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Or it reinforces the idea (rightly or wrongly) that traditional car manufacturers won't play unnecessary games with people's lives. Regardless of what you, I o

Or it reinforces the idea (rightly or wrongly) that traditional car manufacturers won't play unnecessary games with people's lives. Regardless of what you, I or others in 'our' sphere might think, there's a lot of traction in playing the conservative card when it comes to cars hurtling down roads. As someone in a big city who drives a bit, cycles a bit and walks a lot, I can't help but feel we're still a long way off high autonomy in cars outwith constrained environments.

felipelemos 9y ago
Unnecessary plays with shareholder's money. FTFY. What history told us is that people's lives really isn't a concern. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_ignition_switch_recalls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_ignition_switch... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimshaw_v._Ford_Motor_Co https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimshaw_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
- jeffreyrogers 9y ago
  Part of the reason more mature car manufacturers are conservative is because they've gone through lawsuits and recalls.
CamperBob2 9y ago
Regardless of what you, I or others in 'our' sphere might think, there's a lot of traction in playing the conservative card when it comes to cars hurtling down roads. Every day that goes by without a shift to autonomous driving, we lose 70 or so people in the US alone. Why this isn't being treated as a Manhattan- or Apollo-scale project, I don't understand. A conservative approach is not what's called for here. We can afford to break a few eggs on the way. Sounds heartless... but sorry, that's what the math says.
- majormajor 9y ago
  This is the same problem current safety tech already has. We have cars that can stop themselves in most situations already - things like that + lane detection + distracted/sleepy driver detection would do wonders if everyone had them even without full autonomy. But they also all add cost to new vehicles, and the average age of vehicles on the road reflects that. It's been climbing, looks like 11.5 years now.[0] Looks like there's about 260M cars in the US, and on average only ~18M new ones sold each year[1]. Let's go conservative, and say we just need to replace 200M cars with current-or-near-future tech ones to save 30K lives a year. Let's say a 30K car has the level of tech we want. 200M * 30K = 6 trillion. But car crashes are like 2% or fewer[2] of all deaths in the US. So that's a massive cost that might be much better spent elsewhere. It's not that we can't make cars safer - we can already do that! - it's that there are some much more appealing ways to spend the money if approaching it from a non-commercial perspective. [0] http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-ihs-average-car-age-20150729-story.html http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-ihs-average-c... [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/183505/number-of-vehicles-in-the-united-states-since-1990/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/183505/number-of-vehicle... and https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TOTALSA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TOTALSA [2] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm vs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
  - ghaff 9y ago
    Furthermore, I assume that many cars on the roads today don't have the most modern air bag systems and passive features that increase survivability in a crash. To say nothing of the fact that they're simply old which certainly isn't likely to help with their likelihood to get in a crash or survive one. I expect that if every car in the US were replaced with a new one with most of the available modern safety features, you'd reduce the current fatality rate by a very significant percentage. One of my vehicles is quite old. But I'm not going to replace it just to get new safety features.
Retric 9y ago
I already trust self driving cars more than random motorists. Slowing down the deployment of self driving cars is likely to cost far more lives than it saves. The difference is we don't create national news for the several people that will be killed today on America's highways.
- felippee 9y ago
  You should probably reconsider your trust in the face of data: https://blog.piekniewski.info/2018/02/09/a-v-safety-2018-update/ https://blog.piekniewski.info/2018/02/09/a-v-safety-2018-upd... But who cares about data, if it is all about AI singularity religion?
  - NickM 9y ago
    Measuring disengagements for pre-release autonomous vehicles seems like a terrible way to measure safety of what's actually available to the public now. Here's a better study from the NHTSA that measures the safety impact of Tesla's autopilot features. They found that Tesla vehicle crash rates dropped by almost 40 percent for cars equipped with autopilot: https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/inv/2016/INCLA-PE16007-7876.PDF https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/inv/2016/INCLA-PE16007-7876.PDF
    - felippee 9y ago
      You are mixing things. Measuring safety of a human driven car with a human driven car with additional safety feature is not the same as measuring safety of autonomous vehicle. Contrary to its name, autopilot is not autonomous driving feature. It is a "smarter" cruise control. And if the drivers remain attentive it can improve safety as seen in the statistics you cite. If the drivers are not attentive (and treat it like "autonomous" feature) they end up like Joshua Brown. And BTW, I'm not saying I'm measuring what is available on the market. I simply point out, that there is no evidence yet that _fully_ autonomous vehicles had exceeded human safety level by any stretch of imagination.
      - deleted 9y ago
oh_sigh 9y ago
This statement: "traditional car manufacturers won't play unnecessary games with people's lives" should be amended with "unless the games will save some money, and won't generate bad PR"

felipelemos 9y ago

Unnecessary plays with shareholder's money. FTFY. What history told us is that people's lives really isn't a concern. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_ignition_switch_recalls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_ignition_switch... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimshaw_v._Ford_Motor_Co https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimshaw_v._Ford_Motor_Co.

