4 ms·
A bigger problem is this: Say you need to prove to the public that the autonomous car is significantly safer, and you do an apples-to-apples comparison between
by semi-extrinsic 4y ago
A bigger problem is this: Say you need to prove to the public that the autonomous car is significantly safer, and you do an apples-to-apples comparison between a hypothetical Level 4/5 car and well designed new Level 2 electric car like a Volvo C40 or a BMW i4.
The modern Level 2 car is already today at below 1 fatality per billion vehicle miles travelled (VMT). The autonomous car then needs to be below 0.1 fatalities per billion VMT. Meaning that if you have 1 million vehicles of your make deployed, they each need to have driven 30-40 000 miles autonomously before you have enough statistics!
That means proving the safety of a Level 4/5 autonomous system is extremely expensive and slow, and requires significant public adoption before it's proven to be safe. The consequence is that, assuming proven safety is necessary before public adoption, it becomes impossible to prove safety.
Another point is that OTA upgrades for autonomy become entirely pointless, as you'll be polluting your statistics if you change the code more frequently than every ~3 years.
- ryanwaggoner 4y agoI think you’d use crashes, not fatalities.
- cipheredStones 4y ago> The modern Level 2 car is already today at below 1 fatality per billion vehicle miles travelled (VMT) Does this statistic count fatalities to people outside the car? I ask because (in the US, at least) car safety ratings don't take those into consideration.
- rootusrootus 4y ago> in the US, at least) car safety ratings don't take those into consideration Which ratings? The NHTSA does include non-occupant fatalities in their statistics. E.g. https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/2020-traffic-crash-data-fatalities https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/2020-traffic-crash-data...
- cipheredStones 4y agoNHTSA safety ratings (https://www.nhtsa.gov/ratings https://www.nhtsa.gov/ratings) only count people in the car. It looks like they proposed a change to that this spring (https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/five-star-safety-ratings-program-updates-proposed https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/five-star-safety-rating...), but I don't think they've implemented it yet. From that press release: > For the first time ever, [the proposed rating program] includes technology recommendations not only for drivers and passengers but for road users outside the vehicle, like pedestrians. News story on this: https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/3/22960262/nhtsa-ncap-five-star-safety-rating-adas-proposal https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/3/22960262/nhtsa-ncap-five-s...