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"Delaying the roll-out of partially-autonomous vehicles costs lives. This conclusion assumes that (1) automakers make steady progress in improving the safety an

by makomk 8y ago

"Delaying the roll-out of partially-autonomous vehicles costs lives. This conclusion assumes that (1) automakers make steady progress in improving the safety and reliability of their partially autonomous vehicles and (2) drivers are comfortable enough with monitoring the partially-autonomous vehicles so that new sources of error associated with the transition to and from manual and autonomous control do not increase fatality rates." In other words, if you assume (1) something which we can't actually know unless we have the ability to predict the future, and (2) something we already have strong reason to believe isn't true, then we must roll out partially autonomous vehicles as soon as possible and anyone who questions this is basically killing people.

tedsanders 8y ago
The previous sentences are worth quoting as well: >This model shows that rolling out just as safe or a little safer partially-autonomous vehicles by 2020 will save 160,000 more lives over 50 years than a scenario that waits until 2025 to roll out almost perfect autonomous vehicles. Delaying the roll-out of partially-autonomous vehicles costs lives. Sure, rolling out autonomous vehicles will save lives if you assume that they are safer than humans. But right now all the evidence points to autonomous vehicles being substantially more dangerous than humans. Waymo reports disengagements every 5,500 miles, and estimates that something like 10% disengagements would have led to a collision. https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disengagement_report_2017 https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disen... And taken as a whole, self-driving cars have already killed one person with only about 10 million miles driven. It would take the average human driver more than 100 million miles to kill someone. Edit: My comment refers to safety of level 4/5 autonomy, not the current Tesla Autopilot. The real interesting question is whether it's worth it to deploy dangerous cars, risking today's lives to help save future lives. It's not that interesting to ask whether deploying hypothetically safer cars will save lives.
- stardust83 8y ago
  Why do you think only 10 million miles have been driven with Autopilot? This article says a billion+ miles have been driven with Autopilot cars: https://electrek.co/2016/11/13/tesla-autopilot-billion-miles-data-self-driving-program/ https://electrek.co/2016/11/13/tesla-autopilot-billion-miles...
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - woofyman 8y ago
    >The actual number of miles driven with the Autopilot active is closer to 300 million miles at this point.
  - tedsanders 8y ago
    I'm talking about fully autonomous vehicles (level 4/5).
  - rhino369 8y ago
    Autopilot isn’t self driving. It’s glorfied cruise control. And Tesla’s had two autopilot fatalities. And Uber had one.
    - zip1234 8y ago
      Does the Uber one count in the same statistical category since it was a pedestrian? I thought those were there own category?
- aidenn0 8y ago
  You can plug in numbers where the cars are less safe now, but there is a steady rate of improvement in safety once the cars are on the road.
sneak 8y ago
1 does indeed require predicting the future, but if we can all agree that full autonomy is a tractable problem that will eventually be solved, then it stands to reason that progress will be made toward that goal, barring some catastrophe. How steady that progress is remains to be seen, but I think we can reasonably take assumption 1 as a given, even with a generally skeptical view.
- archagon 8y ago
  I don't think "we all" can agree on that, actually. It seems that more and more people are coming to the conclusion that the last 10% of full autonomy is roughly equivalent to solving general intelligence—at least given our current road infrastructure and driving-related behaviors and expectations.
  - euyyn 8y ago
    > It seems that more and more people are coming to the conclusion that What gives you that impression? It seems the opposite to me.
    - mark-r 8y ago
      I've certainly come to that conclusion, although one person is not a trend. I'm in the minority among the people I talk to. I think more people see them achieving something that looked impossible, so something even more impossible doesn't seem like an obstacle.
    - slfnflctd 8y ago
      People who browse threads in places where actual engineers working on this stuff post their thoughts vs. People who get all their information about self-driving cars from "journalists" The former group will pretty much unanimously tell you we are at least 10 years from a full solution, if it's even possible. Most of the latter group seem to think it's already here.
      - euyyn 8y ago
chris11 8y ago
I'd strongly argue against 2. Telling people that paying attention isn't important 90% of the time is not going to increase attention the random 10% of the time when it does matter. Google halted all testing for level 3 self-driving cars because of this. They caught employees literally falling asleep. https://cleantechnica.com/2017/11/01/googlewaymo-stopped-testing-level-3-self-driving-tech-testers-literally-fell-asleep-using-switched-full-autonomy/ https://cleantechnica.com/2017/11/01/googlewaymo-stopped-tes...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

