5 ms·

Meh. It only needs to be better than the average driver. Several companies have already achieved that

by NavinF 6y ago

dheera 6y ago
I think the bar needs to be much higher than "average". Although beating the average is arguably "good enough" to deploy in a collective sense, we live in a society of individual actors, and if I'm an above average driver, it needs to be better than me, not better than average, for me to want to use it. Assuming a society in which each person individually and rationally chooses whether or not to use it, if you want 99% of people to use it, your software needs to be better than the 99th percentile driver.
- stormbrew 6y ago
  This assumes a lot about the correctness of people's perceptions of their own driving skills. My experience is 99% of drivers think they're above average, and that obviously can't be true.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    In my experience there's two kinds of people who'll say their good drivers and they're both good but with wildly different definitions of "good" You've got Jose the 35yo MRI service technician who logs 100k/yr for work and has had so much time to get good he can tell exactly what traffic is doing and are highly capable of printing what is about to happen and are preemptively making moves based on that. He knows his insurance company would crucify him if the saw how he flings an overloaded Transit Connect through an on-ramp or parallel parks by braille so if you press the issue he'll tell you he's good at getting where he's going but that the bureaucrats who write the state driver's manual wouldn't like him. And then you've got Karen the elementary school teacher nearing retirement who logs 10k/yr 5k of which are spent looking at her phone. She has spent a cumulative one hour of her life above the speed limit despite spending much more than that on highways where the traffic flow is well above the speed limit. She follows every rule in the book to the letter, gets honked at daily and once a week she has a story about "some asshole" she got in a conflicting situation with. She doesn't know how far down the gas pedal on her 4Runner goes but oh boy does that brake pedal get a workout when "oh crap almost missed my turn". She swears up and down that she's a good driver because of the seventeen fender benders she's been in she was only at fault in the three that were caught on camera or where witnesses stopped. Which definition of "good" do you want near you when there's 3" of snow on the road?
    - kwhitefoot 6y ago
      > Which definition of "good" do you want near you when there's 3" of snow on the road? When there is snow on the road you should not be near either of them. You should be far enough behind that you can stop when the car in front gets into difficulties. The rule of thumb on a dry road is that you should be three seconds behind. At 100 km/h (about 60 mph) that's 83 m (about 270 ft), say 17 car lengths (for my Tesla S that is). If there is snow on the road perhaps it would be wise to allow more distance. See, for instance, https://www.driveincontrol.org/drivingtips/the-three-second-rule https://www.driveincontrol.org/drivingtips/the-three-second-...
  - gunnarmorling 6y ago
    > My experience is 99% of drivers think they're above average, and that obviously can't be true. It actually can be true, depending on the distribution of skills you assume. Say you have 100 drivers, 99 with the same skill level, and one driver which is worse. 99% will be better than the average. I'll see myself out ;)
- NavinF 6y ago
  If you really think you're better than a self driving car, then don't buy one. Or do you want the gov't to choose for you? You should be happy that other people can buy them because they'll no longer crash into you ;)
dotancohen 6y ago
The average driver got to that level after years of practice. With this system in place, the new-average-driver will have the skills of someone who's just barely gotten their drivers license years ago and have never used it since. And that person will be expected to pilot the vehicle only in times of such dire conditions that the computer cannot do it. Perhaps the use of this system should be licensed separately from a standard drivers license, akin to an IFR rating. And to keep the rating, manual driving must be performed periodically and logged as well.
- NavinF 6y ago
  If we have evidence that this is an issue, I'm on board with that. If it turns out this is not an issue and we unnecessarily made self driving cars less common, that would have the same effect as shooting a few hundred random people every day (3,700 people die every day from crashes) We'll find out in a couple of years
  - mathgeek 6y ago
    > 3,700 people die every day from crashes Can you provide your source please? Closest I could find is https://www.cdc.gov/injury/features/global-road-safety/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/injury/features/global-road-safety/index... which states that “[e]very day, almost 3,700 people are killed globally in crashes involving cars, buses, motorcycles, bicycles, trucks, or pedestrians. More than half of those killed are pedestrians, motorcyclists, or cyclists.” I didn’t find a number for just motor vehicle crashes, and since the rates are three times higher in developing countries, it seems like the cost of ownership is going to be a huge factor.
azureel 6y ago
There is also the case of "liability". An average driver can drive the car into a tree with no problems at all. No one except the driver is responsible there. But if a company sells a product with the name "Autonomous Driver", than that company is liable if the product mulfunctions (ie. drives a car into a tree).
- NavinF 6y ago
  Let the courts decide who's liable. I'm sure that in practice this would be decided on a case by case basis with logs from the car's computer.
  - Vespasian 6y ago
    But if the car is in full auto mode the driver is not expected to pay attention or look at the road. Based on the situation the car thinks it can drive autonomously. At least a partial liability will have to fall on the OEM that's why nobody is making any binding promises (including Tesla)
  - dagw 6y ago
    would be decided on a case by case basis with logs from the car's computer. If I was a car manufacturer and I knew that my log files would undoubtedly be used as evidence against me in a criminal negligence trial, I would think very hard about what I did and didn't put into those logs.
cycomanic 6y ago
Yes in California/Arizona sunny weather on wide US roads with. My experiences with even driving assist on small twisty road in the snow tells me me things are nowhere close. The car was accelerating in situations (e.g. coming over the crest of a small incline with a corner at the end), where no driver would ever accelerate and which would have resulted in some bad situation without intervention. We have seen Teslas getting confused by fork in the roads on the highway.
- daveswilson 6y ago
  I don't think anybody's sanctioning the use of driver assist features on small twisty roads the snow yet, are they? If so please share what you were driving - that would be interesting even if it didn't work well at the time. Most of these things, AFAIK, are in the LKAS, ACC, LDW range and meant for highways and there are mutterings about that in the manual. I sometimes use ACC and/or LKAS on country roads but only with very low expectations. Teslas at least get better over time. If it got confused over a fork in the road, there's a decent chance that after a near-future firmware update that same car will no longer be confused. A few folks have acknowledged that they're now smart enough to slow down for curves (even sometimes a bit generously), and they are among the few that work pretty well off-highway (most of the time).
  - PraetorianGourd 6y ago
    It may not being marketed directly, but calling something "full self driving" greatly implies that self driving is fully supported in all scenarios. I have not seen any Tesla marketing that says "full self driving, on big roads with clear markings in dry/slightly damp weather". Words matter
AshamedCaptain 6y ago
Actually, it only needs to be better than the average mammal. And I am not sure any level of AI has reached that level yet.

