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Just Waymo was driving over 1 million miles a month in 2018. How many people have they killed? The fact that an autonomous vehicle or Tesla "autopilot" fatality

Just Waymo was driving over 1 million miles a month in 2018. How many people have they killed? The fact that an autonomous vehicle or Tesla "autopilot" fatality makes national news is telling. It's not commonplace.

crispyambulance 7y ago
It's not sufficient for these systems to just be "better" than humans in terms of accidents/mile/vehicle, they have to be FAR BETTER than humans. Today, when accidents occur, blame and liability goes to the responsible parties. We're talking about millions of accidents and millions of drivers. If you suddenly have a car that drives, the blame and liability for all accidents then gets focused like a giant magnifying glass onto ONE (or a few) companies which have made the self-driving car. I don't know how many accidents/mile/vehicle is the "magic number" but I expect it is going to have to be far far far lower than what it is now. Otherwise, these self-driving car vendors won't be able to survive the legal onslaught.
- magashna 7y ago
  Why can't we accept a little better now and keep striving for far better? Seems stupid to have an all or nothing approach, especially when plenty of luxury vehicles have pieces of automated driving in them already. Liability is for insurance leeches to figure out
  - krisrm 7y ago
    If the added liability of "a little better" self driving car is too much to make a self driving car profitable, companies won't build them.
  - ABCLAW 7y ago
    Because the proper comparison isn't X accidents vs Y accidents. It's X accidents and Z billion dollars spent vs Y accidents, where that Z billion dollars could have gone to other efforts. If the delta between X and Y is minor, Z is wasted.
- stale2002 7y ago
  This isn't as hard of a problem as you make it seem. The people who pay for accidents will be the same people who pay for them now. It will be the insurance companies. I am sure that insurance companies will jump at the chance to save money, by insuring statistically safer vehicles.
- gfodor 7y ago
  Not really. The cars only need to be safe enough to get over the potential fear of users to activate them. This may even be less safe than human drivers, we just don't know until they are deployed. For example, it could turn out that present day autopilot in Tesla cars is less safe than human drivers, but yet people still use it. Humans aren't strictly rational based upon risk when it comes to transportation. If autocars are convenient, and in every day experience work successfully, people will use them (especially those who are young, who have the marginal cost of having to instead learn how to drive, and may just opt-out of learning to drive altogether if they can get through their daily lives by using autonomous vehicles.) The legal issue you mention seems secondary to the human factors one. If people get addicted to self-driving, and some are dependent upon it, the laws will bend to the culture not the other way around, as they always do. Look at the current regime for an example of this: we gloss over the 30k fatalities that happen regularly due to cars, and hand out licenses to drive these death machines to people who really should have no right to do so given their poor driving skills or physical impediments -- we do so because to deny someone the ability to drive is so averse to culture and freedom that we err on the side of enabling more people to drive despite the fact that it surely increases the risk for everyone on the road.
gamblor956 7y ago
A million miles is not a lot. For comparison, the people of LA drove a million miles by 5a this morning. The drivers in SoCal will drive over 100 million miles just today. The fact that many accidents involving human drivers still make the news is telling. It's not commonplace.
- mordymoop 7y ago
  This is a weird hill to want to die on. Self-driving is currently statistically safer than human driving. Yes, caveats, for only the domains on which self-driving has been well-trained.
  - rimliu 7y ago
    Remove accidents caused by humans who were driving recklessly intentionally and I am not sure how the statistics will look.
  - JJMcJ 7y ago
    Namely roaming around the meticulously mapped out streets of Mountain View and Sunnyvale at 25 miles an hour in daylight in good weather. Meticulously mapped - the location of curbs and the like are known within an inch or so.
  - Fins 7y ago
    So, self-driving is safer for those specific circumstances where self-driving is safer? Well, sure. Not much surprise there. That's not very persuasive about self-driving being (or ever being) safer than humans at real world driving in general conditions. One could even argue that adding FSD to the mix for those ideal conditions will "condition", as it were, humans to suck even more at driving exactly when human input will be required.
  - random314 7y ago
    Can you cite these statistics? Has any fsd car driven 1 million miles with no operator on the wheel?
  - 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago
neaden 7y ago
The average is 1.25 fatalities per 100 Million miles driven, so not that telling yet.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago
  Presumably that average is taken over all conditions, implying that the average is well below 1.25 fatalities per 100 million miles driven in the conditions waymo is driving in.
  - neaden 7y ago
    True, and drunk drivers, and unlicensed drivers, and people driving while very sick or tired. Really we will need a couple billion miles driven to really start to get into fatalities as a metric compared to humans. Fortunately most car accidents aren't fatal, so those will be a better starting point.
UncleEntity 7y ago
Two weeks ago I could have reached one of my life goals of ramming a waymo robocar if I were making a U-turn rather than a left so they still have quite a ways to go before they're ready for prime time. Maybe next time...

