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You absolutely can't challenge someone's personal experience with statistics, but something about this line of argument still troubles me. I've lost a handful

You absolutely can't challenge someone's personal experience with statistics, but something about this line of argument still troubles me. I've lost a handful of close friends to car accidents. If survivorship grants standing, then I'm for doing almost anything to reduce the tens of thousands of US road deaths each year. Survivors have been angry at safety tech before, but we generally ignore them. I've known people who insisted they would rather be thrown from an accident; they wouldn't wear a belt. One friend came to that conclusion because his uncle died trapped in a burning vehicle. I respect the incredibly complex and deep emotional reasons that he came to his conclusion, but he was still wrong, and he shouldn't set seatbelt policy. ON THE OTHER HAND... We sometimes throw around this baseline of the natural accident rate of drivers, and that's slightly lying with statistics. Accidents are not evenly distributed across all drivers. You have a lot of impaired drivers in that pack. You have a bunch of insolvent, uninsurable drivers who cause a disproportionate share of accidents. If the worst 10% have most of the accidents, then even a car that makes us safer than the mean driver could still make 90% of us less safe. We really want a car that makes us safer than our percentile of drivers. Maybe driverless cars are already better than the mean. Are they better than the 90th %ile? I don't know that anyone has enough data to say. The most cautious drivers really will have an at-fault accident rate statistically indistinguishable from zero. We should absolutely be shooting for that.

macintux 7y ago
People understand drunk drivers. They understand distracted drivers. They’re angry, rightfully so, but it’s a known problem and easy to comprehend. We can make laws tougher and feel good about it, even if it doesn’t help much. It’s harder to emotionally cope with, I speculate, when someone you love is killed by a software bug, or by machine learning where no one can precisely explain why it made a certain choice. I’m not saying I’m against autonomy. I just don’t know how to prevent it being caught in a backlash when people who didn’t have to die, do.
- brownbat 7y ago
  > but it’s a known problem and easy to comprehend... It's harder emotionally... when someone you love is killed by a software bug Sure, I understand how a poorly designed steel guardrail can ride up the front of a vehicle and crush the chest of someone I had hugged a week earlier. My sense is that understanding does not lessen the pain. You seem to basically be trying to explain how hypothetical people that you are imagining could be experiencing pain that is more salient than mine. I don't see how this takes us anywhere good.
Dylan16807 7y ago
> If the worst 10% have most of the accidents, then even a car that makes us safer than the mean driver could still make 90% of us less safe. We really want a car that makes us safer than our percentile of drivers. The standard shouldn't really vary per-person. If it's as good as a 50th percentile driver, it's good enough. If it's as good as a 20th percentile driver, that's also probably fine. You're right not to touch the mean at all, though.
- brownbat 7y ago
  > 50th percentile driver, it's good enough. The problem is if there's any correlation with safe driving and early adoption, a median solution could also lower overall road safety. For example, teenagers are generally more dangerous drivers than most, safety actually peaks per mile around 60 years old. 60 year olds are more likely to be at peak earning, more able to afford the latest car features. You're probably right at 20℅ though? This all depends on the curve. And there's a herd immunity, once most people are driverless, you can probably be less strict as roads become less hazardous overall. We'd honestly probably make the biggest dent tomorrow by just finding the worst ten percent of drivers and giving them free uber/lyft for life. That would probably save us money as a society, money we could use on driverless tech. Those aren't teenagers. Judging anecdotally from my time as an attorney, those are serially unemployed middle aged males with revoked licenses who somehow still own an old heavy truck and drive it on the sly with a bottle of something in the glove box. If you read through case law that profile is weirdly common.
carlmr 7y ago
>We sometimes throw around this baseline of the natural accident rate of drivers, and that's slightly lying with statistics. Accidents are not evenly distributed across all drivers. Not only drivers, but also roads. I would imagine most people using Autopilot use it more on highways than on city streets. The rate of accidents per kilometer is obviously much higher in the city where you have more complex situations and slower speeds. So when comparing autopilot failures we need to take into account not only miles driven, but where they are driven.

macintux 7y ago

People understand drunk drivers. They understand distracted drivers. They’re angry, rightfully so, but it’s a known problem and easy to comprehend. We can make laws tougher and feel good about it, even if it doesn’t help much. It’s harder to emotionally cope with, I speculate, when someone you love is killed by a software bug, or by machine learning where no one can precisely explain why it made a certain choice. I’m not saying I’m against autonomy. I just don’t know how to prevent it being caught in a backlash when people who didn’t have to die, do.

brownbat 7y ago
> but it’s a known problem and easy to comprehend... It's harder emotionally... when someone you love is killed by a software bug Sure, I understand how a poorly designed steel guardrail can ride up the front of a vehicle and crush the chest of someone I had hugged a week earlier. My sense is that understanding does not lessen the pain. You seem to basically be trying to explain how hypothetical people that you are imagining could be experiencing pain that is more salient than mine. I don't see how this takes us anywhere good.

Dylan16807 7y ago

> If the worst 10% have most of the accidents, then even a car that makes us safer than the mean driver could still make 90% of us less safe. We really want a car that makes us safer than our percentile of drivers. The standard shouldn't really vary per-person. If it's as good as a 50th percentile driver, it's good enough. If it's as good as a 20th percentile driver, that's also probably fine. You're right not to touch the mean at all, though.

brownbat 7y ago
> 50th percentile driver, it's good enough. The problem is if there's any correlation with safe driving and early adoption, a median solution could also lower overall road safety. For example, teenagers are generally more dangerous drivers than most, safety actually peaks per mile around 60 years old. 60 year olds are more likely to be at peak earning, more able to afford the latest car features. You're probably right at 20℅ though? This all depends on the curve. And there's a herd immunity, once most people are driverless, you can probably be less strict as roads become less hazardous overall. We'd honestly probably make the biggest dent tomorrow by just finding the worst ten percent of drivers and giving them free uber/lyft for life. That would probably save us money as a society, money we could use on driverless tech. Those aren't teenagers. Judging anecdotally from my time as an attorney, those are serially unemployed middle aged males with revoked licenses who somehow still own an old heavy truck and drive it on the sly with a bottle of something in the glove box. If you read through case law that profile is weirdly common.

carlmr 7y ago

>We sometimes throw around this baseline of the natural accident rate of drivers, and that's slightly lying with statistics. Accidents are not evenly distributed across all drivers. Not only drivers, but also roads. I would imagine most people using Autopilot use it more on highways than on city streets. The rate of accidents per kilometer is obviously much higher in the city where you have more complex situations and slower speeds. So when comparing autopilot failures we need to take into account not only miles driven, but where they are driven.