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The 4-5x is based on statistics of a sample with a high ratio of human drivers to autonomous drivers, if done on the road today. Autonomous won't be known to b

The 4-5x is based on statistics of a sample with a high ratio of human drivers to autonomous drivers, if done on the road today. Autonomous won't be known to be N times as safe as human driving until there are sufficient autonomous cars on the road and the varying ratios of autonomous to human drivers have been at equilibrium for a some sufficient amount of time to gather sufficient data to compare to human driving safety statistics. So- 4-5x times is a lie. It could be much more dangerous with only autonomous drivers or much less dangerous. They don't know yet.

Dylan16807 6y ago
> So- 4-5x times is a lie. It could be much more dangerous with only autonomous drivers or much less dangerous. They don't know yet. "could be"? Statistics? Aren't these studies asking about theoretical cars that are by definition a certain amount safer?
- studius 6y ago
  e.g. "This autonomous car is 4-5x safer than your human-driven car." When people hear numbers like that, they may assume it's based on sufficient data and is true, even if it's theory. But how could it be true or acceptable, given that we're only just starting to have more autonomous vehicles on the road, and the safety could be dependent on the ratio of autonomous vehicles to human drivers?
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    Are you talking about the study, or people claiming that about real cars? The study would need to have a wide variety of safety numbers, and all the cars are theoretical. If 4-5x lines up with a claim about a real car, it's probably a coincidence. Saying there's not enough data about real cars has no bearing on this research at all, unless the abstract is wildly misleading. You replied to someone talking about waiting for autonomous cars to be 4-5x as safe. That means they are waiting for a car to meet that threshold with correct statistics. You can't call out nonexistent statistics as being a lie!
    - studius 6y ago
      We have safety statistics on real cars with a minority of autonomous vehicles on the road. What we don't have are adequate safety statistics on autonomous cars on the road with each other and human drivers at various ratios of autonomous cars to human-driven cars. If a study were to be able to propose safety numbers based on the various ratios and various autonomous cars and systems, then that would be adequate, given the theories behind those numbers are well-founded. If you were to say, "This is how it is: given that the ratio of autonomous cars to human-driven cars isn't changing and we expect it to stay the same, we can see that the autonomous cars are 4-5x safer," then I'd not call it a lie. But 4-5x safer without qualifications shows a gross misunderstanding of the importance of the effect of the ratio of autonomous drivers to human drivers; the variation in environment and expected behavior could influence greater or decreased safety, leading false assumption.
      - Dylan16807 6y ago
        It would be easy to do a comparison with different ratios, though, so you shouldn't preemptively assume incompetence. And it seems pretty unlikely that increasing the number of autonomous cars will make them signficantly less safe, and that's the only result that would be a problem. Mild fluctuations don't matter on a scale as coarse as "4-5x", and an improvement would be good.
        kaba0 6y ago
        Do you think that increasing the number of autonomous cars will linearly decrease the number of accidents to a certain point? Don’t you think that increasing their number will increase the chances of meeting with really bad human drivers and we simply don’t have sufficient info on whether those ‘meetings’ are less or more deadly than with a human driver - and those are the cause of a significant chunk of accidents. And by intuition I doubt that today’s AI could react better than a competent human driver to someone cutting in front of it, and the like. Simply because we are better at reading high-level patterns in others’ driving. Reaction time is not the only metric that matters.

Dylan16807 6y ago

> So- 4-5x times is a lie. It could be much more dangerous with only autonomous drivers or much less dangerous. They don't know yet. "could be"? Statistics? Aren't these studies asking about theoretical cars that are by definition a certain amount safer?

studius 6y ago
e.g. "This autonomous car is 4-5x safer than your human-driven car." When people hear numbers like that, they may assume it's based on sufficient data and is true, even if it's theory. But how could it be true or acceptable, given that we're only just starting to have more autonomous vehicles on the road, and the safety could be dependent on the ratio of autonomous vehicles to human drivers?
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  Are you talking about the study, or people claiming that about real cars? The study would need to have a wide variety of safety numbers, and all the cars are theoretical. If 4-5x lines up with a claim about a real car, it's probably a coincidence. Saying there's not enough data about real cars has no bearing on this research at all, unless the abstract is wildly misleading. You replied to someone talking about waiting for autonomous cars to be 4-5x as safe. That means they are waiting for a car to meet that threshold with correct statistics. You can't call out nonexistent statistics as being a lie!
  - studius 6y ago
    We have safety statistics on real cars with a minority of autonomous vehicles on the road. What we don't have are adequate safety statistics on autonomous cars on the road with each other and human drivers at various ratios of autonomous cars to human-driven cars. If a study were to be able to propose safety numbers based on the various ratios and various autonomous cars and systems, then that would be adequate, given the theories behind those numbers are well-founded. If you were to say, "This is how it is: given that the ratio of autonomous cars to human-driven cars isn't changing and we expect it to stay the same, we can see that the autonomous cars are 4-5x safer," then I'd not call it a lie. But 4-5x safer without qualifications shows a gross misunderstanding of the importance of the effect of the ratio of autonomous drivers to human drivers; the variation in environment and expected behavior could influence greater or decreased safety, leading false assumption.
    - Dylan16807 6y ago
      It would be easy to do a comparison with different ratios, though, so you shouldn't preemptively assume incompetence. And it seems pretty unlikely that increasing the number of autonomous cars will make them signficantly less safe, and that's the only result that would be a problem. Mild fluctuations don't matter on a scale as coarse as "4-5x", and an improvement would be good.
      - kaba0 6y ago
        Do you think that increasing the number of autonomous cars will linearly decrease the number of accidents to a certain point? Don’t you think that increasing their number will increase the chances of meeting with really bad human drivers and we simply don’t have sufficient info on whether those ‘meetings’ are less or more deadly than with a human driver - and those are the cause of a significant chunk of accidents. And by intuition I doubt that today’s AI could react better than a competent human driver to someone cutting in front of it, and the like. Simply because we are better at reading high-level patterns in others’ driving. Reaction time is not the only metric that matters.