crispyambulance 7y ago

It's not sufficient for these systems to just be "better" than humans in terms of accidents/mile/vehicle, they have to be FAR BETTER than humans. Today, when accidents occur, blame and liability goes to the responsible parties. We're talking about millions of accidents and millions of drivers. If you suddenly have a car that drives, the blame and liability for all accidents then gets focused like a giant magnifying glass onto ONE (or a few) companies which have made the self-driving car. I don't know how many accidents/mile/vehicle is the "magic number" but I expect it is going to have to be far far far lower than what it is now. Otherwise, these self-driving car vendors won't be able to survive the legal onslaught.

magashna 7y ago
Why can't we accept a little better now and keep striving for far better? Seems stupid to have an all or nothing approach, especially when plenty of luxury vehicles have pieces of automated driving in them already. Liability is for insurance leeches to figure out
- krisrm 7y ago
  If the added liability of "a little better" self driving car is too much to make a self driving car profitable, companies won't build them.
- ABCLAW 7y ago
  Because the proper comparison isn't X accidents vs Y accidents. It's X accidents and Z billion dollars spent vs Y accidents, where that Z billion dollars could have gone to other efforts. If the delta between X and Y is minor, Z is wasted.
stale2002 7y ago
This isn't as hard of a problem as you make it seem. The people who pay for accidents will be the same people who pay for them now. It will be the insurance companies. I am sure that insurance companies will jump at the chance to save money, by insuring statistically safer vehicles.
gfodor 7y ago
Not really. The cars only need to be safe enough to get over the potential fear of users to activate them. This may even be less safe than human drivers, we just don't know until they are deployed. For example, it could turn out that present day autopilot in Tesla cars is less safe than human drivers, but yet people still use it. Humans aren't strictly rational based upon risk when it comes to transportation. If autocars are convenient, and in every day experience work successfully, people will use them (especially those who are young, who have the marginal cost of having to instead learn how to drive, and may just opt-out of learning to drive altogether if they can get through their daily lives by using autonomous vehicles.) The legal issue you mention seems secondary to the human factors one. If people get addicted to self-driving, and some are dependent upon it, the laws will bend to the culture not the other way around, as they always do. Look at the current regime for an example of this: we gloss over the 30k fatalities that happen regularly due to cars, and hand out licenses to drive these death machines to people who really should have no right to do so given their poor driving skills or physical impediments -- we do so because to deny someone the ability to drive is so averse to culture and freedom that we err on the side of enabling more people to drive despite the fact that it surely increases the risk for everyone on the road.

gamblor956 7y ago

A million miles is not a lot. For comparison, the people of LA drove a million miles by 5a this morning. The drivers in SoCal will drive over 100 million miles just today. The fact that many accidents involving human drivers still make the news is telling. It's not commonplace.

mordymoop 7y ago
This is a weird hill to want to die on. Self-driving is currently statistically safer than human driving. Yes, caveats, for only the domains on which self-driving has been well-trained.
- rimliu 7y ago
  Remove accidents caused by humans who were driving recklessly intentionally and I am not sure how the statistics will look.
- JJMcJ 7y ago
  Namely roaming around the meticulously mapped out streets of Mountain View and Sunnyvale at 25 miles an hour in daylight in good weather. Meticulously mapped - the location of curbs and the like are known within an inch or so.
- Fins 7y ago
  So, self-driving is safer for those specific circumstances where self-driving is safer? Well, sure. Not much surprise there. That's not very persuasive about self-driving being (or ever being) safer than humans at real world driving in general conditions. One could even argue that adding FSD to the mix for those ideal conditions will "condition", as it were, humans to suck even more at driving exactly when human input will be required.
- random314 7y ago
  Can you cite these statistics? Has any fsd car driven 1 million miles with no operator on the wheel?
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago

neaden 7y ago

The average is 1.25 fatalities per 100 Million miles driven, so not that telling yet.

6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago
Presumably that average is taken over all conditions, implying that the average is well below 1.25 fatalities per 100 million miles driven in the conditions waymo is driving in.
- neaden 7y ago
  True, and drunk drivers, and unlicensed drivers, and people driving while very sick or tired. Really we will need a couple billion miles driven to really start to get into fatalities as a metric compared to humans. Fortunately most car accidents aren't fatal, so those will be a better starting point.

UncleEntity 7y ago

Two weeks ago I could have reached one of my life goals of ramming a waymo robocar if I were making a U-turn rather than a left so they still have quite a ways to go before they're ready for prime time. Maybe next time...