3 ms·

A human being can drive a million miles without a serious accident. 2018 saw 1.1 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles driven[1]. Human beings are extremely good

A human being can drive a million miles without a serious accident. 2018 saw 1.1 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles driven[1]. Human beings are extremely good at driving safely overall. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...

steve_adams_86 6y ago
Yeah, I think people conflate seeing people drive erratically or doing dumb things in cars with an inability to operate a car in a way that ultimately prevents deaths. Humans are incredibly good at that in the bigger picture for reasons that are currently impossible to replicate with a computer. Criticize human driving all you want, but even the worst of us can typically manage to get from point a to point b... Somehow.
- joe_the_user 6y ago
  One of the eye-opening things about the wikipedia statistics is that advent and universality of mobile phones at worst caused a very small uptick in fatalities. With all the bullshit you see with on the road, somehow people manage to mostly avoid death doing it. My guess is people can pull attention back to the road at moments it's really needed.
  - steve_adams_86 6y ago
    For sure. Well, humans don't really need to make great decisions individually to be protected, ultimately, by most people making an effort not to kill or be killed – to some degree at least. It's a very strange and fascinating thing about us. I mean, that industrial agriculture eventually results in food on tables across the globe. So many systems at work. Run by the same people using their smart phones in their cars, haha. We manage to collectively make things happen. Easy to criticize, but hard to argue against the results?
cameronh90 6y ago
Yet driving deaths are the leading cause of death in older children and young adults. It's not that we're bad at driving, I suppose, it's that we do an awful lot of it and it's quite a risky activity - especially if you're not 100% engaged. That being said, if the US cared about road safety, there's quite a lot they could do to improve it already. Many techniques have been used successfully in other countries to significantly reduce road deaths, for example, a nationwide vehicle safety inspection standard and lowering speeds on urban roads. The fact that these aren't being done leads me to think the concerns about road safety are actually rather irrelevant for the country as a whole. When self driving cars exist and are convenient, people probably will switch to them, as long as the accident rate is vaguely comparable.
- Alupis 6y ago
  > Yet driving deaths are the leading cause of death in older children and young adults. All vehicle-related deaths in the US average around 32,000 annually, of which about 50% of those are alcohol and/or drug related, leaving the true accidental vehicular death number around 15,000 annually. The problem we're trying to solve with FSD just doesn't exist at the levels FSD proponents would have you believe. Humans are incredibly safe drivers when you account for the number of people driving, and the number of miles driven per year.
  - mattnewton 6y ago
    I’m not sure you can remove any driving deaths as alcohol or drug related. A hypothetical FSD system would be a solution to those deaths too, and as long as you are driving on the same road as everyone else, abstaining from them yourself still puts you at risk.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    And if everyone drove modern high-end cars with the best assistive driving systems, especially as those improve to something approaching FSD on highways (or even achieve on certain highways in certain conditions) over the coming few years, it would be better still.
jogjayr 6y ago
> A human being can drive a million miles without a serious accident A million miles sounds like a lot, but it isn't. The average American drives 12,000 miles annually. Assuming a driving career of 52 years (from age 18 to 70), the average American will drive 624k miles. So the lifetime chances of getting into a serious accident are not exactly small. (I don't know how to calculate the probability here, actually. Is 624k/1M the lifetime probability of getting into a serious accident?)
- netrus 6y ago
  Just to comment on the math (not the actual numbers): 624k/1M is the expected number of serious accidents. The probability of getting into at least one serious accident is 1 - (999999/1000000)^624000 = 46% (Every mile, you have a 99,9999% chance of no serious accident. You want that 624k times in a row).
  - jogjayr 6y ago
    Neat, thanks! So nearly a 1 in 2 chance of getting into a serious accident in a lifetime. Not great odds IMO.
    - notka 6y ago
      I believe the mileage should be higher because most of us spend time as passengers in cars too.

steve_adams_86 6y ago

Yeah, I think people conflate seeing people drive erratically or doing dumb things in cars with an inability to operate a car in a way that ultimately prevents deaths. Humans are incredibly good at that in the bigger picture for reasons that are currently impossible to replicate with a computer. Criticize human driving all you want, but even the worst of us can typically manage to get from point a to point b... Somehow.

joe_the_user 6y ago
One of the eye-opening things about the wikipedia statistics is that advent and universality of mobile phones at worst caused a very small uptick in fatalities. With all the bullshit you see with on the road, somehow people manage to mostly avoid death doing it. My guess is people can pull attention back to the road at moments it's really needed.
- steve_adams_86 6y ago
  For sure. Well, humans don't really need to make great decisions individually to be protected, ultimately, by most people making an effort not to kill or be killed – to some degree at least. It's a very strange and fascinating thing about us. I mean, that industrial agriculture eventually results in food on tables across the globe. So many systems at work. Run by the same people using their smart phones in their cars, haha. We manage to collectively make things happen. Easy to criticize, but hard to argue against the results?

cameronh90 6y ago

Yet driving deaths are the leading cause of death in older children and young adults. It's not that we're bad at driving, I suppose, it's that we do an awful lot of it and it's quite a risky activity - especially if you're not 100% engaged. That being said, if the US cared about road safety, there's quite a lot they could do to improve it already. Many techniques have been used successfully in other countries to significantly reduce road deaths, for example, a nationwide vehicle safety inspection standard and lowering speeds on urban roads. The fact that these aren't being done leads me to think the concerns about road safety are actually rather irrelevant for the country as a whole. When self driving cars exist and are convenient, people probably will switch to them, as long as the accident rate is vaguely comparable.

Alupis 6y ago
> Yet driving deaths are the leading cause of death in older children and young adults. All vehicle-related deaths in the US average around 32,000 annually, of which about 50% of those are alcohol and/or drug related, leaving the true accidental vehicular death number around 15,000 annually. The problem we're trying to solve with FSD just doesn't exist at the levels FSD proponents would have you believe. Humans are incredibly safe drivers when you account for the number of people driving, and the number of miles driven per year.
- mattnewton 6y ago
  I’m not sure you can remove any driving deaths as alcohol or drug related. A hypothetical FSD system would be a solution to those deaths too, and as long as you are driving on the same road as everyone else, abstaining from them yourself still puts you at risk.
- ghaff 6y ago
  And if everyone drove modern high-end cars with the best assistive driving systems, especially as those improve to something approaching FSD on highways (or even achieve on certain highways in certain conditions) over the coming few years, it would be better still.

jogjayr 6y ago

> A human being can drive a million miles without a serious accident A million miles sounds like a lot, but it isn't. The average American drives 12,000 miles annually. Assuming a driving career of 52 years (from age 18 to 70), the average American will drive 624k miles. So the lifetime chances of getting into a serious accident are not exactly small. (I don't know how to calculate the probability here, actually. Is 624k/1M the lifetime probability of getting into a serious accident?)

netrus 6y ago
Just to comment on the math (not the actual numbers): 624k/1M is the expected number of serious accidents. The probability of getting into at least one serious accident is 1 - (999999/1000000)^624000 = 46% (Every mile, you have a 99,9999% chance of no serious accident. You want that 624k times in a row).
- jogjayr 6y ago
  Neat, thanks! So nearly a 1 in 2 chance of getting into a serious accident in a lifetime. Not great odds IMO.
  - notka 6y ago
    I believe the mileage should be higher because most of us spend time as passengers in cars too.