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"Uber announced that it had driven 2 million miles by December 2017 and is probably up to around 3 million miles today. If you do the math, that means that Uber

"Uber announced that it had driven 2 million miles by December 2017 and is probably up to around 3 million miles today. If you do the math, that means that Uber's cars have killed people at roughly 25 times the rate of a typical human-driven car in the United States." Wow there goes that "safer than human drivers" argument.

vcanales 9y ago
/s ? It's a pretty unfair comparison, with 1 death on one side and over 30k on the other...
- JohnJamesRambo 9y ago
  No because the rate is per million miles driven. It allows us to compare two different things. The sample size is one but it isn't looking great so far.
reedx8 9y ago
You can't just look at Uber to make a sweeping conclusion of all autonomous cars on the road. How many miles has Tesla, VW, Volvo, Waymo, Google, Ford, and Apple have?
imh 9y ago
Driverless cars are also being tested in relatively nice driving conditions. People, on the other hand, drive in all sorts of conditions. X deaths per Y easy driving miles is going to translate to many more than X deaths per Y representative driving miles.
- jaclaz 9y ago
  >Driverless cars are also being tested in relatively nice driving conditions. People, on the other hand, drive in all sorts of conditions. I would add that people represent (as a whole) various kind of drivers, including the non-expert/fresh licensed, the elderly, the too sure of themselves, those speeding or not respecting road signals (or driving in connection with a crime), the emotionally fragile, those under the effect of alcohol or drugs, those tired by not having had enough sleep, etc., etc. The "model" for an autonomous vehicle should be instead a particular "perfect" subset, ideally it should replicate the behaviour of an hypothetical extremely prudent, healthy 30-something with some experience with safe driving, very familiar with the way his/her car handles, having had a nice night sleep, no use of alcohol or drugs, without any external pressure (to arrive in time, to do other chores apart driving) without a cellphone or tablet distracting him/her. If we could find this latter kind of drivers (should they actually exist) and isolate from the statistics the amount of incidents they caused, that would be the reference benchmark.
ben174 9y ago
Well maybe not currently safer than human drivers. I don't think any sound-minded person would claim that they will never be.
- spacehome 9y ago
  Currently we're losing a million lives a year (about a 9/11 per day) to auto accidents. I think there's a serious argument that it's ethical to push autonomous driving onto the road before they're safer than humans if that would help them debug the software faster and advance to superhuman safety levels even a day sooner.
  - mozumder 9y ago
    Why would you want to increase the death rate by pushing more autonomous vehicles onto the road?
    - spacehome 9y ago
      Because doing so will cause issues (like this one) to be found and fixed faster. When enough bugs are fixed that the autonomous drivers are safer than the meatbag drivers, then the death rate will start to decrease. The argument is that you can trade more deaths today for a sooner decrease later. Under certain assumptions, you'll save net lives.
      - jamesgeck0 9y ago
        Why is the FDA so strict about human trials? We could save net lives if we just did drug tests faster to figure out what works. /s
        tmd83 9y ago
        It's slightly different though. Even if FDA was lax, the participants would be volunteers. This victim though didn't have any say in joining Uber's trial.
gtm1260 9y ago
I think focusing on the safety statistics is somewhat of a red herring. Uber wins when you get hung up on how well its self-driving cars drive, because that's something that they can improve. Instead, I think we should focus on the fact that these dangerous machines are being operated by chronically irresponsible companies and because cars in general have issues, not because we expect them to be less safe than human drivers.
mabbo 9y ago
With one data point, you can't extrapolate much. This is misuse of statistics. Consider if there was a new lottery and you weren't sure what the odds of winning were. You play it three weeks in a row and the third time you win a million dollars. Conveniently, no one else tries the new lottery yet. Does it follow then that the odds of winning a million dollars are 1 in 3? Or should you play it a few more times before you declare to all that one in three plays will make one a millionaire?
- soyiuz 9y ago
  They did not sample three times and win once. They sampled three million times and won once. Hardly "one data point."
  - dfee 9y ago
    I believe “one data point” referred to one winning, not three plays.
  - Nomentatus 9y ago
    It still falls under "one swallow does not make a summer" - even though a lot of days of winter preceeded that bird sighting.
  - s0rce 9y ago
    That is one datapoint - one death.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - mabbo 9y ago
    The point remains: it isn't fair to decide what the probability is with only one data point on one side- especially for rare events. Would it have been fair if Uber last week were to declare that they have a 0% probability of pedestrian deaths, since they'd never had one yet? The goal of these statistics is to predict future outcomes. But with such a small data sample, you cannot fairly predict the future- just as in my lottery example.
username223 9y ago
Given exponentially-distributed distance between fatalities, this would have a 3% chance of happening if Uber cars were as safe as humans. So it's unlikely.
mozumder 9y ago
It's much, much worse than that, since that 37,461 deaths number includes all deaths, including motorcycle/Truck/SUV deaths, which have higher death rates than passenger cars, perhaps 5x-10x higher. A proper comparison in this case is comparing passenger car death rates. And then you need to factor in other conditions, such as the fact that weather was clean, and that you should be looking to compare pedestrian/bicyclist deaths, and you see that this incident already throws out wack the death rate for autonomous vehicles.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
corny 9y ago
Any comparison between self-driven miles and typical human-driven miles has to take into account all the times a safety driver took over driving to prevent an accident. Those self-driven miles have a huge asterisk.
- mturmon 9y ago
  This is a good point. Taking it a step farther, I’d expect that road conditions in the Uber tests so far have been more benign than average city driving. Less bad weather, straighter roads, etc.
akkat 9y ago
I don't know how to say it kindly but there is a difference between "what" type of people the car killed. If the fatality was another rule abiding driver on the road or a pedestrian crossing at a crosswalk that would be really bad. However if it was someone not following the safety rules by j walking, then that person accepted upon themselves a higher probability of being in an accident. When making laws, for the most part, they are for the benefit of law abiding people.
- joejerryronnie 9y ago
  This is a ridiculous statement.

