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Then let's add some perspective. You must be referring this[0] paper. If the average person puts on 1,000 miles per month[1], then that means they'd have to dea

Then let's add some perspective. You must be referring this[0] paper. If the average person puts on 1,000 miles per month[1], then that means they'd have to deal with disengagement (a mishap) at least twice a year, which is not acceptable for fully autonomous driving. I'm going to define a "fully autonomous vehicle" as "a vehicle which should not ever require me to sit in the front seat and control it under any conceivable circumstance". Put differently, I should be able to lay down for a nap in the back seat and wake up at my destination without any chance for disengagement during my entire lifetime. At the current rate of 1 mishap per 5,500miles, I would be dead after about 6 months. Assuming a human lives to 75 years (we should really be using 75years minus 16years, but it's unimportant), a lifetime of driving is about 1,000mi/mo x 12mo/yr x 75yr = 900,000 miles. I don't even want the probability of encountering a mishap to be once per lifetime, let alone once per 6 months. One mishap per 900,000 miles isn't enough, because, on average, I'd encounter one disengagement in my lifetime. Assuming we're striving for a world where 7 billion people can drive without a single incident in 75 years (a vast underestimate), we need the probability of a mishap to occur to be less than once per 7,000,000,000humans x 900,000mi/human = 63 x 10^14 miles. 1/5e3 is not even close to 1/6e15. We're talking about 12 orders of magnitude in our error rate. I'd say we're laughably far away from our goal. We've got a long way to go. [0] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/42aff875-7ab1-4115-a72a-97f6f24b23cc/Waymofull.pdf?MOD=AJPERES https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/42aff875-7ab1-4115... [1] https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/01/25/the-average-american-drives-this-much-each-year-ho.aspx https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/01/25/the-averag...

nemothekid 9y ago
> I don't even want the probability of encountering a mishap to be once per lifetime, This doesn't seem reasonable - Waymo's report doesn't dive in depth enough about each disengagement to warrant this sort of extreme reliability. If "2 disengagements" per year, were at most fenderbenders - something I'd wager humans do way more than twice per year - that would be a very different story than if those 2 disengagements were life threatening. Sure you'd wake up from your nap, but you wouldn't be dead, and at most you'd have to exchange insurance information.
- anonytrary 9y ago
  > This report covers disengagements following the California DMV definition, which means "a deactivation of the autonomous mode when a failure of the autonomous technology is detected or when the safe operation of the vehicle requires that the autonomous vehicle test driver disengage the autonomous mode and take immediate manual control of the vehicle.” So, you're right, there's no clear distinction, but I would further argue that it doesn't matter. Even if only 1/1000 disengagements are fatal, my conclusion remains the same. I think we're splitting hairs at this point, though. Even if not fatal, I highly doubt a significant fraction of such events (as defined above) would allow me take a nap upon departure and wake up at my destination, so it would still be unacceptable to me. I guess we have to agree on what an acceptable end-game is for fully autonomous vehicles. If you think "waking up on the shoulder exchanging insurance" is acceptable, then that would indeed change the numbers (but by how much? Two, maybe four orders of magnitude?). Humans get into fender-benders all the time, but surely we'd strive to eradicate this inefficiency in the automated driver. I think this is still an active area of debate; some assembly-line work can be made more efficient with machines, but we've seen humans out-perform machines in other types of work. I think driving tends to utilize more reactive, intuitive "System 1" thinking[0], so I imagine that humans will be vastly better than machines at driving for a very long time. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow
- eanzenberg 9y ago
  Are you kidding? A person averages two fender-benders per year? And no, it's not acceptable by any stretch. A disengage is extremely dangerous to drivers who are lulled into false sense of security through the marketing of.. self-driving cars.
IanCal 9y ago
It is ludicrous I feel to worry about getting to a stage where nobody ever has any type of accident. I'd like to know what the actual rate would be, the 5k miles figure is for conservative thresholds of when control should be handed over, and many problems may be safely solvable (if annoying) by simply coming to a halt or pulling over. No, the current setup is not OK to release on a large scale, but it's not expected to be, and we're not 12 orders of magnitude from a reasonable point.

nemothekid 9y ago

> I don't even want the probability of encountering a mishap to be once per lifetime, This doesn't seem reasonable - Waymo's report doesn't dive in depth enough about each disengagement to warrant this sort of extreme reliability. If "2 disengagements" per year, were at most fenderbenders - something I'd wager humans do way more than twice per year - that would be a very different story than if those 2 disengagements were life threatening. Sure you'd wake up from your nap, but you wouldn't be dead, and at most you'd have to exchange insurance information.

anonytrary 9y ago
> This report covers disengagements following the California DMV definition, which means "a deactivation of the autonomous mode when a failure of the autonomous technology is detected or when the safe operation of the vehicle requires that the autonomous vehicle test driver disengage the autonomous mode and take immediate manual control of the vehicle.” So, you're right, there's no clear distinction, but I would further argue that it doesn't matter. Even if only 1/1000 disengagements are fatal, my conclusion remains the same. I think we're splitting hairs at this point, though. Even if not fatal, I highly doubt a significant fraction of such events (as defined above) would allow me take a nap upon departure and wake up at my destination, so it would still be unacceptable to me. I guess we have to agree on what an acceptable end-game is for fully autonomous vehicles. If you think "waking up on the shoulder exchanging insurance" is acceptable, then that would indeed change the numbers (but by how much? Two, maybe four orders of magnitude?). Humans get into fender-benders all the time, but surely we'd strive to eradicate this inefficiency in the automated driver. I think this is still an active area of debate; some assembly-line work can be made more efficient with machines, but we've seen humans out-perform machines in other types of work. I think driving tends to utilize more reactive, intuitive "System 1" thinking[0], so I imagine that humans will be vastly better than machines at driving for a very long time. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow
eanzenberg 9y ago
Are you kidding? A person averages two fender-benders per year? And no, it's not acceptable by any stretch. A disengage is extremely dangerous to drivers who are lulled into false sense of security through the marketing of.. self-driving cars.

IanCal 9y ago

It is ludicrous I feel to worry about getting to a stage where nobody ever has any type of accident. I'd like to know what the actual rate would be, the 5k miles figure is for conservative thresholds of when control should be handed over, and many problems may be safely solvable (if annoying) by simply coming to a halt or pulling over. No, the current setup is not OK to release on a large scale, but it's not expected to be, and we're not 12 orders of magnitude from a reasonable point.