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> What does it mean to be “better than human drivers?” It's extremely simple, and the same criteria they use to determine if driving is safer with many safety

by grecy 8y ago

> What does it mean to be “better than human drivers?” It's extremely simple, and the same criteria they use to determine if driving is safer with many safety devices (ie. airbags or seat belts) than without them. Injuries or deaths per x miles or x hours driven. It's very important to note that in some cases airbags and seat belts actually result in more severe injuries or deaths than without them, but overall they are better because they reduce the fatalities per x miles driven. Just because airbags sometimes kill people, it doesn't mean I'm going to choose a car that doesn't have them. Overall, I'm better off to have them.

rayiner 8y ago
That’s not an incorrect metric, but it’s not a very useful one. Or put differently, you’ll need to be a lot more “perfect” than you think in order to get to an ultimate injury/death rate lower than human drivers. You need to be able to handle all the corner cases humans handle routinely, otherwise you’re going to get catastrophic effects. For example, right now Teslas cannot detect stationary obstacles. They slam right into them at highway speeds: https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a24511826/safety-features-automatic-braking-system-tested-explained https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a24511826/safety-featu.... This is not a matter of just tweaking the algorithms to get better and better error rates—it’s a fundamental problem with the system Tesla uses to detect obstacles. In order to actually get close to the accident rate of human drivers on average, you have to be “perfect” in the sense you have to be able to handle every edge case a human driver is likely to ever run into in their entire lives.
- grecy 8y ago
  > In order to actually get close to the accident rate of human drivers on average, you have to be “perfect” in the sense you have to be able to handle every edge case a human driver is likely to ever run into in their entire lives. That's like saying for airbags to be overall better, they have to be better at every single edge case like kids in the front seat or unrestrained passengers. We know for a fact they are not better at those edge cases, yet overall airbags are safer. Why? Because 99.99999% of driving is not edge cases (that's why they're called edge cases), and as long as you're better for that very vast majority of cases, then you're better overall.
  - rayiner 8y ago
    Fun fact: if you can only handle 99.99999% of cases (say on a per mile basis), your system will blow up 32 million times per year in the US alone. You need to handle the “long tail” of exceptional cases. While most driving is not exceptional cases (on a per mile basis), they arise quite often for any given driver, and more importantly, for drivers in the aggregate. A vehicle stopped in the middle of the road is an edge case. It’s also something that just happened to me today, and in the DC metro area happens hundreds of times per day. Encountering a traffic cop in the middle of the street directing traffic happens to thousands of cars per day in DC. Traffic detours happen thousands of times per day. Road construction, unplanned rerouting, screwed up lane markings, misleading signs, etc. The basic problem you’re having is that you’re assuming that failure modes for self driving vehicles are basically random. That’s not the case. A particular human might plow into a stopped vehicle because she is not paying attention, but the vast majority of people will not. But a particular Tesla will plow into a stopped vehicle because it doesn’t know how to handle that edge case, and so will every other Tesla on the road. A human driver might blow through a construction worker signaling traffic by hand because they’re texting. But the vast vast majority will not. But all the Teslas on that stretch of highway will blow through that guy signaling traffic, because they don’t know how to handle that edge case. A human driver might hit a panhandler who jumps into the street because she isn’t paying attention to body language. Every Tesla will do it, every time. Humans can handle all the edge cases most of the time. That means self driving cars must be able to handle all the edge cases, because any edge case they can’t handle, they can’t handle it any of the time.
    - grecy 8y ago
      > Fun fact: if you can only handle 99.99999% of cases (say on a per mile basis), your system will blow up 32 million times per year in the US alone. We know how many fatalities there are in the US per year, but I wonder how many crashes there are? How many near misses, or how many times does someone "luck" out and miss death by inches while being completely oblivious to it? > A vehicle stopped in the middle of the road is an edge case No it's not. It happens all the time (vehicles waiting to turn across on comming traffic) and I'm sure training models are already dealing with it. > But all the Teslas on that stretch of highway will blow through that guy signaling traffic, because they don’t know how to handle that edge case You really think self-driving cars won't be able to read the "stop" sign a construction worker holds out? I bet they can now. > A human driver might hit a panhandler who jumps into the street because she isn’t paying attention to body language. Every Tesla will do it, every time. Again, you really think self-driving cars won't automatically emergency stop when they detect something jump out into their lane? Again, I'd be willing to bet they'll have a much faster reaction time than your average driver. > Humans can handle all the edge cases most of the time The number of road deaths per day around the world makes me strongly disagree with that. It sounds like you have a particular bent against "Tesla", and you're not seeing this for what it is. They don't have to be perfect, but they do have to continually get better. And they are.
sgustard 8y ago
OK, so imagine someone paints these robotcar-fooling dots on the road, and a caravan of a hundred robot cars is cruising down the street. All 100 of them veer into oncoming traffic. That will destroy your safety statistics quite handily.
- grecy 8y ago
  OMG, Imagine someone cuts all the brake lines in our current cars, or hacks the traffic system and makes all the lights green at the same time, or puts nails on the road, or turns into the boogie man and "gets" people. Fear mongering is not the way to view problems, or to make our society better. We need to improve things, not live in fear of what "Bad" people could do to us.

