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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/2

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
    [deleted]
  - Retric 9y ago
    "Fully" autonomous cars (by your definition) have zero fatalities to date. Considering miles driven that is significant better than human drivers even paid human drivers if you look at trucking death statistics. Now, driving a semi may be more dangerous than a car, but it's hard to argue it's vastly more dangerous. Further, people are not uniformly good drivers, a self driving car is vastly better than someone that so drunk they have trouble standing.
    - felippee 9y ago
      I'm sorry to disappoint you, but again the data does not support your claim. The cumulative number of miles driven by autonomous test fleet to date is nowhere near 100 million miles, which is where one should expect the first fatality from an average human. So no, your claim is empty.
      - Retric 9y ago
        First US numbers are greater than 1.25 deaths per 100 million miles. Self driving cars are well over 10 million miles but not 80 million. Even then 0 < 0.1 even if it's not great evidence it is still evidence. However US is not the only country, they have easily passed the accident rate in Brazil.
        felippee 9y ago
        It is 0.99 deaths/100 mil in California, but fair enough. I'm not sure where you got your "well over 10mil miles" data. Last time I checked, Waymo clocked 3mil, Uber 2mil, Cruise <0.5mil, and the rest are small potatoes, so it looks more like maybe 6-7 million miles to date at best (though if you can provide a reference that would be great). But that aside, you are missing one more important point: Current autonomous cars still have a backup driver. So what we are measuring here is a compound safety level of autonomous tech + attentive, professional, sober human. The real data of interest is the safety level of autonomous vehicle alone. We don't have that data. We can proxy it, by looking at the numbers of disengagements and their severity, and that data currently does not look particularly good. But nonetheless it is just proxy data. Once a larger scale tests without backup drivers are concluded, we will get a better picture. Until then, I advise to withhold from any statements such as "autonomous vehicles are much safer than humans", because they are simply not supported by any data. As for you final statement, I bet there are many undeveloped countries or particular cities with huge number of deaths per mile. But exceeding their death rate on US roads is not anything to be celebrated.
        Retric 9y ago
        https://medium.com/waymo/waymos-fleet-reaches-4-million-self-driven-miles-b28f32de495a https://medium.com/waymo/waymos-fleet-reaches-4-million-self... 4 million in early November 2017 with 1 million miles taking 6 months. https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/27/waymo-autonomous-cars-drove-4-million-miles/ https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/27/waymo-autonomous-cars-dr... While it took the company 18 months to reach one million, then 14 to reach two, then 8 months to reach three and finally six months to reach the four million mile marker. Call it 4.7 to 4.9 million miles today. Uber went from 1 to 2 million miles in 100 days and where over 2 million in December. So they are likely around 2.5 million today unless they slowed down significantly. However, their are actually a surprisingly large number of self driving car initiatives world wide. Though apparently EasyMile which sells slow level 4 automation busses to 20 countries is only at ~100,000 miles which surprised me. Sill there are several competitors in that space.
Retric 9y ago
Disengagements vs crashing is a meaningless comparison, these are in the middle of testing not deployed systems. We have real world data on self driving cars and per mile they have statistically saved lives already and are only improving with time. Still if you want a real comparison my parked cars have been hit 5 times, most of which does not show up on accident data, because I only reported one of those the rest caused minor damage. Similarly I know of multiple cases of people driving off the road and not reporting anything because they did not cause significant damage. I even know of several cases of road accidents not being reported due to minor damage. PS: Tesla's self driving cars get a lot of flack for not being ready but they have dramatically lower accident rates than non self driving Tesla's.
- felippee 9y ago
  What self driving data do you mean? There are no self driving cars in deployment right now. There are various semi-autonomous safety features that _REQUIRE_ full attention from the driver.
  - Retric 9y ago
    You don't actually need to pay attention in a Tesla when it's on the road. It's closer to a dead man switch on a train than a real test of attention. Except you don't even need to keep your hands on the wheel as it's really easy to fool. So, your argument falls flat.
    - felippee 9y ago
      LOL, all I can say to this, is that perhaps you should read your Tesla manual. I sincerely wish you luck with your driving, just watch out for fire trucks parked in the emergency lane...
      - Retric 9y ago
        What an ungracious way to admit you're wrong. I am simply pointing out 'paying attention' is like keeping tires properly inflated, it's something many people are not going to do and thus part of real world data.