Meh. It only needs to be better than the average driver. Several companies have already achieved that

by NavinF 6y ago

Meh. It only needs to be better than the average driver. Several companies have already achieved that

I think the bar needs to be much higher than "average". Although beating the average is arguably "good enough" to deploy in a collective sense, we live in a society of individual actors, and if I'm an above average driver, it needs to be better than me, not better than average, for me to want to use it. Assuming a society in which each person individually and rationally chooses whether or not to use it, if you want 99% of people to use it, your software needs to be better than the 99th percentile driver.

stormbrew 6y ago
This assumes a lot about the correctness of people's perceptions of their own driving skills. My experience is 99% of drivers think they're above average, and that obviously can't be true.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  In my experience there's two kinds of people who'll say their good drivers and they're both good but with wildly different definitions of "good" You've got Jose the 35yo MRI service technician who logs 100k/yr for work and has had so much time to get good he can tell exactly what traffic is doing and are highly capable of printing what is about to happen and are preemptively making moves based on that. He knows his insurance company would crucify him if the saw how he flings an overloaded Transit Connect through an on-ramp or parallel parks by braille so if you press the issue he'll tell you he's good at getting where he's going but that the bureaucrats who write the state driver's manual wouldn't like him. And then you've got Karen the elementary school teacher nearing retirement who logs 10k/yr 5k of which are spent looking at her phone. She has spent a cumulative one hour of her life above the speed limit despite spending much more than that on highways where the traffic flow is well above the speed limit. She follows every rule in the book to the letter, gets honked at daily and once a week she has a story about "some asshole" she got in a conflicting situation with. She doesn't know how far down the gas pedal on her 4Runner goes but oh boy does that brake pedal get a workout when "oh crap almost missed my turn". She swears up and down that she's a good driver because of the seventeen fender benders she's been in she was only at fault in the three that were caught on camera or where witnesses stopped. Which definition of "good" do you want near you when there's 3" of snow on the road?
  - kwhitefoot 6y ago
    > Which definition of "good" do you want near you when there's 3" of snow on the road? When there is snow on the road you should not be near either of them. You should be far enough behind that you can stop when the car in front gets into difficulties. The rule of thumb on a dry road is that you should be three seconds behind. At 100 km/h (about 60 mph) that's 83 m (about 270 ft), say 17 car lengths (for my Tesla S that is). If there is snow on the road perhaps it would be wise to allow more distance. See, for instance, https://www.driveincontrol.org/drivingtips/the-three-second-rule https://www.driveincontrol.org/drivingtips/the-three-second-...
- gunnarmorling 6y ago
  > My experience is 99% of drivers think they're above average, and that obviously can't be true. It actually can be true, depending on the distribution of skills you assume. Say you have 100 drivers, 99 with the same skill level, and one driver which is worse. 99% will be better than the average. I'll see myself out ;)
NavinF 6y ago
If you really think you're better than a self driving car, then don't buy one. Or do you want the gov't to choose for you? You should be happy that other people can buy them because they'll no longer crash into you ;)

