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How much better than human drivers do self-driving cars have to be to succeed? If you take a metric like fatalities or damage per mile I'm guessing we ask our r

How much better than human drivers do self-driving cars have to be to succeed? If you take a metric like fatalities or damage per mile I'm guessing we ask our robots to be much better than humans, even though it doesn't really make sense. Over time the differential will come down but a better intermediate strategy would be to keep humans away from robot cars until collision avoidance techniques improve substantially.

Retortoise 8y ago
But the thing is most safety features can be applied to a regular car and we'd see a significant decrease in accidents. Adaptive cruise control and pre-collision breaking haves existed as premium packages. The biggest added safety feature I can think of self driving cars is sleeping at the wheel, CDC estimates up to 6000 fatal crashes a year but I wonder how much modern safety features would reduce it if it was required on all cars.
mdorazio 8y ago
FWIW, I've heard the "100x safer" number tossed out at conferences on ADAS. I.e. an autonomous vehicle needs to crash 100x less frequently, kill 100x less people, etc. for the public to truly accept it as better than human drivers. Logically, this doesn't make any sense, but taking control away from people leads to some psychological hurdles.
carapace 8y ago
I had this argument the other day with someone else. You can't make a robot that goes out in public and kills random people. You just can't do that. Okay? Q: "What if the robot looks just like a car and there's a person inside the robot watching TV? Can it kill random people then?" Still no. Q: "But people do that all the time! Tens of thousands of people die or are maimed by traffic collisions every year! My robot can't join the fray?" Still no. It's insane and horrible that we set up a death and mayhem lottery and that we force everyone-- children, old people, pregnant ladies, folks in wheelchairs, ev-er-ee-one -- to play it whether they want to or not. That's a bad thing we shouldn't do. But it still doesn't make it okay for you to make a robot that goes out in public and kills random people. If you make a robot, send it into the world, and it kills someone, you are a murderer and you should go to jail, even if your robot looks like a car and there's a person riding inside it. - - - - - We could make a self-driving golf cart that never went fast enough to be able to injure people and it could take my mom (who has dementia and can't drive or ride the bus on her own anymore) to the doctor and back safely. We could build that today, with existing technology, there's a market for it, and it wouldn't kill anyone. Self-driving cars are a fetish that distracts from solving real problems! (One day that won't be true, let's not kill too many more people until then, hey?) - - - - - Humans drive really well. Like really really crazy good well. When I first realized how well people drive it made me consider that Guardian Angels might be a real thing. But then I learned more about how the motor cortex worked and some of the uncanniness faded. We should be so lucky as to have robots that drive as well as we do. In the meantime, the industry should concentrate on incrementally automating traffic and stop trying to bite off more than current technology can chew. What we're seeing now is hubris driven by ego and greed. And it's killing people.
rohit2412 8y ago
The driverless technology has to be better than an average human assisted by the same technology. In over words, the human has to add no value in safety, and then can be allowed to not drive. Notice it is not the average human on the road right now, but the average human assisted by the same magical driverless technology that is developed.

Retortoise 8y ago

But the thing is most safety features can be applied to a regular car and we'd see a significant decrease in accidents. Adaptive cruise control and pre-collision breaking haves existed as premium packages. The biggest added safety feature I can think of self driving cars is sleeping at the wheel, CDC estimates up to 6000 fatal crashes a year but I wonder how much modern safety features would reduce it if it was required on all cars.

mdorazio 8y ago

FWIW, I've heard the "100x safer" number tossed out at conferences on ADAS. I.e. an autonomous vehicle needs to crash 100x less frequently, kill 100x less people, etc. for the public to truly accept it as better than human drivers. Logically, this doesn't make any sense, but taking control away from people leads to some psychological hurdles.

carapace 8y ago

I had this argument the other day with someone else. You can't make a robot that goes out in public and kills random people. You just can't do that. Okay? Q: "What if the robot looks just like a car and there's a person inside the robot watching TV? Can it kill random people then?" Still no. Q: "But people do that all the time! Tens of thousands of people die or are maimed by traffic collisions every year! My robot can't join the fray?" Still no. It's insane and horrible that we set up a death and mayhem lottery and that we force everyone-- children, old people, pregnant ladies, folks in wheelchairs, ev-er-ee-one -- to play it whether they want to or not. That's a bad thing we shouldn't do. But it still doesn't make it okay for you to make a robot that goes out in public and kills random people. If you make a robot, send it into the world, and it kills someone, you are a murderer and you should go to jail, even if your robot looks like a car and there's a person riding inside it. - - - - - We could make a self-driving golf cart that never went fast enough to be able to injure people and it could take my mom (who has dementia and can't drive or ride the bus on her own anymore) to the doctor and back safely. We could build that today, with existing technology, there's a market for it, and it wouldn't kill anyone. Self-driving cars are a fetish that distracts from solving real problems! (One day that won't be true, let's not kill too many more people until then, hey?) - - - - - Humans drive really well. Like really really crazy good well. When I first realized how well people drive it made me consider that Guardian Angels might be a real thing. But then I learned more about how the motor cortex worked and some of the uncanniness faded. We should be so lucky as to have robots that drive as well as we do. In the meantime, the industry should concentrate on incrementally automating traffic and stop trying to bite off more than current technology can chew. What we're seeing now is hubris driven by ego and greed. And it's killing people.

rohit2412 8y ago

The driverless technology has to be better than an average human assisted by the same technology. In over words, the human has to add no value in safety, and then can be allowed to not drive. Notice it is not the average human on the road right now, but the average human assisted by the same magical driverless technology that is developed.