8 ms·

Let’s suspend human driving too, since it kills over 100 people per day.

vkou 9y ago
Humans kill 1 person every ~100m miles. Uber has killed 1 person after ~3m miles. Yes, I would absolutely suspend a system that kills 3,000 people/day in favor of a system that kills 100 people/day.
- stagbeetle 9y ago
  This is lying with statistics. To beat a dead statistician, everyone that's ever come in contact with air has died or will die.
  - adjkant 9y ago
    If you're going to claim it's a lie, citing evidence and why it's flawed would probably be a good start...
    - stagbeetle 9y ago
      Out of the 95 billion or so[0] people that have ever breathed air before the year 1900, all are dead dead.[1] Every year on average, 500 people die of carbon monoxide poisoning[2]. If that rate was steady for the amount of time humans have been alive, that's a total of 25,950,000 deaths ever from carbon monoxide poisoning. "Carbon monoxide exposure kills 1 person every 18 hours (500/8766h). Oxygen has killed 1944 people every 18 hours (108x18)[3]. Yes, I would absolutely replace a gas that kills 155,000 (108x60x24) people/day[3] in favor of a gas that kills 1 person/day." This is lying with statistics. It's not the right way to use data. [0]https://www.prb.org/howmanypeoplehaveeverlivedonearth/ https://www.prb.org/howmanypeoplehaveeverlivedonearth/ [1]http://supercentenarian-research-foundation.org/TableE.aspx http://supercentenarian-research-foundation.org/TableE.aspx [2]https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6303a6.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6303a6.htm [3]https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/xx.html https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...
      - adjkant 9y ago
        Come on now, I was asking clearly about data on Uber's death rate...
        stagbeetle 9y ago
        And I was specifically referring to the absurdity of comparing Uber's death rate to humans'.
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
        adjkant 9y ago
        Not very convincing though - genuine neutral party here without a fully formed opinion and I see no reason that's absurd. If self-driving cars (or brand X of them) are killing people at higher rates per mile, that's not good. I don't see how the statistic is an absurd comparison.
        stagbeetle 9y ago
        Here is the issue with the OG: 1). He has no sources. [0] 2). Sample size for Uber deaths is 1 3). Miles driven is also sampled at 1 2+3). With only one pair, it is a rate, not "rates" of death by Uber. There has been 1 death by Uber. As opposed to the many deaths motor vehicles accidents have caused 4). Per mile is an arbitrary metric, and in this case, false equivalency due to n=1. One Uber car killed one person. As opposed to millions of cars killing thousands of people. You cannot compare the cumulative results of the many to the single result of the one. 4.1). Per mile is an arbitrary metric. It tells us nothing but how many miles of road must be driven by every single driver until 1 death will happen. How do we measure total miles driven in a practical fashion? We can't. We estimate months later. 4.2) Per mile is an arbitrary metric. It doesn't let us know how quickly deaths happen. Do they happen every 1,000 hours? Every 10 hours? Every 100 years? 6). Comparison is unstandardized. 1 kill per ~100m miles is an aggregate and 1 kill per ~3m miles is an absolute. To normalize the data, you would take all the drivers who killed people, their total aggregate miles driven, and graph them on a standard distribution. Plop Uber in there to get your real likelihood of an Uber killing you compared to a regular human. I might even do #6 if I can find the data. [0]https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx
- jazoom 9y ago
  n=1 (To reduce the number of email notifications I'm getting I'd best put this message in parentheses right next to this statement. NOTE: I'm not a statistician and don't believe statistics are all that important here! All I meant to say here is that this is a single incident. That's it. Nothing more.) Edit: I'm getting the impression some people think I am suggesting there aren't grounds to suspend Uber's driving based on my 3 character comment above, so I'll paste my comment to a child comment here. Also, I'm not a statistician and I don't really care about the statistics here all that much when there's video evidence showing this was poor driving. "Same reason clinical trials stop early if someone dies. It might just be bad luck. Unfortunately we'll never know and that drug might never be tested again. It might have been an amazing drug. In this case, based on how it played out, I personally wouldn't want Uber's self-driving cars near me."
  - drcode 9y ago
    Agreed, but it's not like it's OK to say "Well sure, so far we have a kill rate of 50x a human driver, but why don't we wait until Uber kills at least 20 people first so we can determine proper statistical significance"
    - jstanley 9y ago
      Why not? Why in this case is it acceptable to make decisions on non-statistically significant data? You would exercise more rigour than that in a throwaway A/B test.
      - jazoom 9y ago
        Same reason clinical trials stop early if someone dies. It might just be bad luck. Unfortunately we'll never know and that drug might never be tested again. It might have been an amazing drug. In this case, based on how it played out, I personally wouldn't want Uber's self-driving cars near me.
      - tedsanders 9y ago
        It is statistically significant, at a 0.03 level: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16655081 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16655081
RoyTyrell 9y ago
People that drive recklessly and kill people can, indeed, have their license pulled. This is not unreasonable and we'll see what the investigation finds. If Uber did not take needless risks and this was some kind of edge-case where everything that could go wrong, went wrong, then perhaps it would be acceptable to allow them to re-continue their testing. Given Uber's track record, however, I believe we'll see this was more of their "don't give a fuck" brogrammer attitude. When you're only really risking people not being charged a correct fee or not being picked up for a ride it's one thing. Risking public safety is another.

