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We've already had fatal self driving crashes while the self driving system was in operation. The media irresponsibly, but predictably, tried to use it to drive
by indubitable 9y ago
We've already had fatal self driving crashes while the self driving system was in operation. The media irresponsibly, but predictably, tried to use it to drive people into a terrified frenzy - which surprisingly did not work. And even more surprising, the regulators were also reasonable. There was an understanding of what caused the crash and that there are inherent risks. This was contrasted by data indicating that, for instance, since Tesla rolled out their autopilot system - crashes as a whole declined some odd 40%.
And finally there is even just macabre data on fatality rates. On average in the US currently about 1.2 people are expected to die in car crashes per 100 million miles driven. Tesla alone has had hundreds of millions of miles driven in its full autopilot mode, and the fatalities are not racking up like they 'should' be. We could argue that maybe people are paying more attention when the autopilot system is enabled, but practice across the industry has shown the exact opposite to be invariably true.
I think it's just been so long since our society had a revolutionary 'physical' technology, that we've become scared of change and progress. Imagine what a change it was going from horses to cars operating on internal combustion engines and relying on brakes to stop these vehicles going far faster than any horse. Or imagine the idea of stringing the entire country up with electric polls with so much energy going between them that anything landing on a wire and touching something else was certain to be killed, and accepting the fact that when these polls, or the lines between them, go down they not only could but on some occasions would start fires, and so forth. Going from human to automatically driven vehicles is a hardly meaningful contrasted against many of the revolutions of technology throughout the times.
And one final point is that we're also being somewhat self centered in this discussion. These technological changes we're seeing are happening worldwide. An image of e.g. Singapore streets with people in vehicles relaxing as they are autonomously driven to their destination would leave the state of the US and its rules and regulations looking increasingly like an anachronism. Certainly something that would cast a dim light on our view of ourselves as the world leader in innovation.
- chopin 9y agoI generally agree with you. It should, however, be noted that you'll need to compare fatality rates caused by human drivers and fatality rates caused by Teslas autopilot under the same driving conditions. I am pretty sure that there is a vast amount of driving conditions under which the autopilot cannot be engaged safely (and will not get engaged). It's one thing driving on a highway and another thing driving in a crowded city. Here in Germany we have comparably little fatalities on highways. Most occur on rural roads and cities.
- indubitable 9y agoYou have to distinguish between fatal crashes and all crashes. Here [1] are the data for the US if you can tolerate that site. What is the typical condition for a fatal crash? It's extremely counter intuitive. It is driving straight, on a major roadway, in good weather, during the day time, while sober, in a 4 door hardtop sedan. Seriously. I'm reluctant to go social science and start handwaving too much causality there, but on the other hand I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to observe that those 'easy' driving conditions also tend to be some of the highest speed driving conditions. Creates a nasty combination of of a situation where we might be more subject to lapses of attention, due to comfort, and exponentially increased consequences when that lapse results in a crash. But the really cool thing here is that these are also the conditions that right now the self driving systems are rocking. In other words there's actually a chance you're right that we're not comparing apples to apples, but instead are actually oversampling conditions where fatal accidents are more likely to happen! [1] - https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx
- pjc50 9y ago> We've already had fatal self driving crashes while the self driving system was in operation. There is no true (level 5) self-driving system yet, only driver-assist where the system may hand back control at any moment. It's only true self-driving when there's no human in the car. > Imagine what a change it was going from horses to cars operating on internal combustion engines and relying on brakes to stop these vehicles going far faster than any horse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_flag_traffic_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_flag_traffic_laws - knee-jerk legislative response driven by a combination of fear and lobbying is always a risk.
- indubitable 9y agoThat is rather humorous on the red flag traffic laws. Had never heard of that before! One thing that's nice now about self driving vehicles is that it seems that more or less the entire automotive industry is hopping on board. For some time it looked like it was going to be Google + Tesla doing self driving and I think it being lobbied and consequently "regulated" out of existence in the US was a very real danger. But at this point, which influential lobbying force might, even if we're just speculating, be a concern?
- bluetwo 9y agoThank you PJC for hearing what I was trying to say. Good example, too.