by grecy 8y ago

rayiner 8y ago

That’s not an incorrect metric, but it’s not a very useful one. Or put differently, you’ll need to be a lot more “perfect” than you think in order to get to an ultimate injury/death rate lower than human drivers. You need to be able to handle all the corner cases humans handle routinely, otherwise you’re going to get catastrophic effects. For example, right now Teslas cannot detect stationary obstacles. They slam right into them at highway speeds: https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a24511826/safety-features-automatic-braking-system-tested-explained https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a24511826/safety-featu.... This is not a matter of just tweaking the algorithms to get better and better error rates—it’s a fundamental problem with the system Tesla uses to detect obstacles. In order to actually get close to the accident rate of human drivers on average, you have to be “perfect” in the sense you have to be able to handle every edge case a human driver is likely to ever run into in their entire lives.

grecy 8y ago
> In order to actually get close to the accident rate of human drivers on average, you have to be “perfect” in the sense you have to be able to handle every edge case a human driver is likely to ever run into in their entire lives. That's like saying for airbags to be overall better, they have to be better at every single edge case like kids in the front seat or unrestrained passengers. We know for a fact they are not better at those edge cases, yet overall airbags are safer. Why? Because 99.99999% of driving is not edge cases (that's why they're called edge cases), and as long as you're better for that very vast majority of cases, then you're better overall.
- rayiner 8y ago
  Fun fact: if you can only handle 99.99999% of cases (say on a per mile basis), your system will blow up 32 million times per year in the US alone. You need to handle the “long tail” of exceptional cases. While most driving is not exceptional cases (on a per mile basis), they arise quite often for any given driver, and more importantly, for drivers in the aggregate. A vehicle stopped in the middle of the road is an edge case. It’s also something that just happened to me today, and in the DC metro area happens hundreds of times per day. Encountering a traffic cop in the middle of the street directing traffic happens to thousands of cars per day in DC. Traffic detours happen thousands of times per day. Road construction, unplanned rerouting, screwed up lane markings, misleading signs, etc. The basic problem you’re having is that you’re assuming that failure modes for self driving vehicles are basically random. That’s not the case. A particular human might plow into a stopped vehicle because she is not paying attention, but the vast majority of people will not. But a particular Tesla will plow into a stopped vehicle because it doesn’t know how to handle that edge case, and so will every other Tesla on the road. A human driver might blow through a construction worker signaling traffic by hand because they’re texting. But the vast vast majority will not. But all the Teslas on that stretch of highway will blow through that guy signaling traffic, because they don’t know how to handle that edge case. A human driver might hit a panhandler who jumps into the street because she isn’t paying attention to body language. Every Tesla will do it, every time. Humans can handle all the edge cases most of the time. That means self driving cars must be able to handle all the edge cases, because any edge case they can’t handle, they can’t handle it any of the time.
  - grecy 8y ago
    > Fun fact: if you can only handle 99.99999% of cases (say on a per mile basis), your system will blow up 32 million times per year in the US alone. We know how many fatalities there are in the US per year, but I wonder how many crashes there are? How many near misses, or how many times does someone "luck" out and miss death by inches while being completely oblivious to it? > A vehicle stopped in the middle of the road is an edge case No it's not. It happens all the time (vehicles waiting to turn across on comming traffic) and I'm sure training models are already dealing with it. > But all the Teslas on that stretch of highway will blow through that guy signaling traffic, because they don’t know how to handle that edge case You really think self-driving cars won't be able to read the "stop" sign a construction worker holds out? I bet they can now. > A human driver might hit a panhandler who jumps into the street because she isn’t paying attention to body language. Every Tesla will do it, every time. Again, you really think self-driving cars won't automatically emergency stop when they detect something jump out into their lane? Again, I'd be willing to bet they'll have a much faster reaction time than your average driver. > Humans can handle all the edge cases most of the time The number of road deaths per day around the world makes me strongly disagree with that. It sounds like you have a particular bent against "Tesla", and you're not seeing this for what it is. They don't have to be perfect, but they do have to continually get better. And they are.

sgustard 8y ago

OK, so imagine someone paints these robotcar-fooling dots on the road, and a caravan of a hundred robot cars is cruising down the street. All 100 of them veer into oncoming traffic. That will destroy your safety statistics quite handily.

grecy 8y ago
OMG, Imagine someone cuts all the brake lines in our current cars, or hacks the traffic system and makes all the lights green at the same time, or puts nails on the road, or turns into the boogie man and "gets" people. Fear mongering is not the way to view problems, or to make our society better. We need to improve things, not live in fear of what "Bad" people could do to us.