a car, limited intelligence is not enough.
vadimberman 9y ago
> Crucially, this study models scenarios such as AVs being _half_ as safe as human drivers See, this is the main reason why AVs are great: accidents are caused by speeders, drunk, tired, inexperienced drivers, morons driving while high on pot or ecstasy, that is, those who are MUCH worse than an average driver used as a yardstick to measure the performance of the autonomous cars. Replace them by an imperfect machine lacking common sense, and the overall driving skill still goes up.
- lambdadmitry 9y ago
  The "replacement" implies that people you mentioned want to be replaced. I don't think that's the case; speeders will just disable AI and crank up the speed themselves. People who are reasonable enough to activate AI when they are drunk will probably just order a taxi now, and so on. The only way to have that "replacement" is to force the autonomy on drivers, but that's not gonna fly well on a market.
  - vadimberman 9y ago
    > The "replacement" implies that people you mentioned want to be replaced Not the entire world is America. Oftentimes "want" is replaced by "forced".
jedharris 9y ago
Another quesion: if somebody you loved was killed by a driver's human error (quite possibly their own), would you be angry about the delays in making autonomous cars available?

gowld 9y ago

> including a little javascript widget This is great. You can make any model say anything you want by tuning the parameters, so we needs researchers to stop forcing their preferred parameters, and let consumers check the robustness of the conclusions against ranges of parameters > if somebody you loved was killed by a self-driving car, would you be comforted in knowing that the technology was in aggregate saving the lives of other people? and if somebody you loved was killed by a human-driven car, would you be comforted in knowing that the technology was in aggregate was being held back for further testing?

nerfhammer 9y ago
> if somebody you loved was killed by a self-driving car, would you be comforted in knowing that the technology was in aggregate saving the lives of other people? with a handful of centralized systems responsible for every accident everyone will be permanently panicked and outraged at its purportedly uncaring, greedy overlords. > if somebody you loved was killed by a human-driven car, would you be comforted in knowing that the technology was in aggregate was being held back for further testing? counterfactuals need to be near and specific for people to give them much thought, see: http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~schaller/Psyc590Readings/Roese1997.pdf http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~schaller/Psyc590Readings/Roese1997... http://www3.canyons.edu/faculty/rafterm/0%200LLI%20LOVEandLOSS/Day%206%20Files/1986%20-%20Norm%20Theory%20-%20Comparing%20Reality%20to%20Its%20Alternatives.pdf http://www3.canyons.edu/faculty/rafterm/0%200LLI%20LOVEandLO...

taneq 9y ago

> Another question: if somebody you loved was killed by a self-driving car, would you be comforted in knowing that the technology was in aggregate saving the lives of other people? I have no answers to these questions... it's a hard problem. We already have analogous situations with things like airbags. Airbags unarguably save lives, and yet they've also unarguably killed kids.

gatmne 9y ago
How many of those deceased children would have survived the collision if no airbags were installed? Self-driving cars preform predictably under a set of conditions. The primary problem arises when the car, for whatever reason, doesn't correctly detect that it's in an unfamiliar condition and continues moving as normal. Humans are intelligent enough to notice when something is "off". For a machine as heavy, large, fast, and close as a car, limited intelligence is not enough.

vadimberman 9y ago

> Crucially, this study models scenarios such as AVs being _half_ as safe as human drivers See, this is the main reason why AVs are great: accidents are caused by speeders, drunk, tired, inexperienced drivers, morons driving while high on pot or ecstasy, that is, those who are MUCH worse than an average driver used as a yardstick to measure the performance of the autonomous cars. Replace them by an imperfect machine lacking common sense, and the overall driving skill still goes up.

lambdadmitry 9y ago
The "replacement" implies that people you mentioned want to be replaced. I don't think that's the case; speeders will just disable AI and crank up the speed themselves. People who are reasonable enough to activate AI when they are drunk will probably just order a taxi now, and so on. The only way to have that "replacement" is to force the autonomy on drivers, but that's not gonna fly well on a market.
- vadimberman 9y ago
  > The "replacement" implies that people you mentioned want to be replaced Not the entire world is America. Oftentimes "want" is replaced by "forced".

jedharris 9y ago

Another quesion: if somebody you loved was killed by a driver's human error (quite possibly their own), would you be angry about the delays in making autonomous cars available?