by makomk 8y ago

tedsanders 8y ago

The previous sentences are worth quoting as well: >This model shows that rolling out just as safe or a little safer partially-autonomous vehicles by 2020 will save 160,000 more lives over 50 years than a scenario that waits until 2025 to roll out almost perfect autonomous vehicles. Delaying the roll-out of partially-autonomous vehicles costs lives. Sure, rolling out autonomous vehicles will save lives if you assume that they are safer than humans. But right now all the evidence points to autonomous vehicles being substantially more dangerous than humans. Waymo reports disengagements every 5,500 miles, and estimates that something like 10% disengagements would have led to a collision. https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disengagement_report_2017 https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disen... And taken as a whole, self-driving cars have already killed one person with only about 10 million miles driven. It would take the average human driver more than 100 million miles to kill someone. Edit: My comment refers to safety of level 4/5 autonomy, not the current Tesla Autopilot. The real interesting question is whether it's worth it to deploy dangerous cars, risking today's lives to help save future lives. It's not that interesting to ask whether deploying hypothetically safer cars will save lives.

stardust83 8y ago
Why do you think only 10 million miles have been driven with Autopilot? This article says a billion+ miles have been driven with Autopilot cars: https://electrek.co/2016/11/13/tesla-autopilot-billion-miles-data-self-driving-program/ https://electrek.co/2016/11/13/tesla-autopilot-billion-miles...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- woofyman 8y ago
  >The actual number of miles driven with the Autopilot active is closer to 300 million miles at this point.
- tedsanders 8y ago
  I'm talking about fully autonomous vehicles (level 4/5).
- rhino369 8y ago
  Autopilot isn’t self driving. It’s glorfied cruise control. And Tesla’s had two autopilot fatalities. And Uber had one.
  - zip1234 8y ago
    Does the Uber one count in the same statistical category since it was a pedestrian? I thought those were there own category?
aidenn0 8y ago
You can plug in numbers where the cars are less safe now, but there is a steady rate of improvement in safety once the cars are on the road.

sneak 8y ago

1 does indeed require predicting the future, but if we can all agree that full autonomy is a tractable problem that will eventually be solved, then it stands to reason that progress will be made toward that goal, barring some catastrophe. How steady that progress is remains to be seen, but I think we can reasonably take assumption 1 as a given, even with a generally skeptical view.

archagon 8y ago
I don't think "we all" can agree on that, actually. It seems that more and more people are coming to the conclusion that the last 10% of full autonomy is roughly equivalent to solving general intelligence—at least given our current road infrastructure and driving-related behaviors and expectations.
- euyyn 8y ago
  > It seems that more and more people are coming to the conclusion that What gives you that impression? It seems the opposite to me.
  - mark-r 8y ago
    I've certainly come to that conclusion, although one person is not a trend. I'm in the minority among the people I talk to. I think more people see them achieving something that looked impossible, so something even more impossible doesn't seem like an obstacle.
  - slfnflctd 8y ago
    People who browse threads in places where actual engineers working on this stuff post their thoughts vs. People who get all their information about self-driving cars from "journalists" The former group will pretty much unanimously tell you we are at least 10 years from a full solution, if it's even possible. Most of the latter group seem to think it's already here.
    - euyyn 8y ago

chris11 8y ago

I'd strongly argue against 2. Telling people that paying attention isn't important 90% of the time is not going to increase attention the random 10% of the time when it does matter. Google halted all testing for level 3 self-driving cars because of this. They caught employees literally falling asleep. https://cleantechnica.com/2017/11/01/googlewaymo-stopped-testing-level-3-self-driving-tech-testers-literally-fell-asleep-using-switched-full-autonomy/ https://cleantechnica.com/2017/11/01/googlewaymo-stopped-tes...

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]