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> Ahg misleading numbers. People are actually surprisingly good at driving. What? No they are not. If that were true then hundreds of thousands of Americans wo
by cryptoz 9y ago
> Ahg misleading numbers. People are actually surprisingly good at driving.
What? No they are not. If that were true then hundreds of thousands of Americans would not die due to car accidents every decade. Just because there are hundreds of millions of us does not make us good at driving, if we 'only' kill tens of thousands per year.
> You can tell it's low because it's measured in "per billion vehicle-km".
You can tell that the CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere is low because it's measured in ppm. Not something we should be concerned about, right? And when we increase it by a few hundred ppm, no big deal right?
What? You are the one driving misleading statistics around. You are the one diminishing the lives of those murdered by drunk drivers. People are dying every day because humans are really, really bad at driving.
Let's say this again. People are not surprisingly good at driving. People are very very bad at driving.
- abcanthur 9y agoAre humans good or bad at driving? Until a few years ago, humans defined entirely what "driving" was. Now two things can drive, humans and the autobots. Currently it seems we are better than the autobots. We are still the best drivers around, and good enough to make driving legal and widespread. Deaths per mile or whatever summary statistic is just descriptive; I don't see an obvious, natural baseline. Perhaps we could say something about the question are human-controlled automobiles a safe form of travel relative to other modes of transportation? Or maybe calling humans bad drivers just highlights tbe risks of driving. But assessing the quality of driving of the human population still seems tautological to me.