vkou 9y ago

Humans kill 1 person every ~100m miles. Uber has killed 1 person after ~3m miles. Yes, I would absolutely suspend a system that kills 3,000 people/day in favor of a system that kills 100 people/day.

stagbeetle 9y ago
This is lying with statistics. To beat a dead statistician, everyone that's ever come in contact with air has died or will die.
- adjkant 9y ago
  If you're going to claim it's a lie, citing evidence and why it's flawed would probably be a good start...
  - stagbeetle 9y ago
    Out of the 95 billion or so[0] people that have ever breathed air before the year 1900, all are dead dead.[1] Every year on average, 500 people die of carbon monoxide poisoning[2]. If that rate was steady for the amount of time humans have been alive, that's a total of 25,950,000 deaths ever from carbon monoxide poisoning. "Carbon monoxide exposure kills 1 person every 18 hours (500/8766h). Oxygen has killed 1944 people every 18 hours (108x18)[3]. Yes, I would absolutely replace a gas that kills 155,000 (108x60x24) people/day[3] in favor of a gas that kills 1 person/day." This is lying with statistics. It's not the right way to use data. [0]https://www.prb.org/howmanypeoplehaveeverlivedonearth/ https://www.prb.org/howmanypeoplehaveeverlivedonearth/ [1]http://supercentenarian-research-foundation.org/TableE.aspx http://supercentenarian-research-foundation.org/TableE.aspx [2]https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6303a6.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6303a6.htm [3]https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/xx.html https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...
    - adjkant 9y ago
      Come on now, I was asking clearly about data on Uber's death rate...
      - stagbeetle 9y ago
        And I was specifically referring to the absurdity of comparing Uber's death rate to humans'.
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
        adjkant 9y ago
        Not very convincing though - genuine neutral party here without a fully formed opinion and I see no reason that's absurd. If self-driving cars (or brand X of them) are killing people at higher rates per mile, that's not good. I don't see how the statistic is an absurd comparison.
        stagbeetle 9y ago
        Here is the issue with the OG: 1). He has no sources. [0] 2). Sample size for Uber deaths is 1 3). Miles driven is also sampled at 1 2+3). With only one pair, it is a rate, not "rates" of death by Uber. There has been 1 death by Uber. As opposed to the many deaths motor vehicles accidents have caused 4). Per mile is an arbitrary metric, and in this case, false equivalency due to n=1. One Uber car killed one person. As opposed to millions of cars killing thousands of people. You cannot compare the cumulative results of the many to the single result of the one. 4.1). Per mile is an arbitrary metric. It tells us nothing but how many miles of road must be driven by every single driver until 1 death will happen. How do we measure total miles driven in a practical fashion? We can't. We estimate months later. 4.2) Per mile is an arbitrary metric. It doesn't let us know how quickly deaths happen. Do they happen every 1,000 hours? Every 10 hours? Every 100 years? 6). Comparison is unstandardized. 1 kill per ~100m miles is an aggregate and 1 kill per ~3m miles is an absolute. To normalize the data, you would take all the drivers who killed people, their total aggregate miles driven, and graph them on a standard distribution. Plop Uber in there to get your real likelihood of an Uber killing you compared to a regular human. I might even do #6 if I can find the data. [0]https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx
jazoom 9y ago
n=1 (To reduce the number of email notifications I'm getting I'd best put this message in parentheses right next to this statement. NOTE: I'm not a statistician and don't believe statistics are all that important here! All I meant to say here is that this is a single incident. That's it. Nothing more.) Edit: I'm getting the impression some people think I am suggesting there aren't grounds to suspend Uber's driving based on my 3 character comment above, so I'll paste my comment to a child comment here. Also, I'm not a statistician and I don't really care about the statistics here all that much when there's video evidence showing this was poor driving. "Same reason clinical trials stop early if someone dies. It might just be bad luck. Unfortunately we'll never know and that drug might never be tested again. It might have been an amazing drug. In this case, based on how it played out, I personally wouldn't want Uber's self-driving cars near me."
- drcode 9y ago
  Agreed, but it's not like it's OK to say "Well sure, so far we have a kill rate of 50x a human driver, but why don't we wait until Uber kills at least 20 people first so we can determine proper statistical significance"
  - jstanley 9y ago
    Why not? Why in this case is it acceptable to make decisions on non-statistically significant data? You would exercise more rigour than that in a throwaway A/B test.
    - jazoom 9y ago
      Same reason clinical trials stop early if someone dies. It might just be bad luck. Unfortunately we'll never know and that drug might never be tested again. It might have been an amazing drug. In this case, based on how it played out, I personally wouldn't want Uber's self-driving cars near me.
    - tedsanders 9y ago
      It is statistically significant, at a 0.03 level: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16655081 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16655081

RoyTyrell 9y ago

People that drive recklessly and kill people can, indeed, have their license pulled. This is not unreasonable and we'll see what the investigation finds. If Uber did not take needless risks and this was some kind of edge-case where everything that could go wrong, went wrong, then perhaps it would be acceptable to allow them to re-continue their testing. Given Uber's track record, however, I believe we'll see this was more of their "don't give a fuck" brogrammer attitude. When you're only really risking people not being charged a correct fee or not being picked up for a ride it's one thing. Risking public safety is another.