vcanales 9y ago

/s ? It's a pretty unfair comparison, with 1 death on one side and over 30k on the other...

JohnJamesRambo 9y ago
No because the rate is per million miles driven. It allows us to compare two different things. The sample size is one but it isn't looking great so far.

reedx8 9y ago

You can't just look at Uber to make a sweeping conclusion of all autonomous cars on the road. How many miles has Tesla, VW, Volvo, Waymo, Google, Ford, and Apple have?

imh 9y ago

Driverless cars are also being tested in relatively nice driving conditions. People, on the other hand, drive in all sorts of conditions. X deaths per Y easy driving miles is going to translate to many more than X deaths per Y representative driving miles.

jaclaz 9y ago
>Driverless cars are also being tested in relatively nice driving conditions. People, on the other hand, drive in all sorts of conditions. I would add that people represent (as a whole) various kind of drivers, including the non-expert/fresh licensed, the elderly, the too sure of themselves, those speeding or not respecting road signals (or driving in connection with a crime), the emotionally fragile, those under the effect of alcohol or drugs, those tired by not having had enough sleep, etc., etc. The "model" for an autonomous vehicle should be instead a particular "perfect" subset, ideally it should replicate the behaviour of an hypothetical extremely prudent, healthy 30-something with some experience with safe driving, very familiar with the way his/her car handles, having had a nice night sleep, no use of alcohol or drugs, without any external pressure (to arrive in time, to do other chores apart driving) without a cellphone or tablet distracting him/her. If we could find this latter kind of drivers (should they actually exist) and isolate from the statistics the amount of incidents they caused, that would be the reference benchmark.

ben174 9y ago

Well maybe not currently safer than human drivers. I don't think any sound-minded person would claim that they will never be.

