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This is not the right question to ask because it's an apples to oranges comparison for many, but most importantly two reasons. 1. Automated driving right now h

This is not the right question to ask because it's an apples to oranges comparison for many, but most importantly two reasons. 1. Automated driving right now happens in a tiny fraction of environments that are self-selected to be safe, if you were to put as many automated as real cars into absolutely the same environment as real cars the rate of incidents would obviously be substantially higher 2. automated errors are correlated. One bug in the model likely extends to every self-driving car in the same situation. Inherent reason why you cannot trivially compare the dangers of automated systems to people.

throwaway894345 5y ago
1. You need data about self-driving cars in all conditions. This doesn’t mean that “error rate of self-driving vs error rate of human drivers” is the wrong comparison. 2. This is irrelevant. What matters is the error frequency and severity. Correlations will increase frequency, but if that frequency and severity is lower than that of human drivers, it’s still a win.
- Barrin92 5y ago
  it's not irrelevant because the number of cars on the road is so low. If we had tens of millions instead of a few hundred or thousand of these on the road, and you roll out an update that makes the car drive over small kids in green t-shirts then you have a big problem in a very short time. Correlated error is a big problem when combined with tail risk, which you simply cannot see right now due to how limited the use of the technology is.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    Error rates account for these concerns. Error rate isn’t “the total number of errors”, it’s “errors per mile driven by all self-driving cars” (hence “rate”). Yes, an update might spike the number of errors, but as long as the error rate (accounting for severity) remains lower than for human drivers it’s still a net benefit. And moreover, no one is going to release an update to every car at once.

throwaway894345 5y ago

1. You need data about self-driving cars in all conditions. This doesn’t mean that “error rate of self-driving vs error rate of human drivers” is the wrong comparison. 2. This is irrelevant. What matters is the error frequency and severity. Correlations will increase frequency, but if that frequency and severity is lower than that of human drivers, it’s still a win.

Barrin92 5y ago
it's not irrelevant because the number of cars on the road is so low. If we had tens of millions instead of a few hundred or thousand of these on the road, and you roll out an update that makes the car drive over small kids in green t-shirts then you have a big problem in a very short time. Correlated error is a big problem when combined with tail risk, which you simply cannot see right now due to how limited the use of the technology is.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  Error rates account for these concerns. Error rate isn’t “the total number of errors”, it’s “errors per mile driven by all self-driving cars” (hence “rate”). Yes, an update might spike the number of errors, but as long as the error rate (accounting for severity) remains lower than for human drivers it’s still a net benefit. And moreover, no one is going to release an update to every car at once.