jeffreyrogers 9y ago
Part of the reason more mature car manufacturers are conservative is because they've gone through lawsuits and recalls.

CamperBob2 9y ago

Regardless of what you, I or others in 'our' sphere might think, there's a lot of traction in playing the conservative card when it comes to cars hurtling down roads. Every day that goes by without a shift to autonomous driving, we lose 70 or so people in the US alone. Why this isn't being treated as a Manhattan- or Apollo-scale project, I don't understand. A conservative approach is not what's called for here. We can afford to break a few eggs on the way. Sounds heartless... but sorry, that's what the math says.

majormajor 9y ago
This is the same problem current safety tech already has. We have cars that can stop themselves in most situations already - things like that + lane detection + distracted/sleepy driver detection would do wonders if everyone had them even without full autonomy. But they also all add cost to new vehicles, and the average age of vehicles on the road reflects that. It's been climbing, looks like 11.5 years now.[0] Looks like there's about 260M cars in the US, and on average only ~18M new ones sold each year[1]. Let's go conservative, and say we just need to replace 200M cars with current-or-near-future tech ones to save 30K lives a year. Let's say a 30K car has the level of tech we want. 200M * 30K = 6 trillion. But car crashes are like 2% or fewer[2] of all deaths in the US. So that's a massive cost that might be much better spent elsewhere. It's not that we can't make cars safer - we can already do that! - it's that there are some much more appealing ways to spend the money if approaching it from a non-commercial perspective. [0] http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-ihs-average-car-age-20150729-story.html http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-ihs-average-c... [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/183505/number-of-vehicles-in-the-united-states-since-1990/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/183505/number-of-vehicle... and https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TOTALSA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TOTALSA [2] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm vs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
- ghaff 9y ago
  Furthermore, I assume that many cars on the roads today don't have the most modern air bag systems and passive features that increase survivability in a crash. To say nothing of the fact that they're simply old which certainly isn't likely to help with their likelihood to get in a crash or survive one. I expect that if every car in the US were replaced with a new one with most of the available modern safety features, you'd reduce the current fatality rate by a very significant percentage. One of my vehicles is quite old. But I'm not going to replace it just to get new safety features.

Retric 9y ago

I already trust self driving cars more than random motorists. Slowing down the deployment of self driving cars is likely to cost far more lives than it saves. The difference is we don't create national news for the several people that will be killed today on America's highways.

felippee 9y ago
You should probably reconsider your trust in the face of data: https://blog.piekniewski.info/2018/02/09/a-v-safety-2018-update/ https://blog.piekniewski.info/2018/02/09/a-v-safety-2018-upd... But who cares about data, if it is all about AI singularity religion?
- NickM 9y ago
  Measuring disengagements for pre-release autonomous vehicles seems like a terrible way to measure safety of what's actually available to the public now. Here's a better study from the NHTSA that measures the safety impact of Tesla's autopilot features. They found that Tesla vehicle crash rates dropped by almost 40 percent for cars equipped with autopilot: https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/inv/2016/INCLA-PE16007-7876.PDF https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/inv/2016/INCLA-PE16007-7876.PDF
  - felippee 9y ago
    You are mixing things. Measuring safety of a human driven car with a human driven car with additional safety feature is not the same as measuring safety of autonomous vehicle. Contrary to its name, autopilot is not autonomous driving feature. It is a "smarter" cruise control. And if the drivers remain attentive it can improve safety as seen in the statistics you cite. If the drivers are not attentive (and treat it like "autonomous" feature) they end up like Joshua Brown. And BTW, I'm not saying I'm measuring what is available on the market. I simply point out, that there is no evidence yet that _fully_ autonomous vehicles had exceeded human safety level by any stretch of imagination.
    - deleted 9y ago

oh_sigh 9y ago

This statement: "traditional car manufacturers won't play unnecessary games with people's lives" should be amended with "unless the games will save some money, and won't generate bad PR"