spacehome 9y ago
Currently we're losing a million lives a year (about a 9/11 per day) to auto accidents. I think there's a serious argument that it's ethical to push autonomous driving onto the road before they're safer than humans if that would help them debug the software faster and advance to superhuman safety levels even a day sooner.
- mozumder 9y ago
  Why would you want to increase the death rate by pushing more autonomous vehicles onto the road?
  - spacehome 9y ago
    Because doing so will cause issues (like this one) to be found and fixed faster. When enough bugs are fixed that the autonomous drivers are safer than the meatbag drivers, then the death rate will start to decrease. The argument is that you can trade more deaths today for a sooner decrease later. Under certain assumptions, you'll save net lives.
    - jamesgeck0 9y ago
      Why is the FDA so strict about human trials? We could save net lives if we just did drug tests faster to figure out what works. /s
      - tmd83 9y ago
        It's slightly different though. Even if FDA was lax, the participants would be volunteers. This victim though didn't have any say in joining Uber's trial.

gtm1260 9y ago

I think focusing on the safety statistics is somewhat of a red herring. Uber wins when you get hung up on how well its self-driving cars drive, because that's something that they can improve. Instead, I think we should focus on the fact that these dangerous machines are being operated by chronically irresponsible companies and because cars in general have issues, not because we expect them to be less safe than human drivers.

mabbo 9y ago

With one data point, you can't extrapolate much. This is misuse of statistics. Consider if there was a new lottery and you weren't sure what the odds of winning were. You play it three weeks in a row and the third time you win a million dollars. Conveniently, no one else tries the new lottery yet. Does it follow then that the odds of winning a million dollars are 1 in 3? Or should you play it a few more times before you declare to all that one in three plays will make one a millionaire?

soyiuz 9y ago
They did not sample three times and win once. They sampled three million times and won once. Hardly "one data point."
- dfee 9y ago
  I believe “one data point” referred to one winning, not three plays.
- Nomentatus 9y ago
  It still falls under "one swallow does not make a summer" - even though a lot of days of winter preceeded that bird sighting.
- s0rce 9y ago
  That is one datapoint - one death.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- mabbo 9y ago
  The point remains: it isn't fair to decide what the probability is with only one data point on one side- especially for rare events. Would it have been fair if Uber last week were to declare that they have a 0% probability of pedestrian deaths, since they'd never had one yet? The goal of these statistics is to predict future outcomes. But with such a small data sample, you cannot fairly predict the future- just as in my lottery example.

username223 9y ago

Given exponentially-distributed distance between fatalities, this would have a 3% chance of happening if Uber cars were as safe as humans. So it's unlikely.

mozumder 9y ago

It's much, much worse than that, since that 37,461 deaths number includes all deaths, including motorcycle/Truck/SUV deaths, which have higher death rates than passenger cars, perhaps 5x-10x higher. A proper comparison in this case is comparing passenger car death rates. And then you need to factor in other conditions, such as the fact that weather was clean, and that you should be looking to compare pedestrian/bicyclist deaths, and you see that this incident already throws out wack the death rate for autonomous vehicles.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

corny 9y ago

Any comparison between self-driven miles and typical human-driven miles has to take into account all the times a safety driver took over driving to prevent an accident. Those self-driven miles have a huge asterisk.

mturmon 9y ago
This is a good point. Taking it a step farther, I’d expect that road conditions in the Uber tests so far have been more benign than average city driving. Less bad weather, straighter roads, etc.

akkat 9y ago

I don't know how to say it kindly but there is a difference between "what" type of people the car killed. If the fatality was another rule abiding driver on the road or a pedestrian crossing at a crosswalk that would be really bad. However if it was someone not following the safety rules by j walking, then that person accepted upon themselves a higher probability of being in an accident. When making laws, for the most part, they are for the benefit of law abiding people.

joejerryronnie 9y ago
This is a ridiculous statement.