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
  [deleted]
- Retric 9y ago
  "Fully" autonomous cars (by your definition) have zero fatalities to date. Considering miles driven that is significant better than human drivers even paid human drivers if you look at trucking death statistics. Now, driving a semi may be more dangerous than a car, but it's hard to argue it's vastly more dangerous. Further, people are not uniformly good drivers, a self driving car is vastly better than someone that so drunk they have trouble standing.
  - felippee 9y ago
    I'm sorry to disappoint you, but again the data does not support your claim. The cumulative number of miles driven by autonomous test fleet to date is nowhere near 100 million miles, which is where one should expect the first fatality from an average human. So no, your claim is empty.
    - Retric 9y ago
      First US numbers are greater than 1.25 deaths per 100 million miles. Self driving cars are well over 10 million miles but not 80 million. Even then 0 < 0.1 even if it's not great evidence it is still evidence. However US is not the only country, they have easily passed the accident rate in Brazil.
      - felippee 9y ago
        It is 0.99 deaths/100 mil in California, but fair enough. I'm not sure where you got your "well over 10mil miles" data. Last time I checked, Waymo clocked 3mil, Uber 2mil, Cruise <0.5mil, and the rest are small potatoes, so it looks more like maybe 6-7 million miles to date at best (though if you can provide a reference that would be great). But that aside, you are missing one more important point: Current autonomous cars still have a backup driver. So what we are measuring here is a compound safety level of autonomous tech + attentive, professional, sober human. The real data of interest is the safety level of autonomous vehicle alone. We don't have that data. We can proxy it, by looking at the numbers of disengagements and their severity, and that data currently does not look particularly good. But nonetheless it is just proxy data. Once a larger scale tests without backup drivers are concluded, we will get a better picture. Until then, I advise to withhold from any statements such as "autonomous vehicles are much safer than humans", because they are simply not supported by any data. As for you final statement, I bet there are many undeveloped countries or particular cities with huge number of deaths per mile. But exceeding their death rate on US roads is not anything to be celebrated.
        Retric 9y ago
        https://medium.com/waymo/waymos-fleet-reaches-4-million-self-driven-miles-b28f32de495a https://medium.com/waymo/waymos-fleet-reaches-4-million-self... 4 million in early November 2017 with 1 million miles taking 6 months. https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/27/waymo-autonomous-cars-drove-4-million-miles/ https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/27/waymo-autonomous-cars-dr... While it took the company 18 months to reach one million, then 14 to reach two, then 8 months to reach three and finally six months to reach the four million mile marker. Call it 4.7 to 4.9 million miles today. Uber went from 1 to 2 million miles in 100 days and where over 2 million in December. So they are likely around 2.5 million today unless they slowed down significantly. However, their are actually a surprisingly large number of self driving car initiatives world wide. Though apparently EasyMile which sells slow level 4 automation busses to 20 countries is only at ~100,000 miles which surprised me. Sill there are several competitors in that space.

Retric 9y ago

Disengagements vs crashing is a meaningless comparison, these are in the middle of testing not deployed systems. We have real world data on self driving cars and per mile they have statistically saved lives already and are only improving with time. Still if you want a real comparison my parked cars have been hit 5 times, most of which does not show up on accident data, because I only reported one of those the rest caused minor damage. Similarly I know of multiple cases of people driving off the road and not reporting anything because they did not cause significant damage. I even know of several cases of road accidents not being reported due to minor damage. PS: Tesla's self driving cars get a lot of flack for not being ready but they have dramatically lower accident rates than non self driving Tesla's.

felippee 9y ago
What self driving data do you mean? There are no self driving cars in deployment right now. There are various semi-autonomous safety features that _REQUIRE_ full attention from the driver.
- Retric 9y ago
  You don't actually need to pay attention in a Tesla when it's on the road. It's closer to a dead man switch on a train than a real test of attention. Except you don't even need to keep your hands on the wheel as it's really easy to fool. So, your argument falls flat.
  - felippee 9y ago
    LOL, all I can say to this, is that perhaps you should read your Tesla manual. I sincerely wish you luck with your driving, just watch out for fire trucks parked in the emergency lane...
    - Retric 9y ago
      What an ungracious way to admit you're wrong. I am simply pointing out 'paying attention' is like keeping tires properly inflated, it's something many people are not going to do and thus part of real world data.