dotancohen 6y ago

The average driver got to that level after years of practice. With this system in place, the new-average-driver will have the skills of someone who's just barely gotten their drivers license years ago and have never used it since. And that person will be expected to pilot the vehicle only in times of such dire conditions that the computer cannot do it. Perhaps the use of this system should be licensed separately from a standard drivers license, akin to an IFR rating. And to keep the rating, manual driving must be performed periodically and logged as well.

NavinF 6y ago
If we have evidence that this is an issue, I'm on board with that. If it turns out this is not an issue and we unnecessarily made self driving cars less common, that would have the same effect as shooting a few hundred random people every day (3,700 people die every day from crashes) We'll find out in a couple of years
- mathgeek 6y ago
  > 3,700 people die every day from crashes Can you provide your source please? Closest I could find is https://www.cdc.gov/injury/features/global-road-safety/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/injury/features/global-road-safety/index... which states that “[e]very day, almost 3,700 people are killed globally in crashes involving cars, buses, motorcycles, bicycles, trucks, or pedestrians. More than half of those killed are pedestrians, motorcyclists, or cyclists.” I didn’t find a number for just motor vehicle crashes, and since the rates are three times higher in developing countries, it seems like the cost of ownership is going to be a huge factor.

azureel 6y ago

There is also the case of "liability". An average driver can drive the car into a tree with no problems at all. No one except the driver is responsible there. But if a company sells a product with the name "Autonomous Driver", than that company is liable if the product mulfunctions (ie. drives a car into a tree).

NavinF 6y ago
Let the courts decide who's liable. I'm sure that in practice this would be decided on a case by case basis with logs from the car's computer.
- Vespasian 6y ago
  But if the car is in full auto mode the driver is not expected to pay attention or look at the road. Based on the situation the car thinks it can drive autonomously. At least a partial liability will have to fall on the OEM that's why nobody is making any binding promises (including Tesla)
- dagw 6y ago
  would be decided on a case by case basis with logs from the car's computer. If I was a car manufacturer and I knew that my log files would undoubtedly be used as evidence against me in a criminal negligence trial, I would think very hard about what I did and didn't put into those logs.

cycomanic 6y ago

Yes in California/Arizona sunny weather on wide US roads with. My experiences with even driving assist on small twisty road in the snow tells me me things are nowhere close. The car was accelerating in situations (e.g. coming over the crest of a small incline with a corner at the end), where no driver would ever accelerate and which would have resulted in some bad situation without intervention. We have seen Teslas getting confused by fork in the roads on the highway.

daveswilson 6y ago
I don't think anybody's sanctioning the use of driver assist features on small twisty roads the snow yet, are they? If so please share what you were driving - that would be interesting even if it didn't work well at the time. Most of these things, AFAIK, are in the LKAS, ACC, LDW range and meant for highways and there are mutterings about that in the manual. I sometimes use ACC and/or LKAS on country roads but only with very low expectations. Teslas at least get better over time. If it got confused over a fork in the road, there's a decent chance that after a near-future firmware update that same car will no longer be confused. A few folks have acknowledged that they're now smart enough to slow down for curves (even sometimes a bit generously), and they are among the few that work pretty well off-highway (most of the time).
- PraetorianGourd 6y ago
  It may not being marketed directly, but calling something "full self driving" greatly implies that self driving is fully supported in all scenarios. I have not seen any Tesla marketing that says "full self driving, on big roads with clear markings in dry/slightly damp weather". Words matter

AshamedCaptain 6y ago

Actually, it only needs to be better than the average mammal. And I am not sure any level of AI has reached that level yet.