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Thirty thousand people die on US roads every year because of the actions of people who received driving instruction and passed a driving test.

kibwen 4y ago
And ubiquitous FSD could easily make that number worse, not better.
rootusrootus 4y ago
This is a better argument for improving training and testing than it is in lowering the bar and letting a buggy computer program drive.
- jjoonathan 4y ago
  Do you really think there's more room to improve human nature than AI technology? I don't. I think they both have a ceiling and that the ceiling on AI is much higher.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    Yes? The largest causes of accidents are fairly well understood, if we decided it were worth the effort. Not coincidentally, this is why all the arguments for self-driving fall flat. Being as good as an average driver is a low bar. Being as good as a median driver is a harder task. But it's the latter that is the bar we have to pass if self-driving cars are ever to become mainstream.
    - jjoonathan 4y ago
      Deaths = N*average, not N*median.
      - rootusrootus 4y ago
        I was not trying to claim otherwise. But unless you are intending to make self-driving cars mandatory, N*average is meaningless. The median driver is who you actually need to convince, and they are not going to choose a self-driving car that is less safe than they are.
- simondotau 4y ago
  It was only intended as an argument as a direct response to the post by tsimionescu. Tesla could focus on making FSD beta satisfy the driver test given to teenagers. It could perform the test as well as any 16-year-old and we'd all agree that it wouldn't really prove anything about the safety of FSD or the human teenager. Which is my point — the road is full of hideously bad/dangerously inexperienced human drivers holding driver licenses. Given this, it's hard for me to interpret the pearl-clutching around humans co-driving with FSD beta as anything other than confected paranoia.
kaba0 4y ago
Many (most?) accidents are due to a clearly in the wrong driver (drunk-driving, texting, etc), and the other parties have no way of avoiding that. How exactly would a few self-driving cars help here? They can’t prevent a collision when the other party goes over a red light at some insane speed. They could start breaking sooner, which is great, but that doesn’t need self driving, it is a feature of plenty of cars already. Of course if every car would be self driving we wouldn’t have crazy drivers, and accidents would diminish, but so would if we simply didn’t have crazy drivers. Neither is feasible in the near future, and in the short term, humans are much better at handling tricky situations (like.. not emergency braking at the sight of a plastic bag in the air)

kibwen 4y ago

And ubiquitous FSD could easily make that number worse, not better.

rootusrootus 4y ago

This is a better argument for improving training and testing than it is in lowering the bar and letting a buggy computer program drive.

jjoonathan 4y ago
Do you really think there's more room to improve human nature than AI technology? I don't. I think they both have a ceiling and that the ceiling on AI is much higher.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  Yes? The largest causes of accidents are fairly well understood, if we decided it were worth the effort. Not coincidentally, this is why all the arguments for self-driving fall flat. Being as good as an average driver is a low bar. Being as good as a median driver is a harder task. But it's the latter that is the bar we have to pass if self-driving cars are ever to become mainstream.
  - jjoonathan 4y ago
    Deaths = N*average, not N*median.
    - rootusrootus 4y ago
      I was not trying to claim otherwise. But unless you are intending to make self-driving cars mandatory, N*average is meaningless. The median driver is who you actually need to convince, and they are not going to choose a self-driving car that is less safe than they are.
simondotau 4y ago
It was only intended as an argument as a direct response to the post by tsimionescu. Tesla could focus on making FSD beta satisfy the driver test given to teenagers. It could perform the test as well as any 16-year-old and we'd all agree that it wouldn't really prove anything about the safety of FSD or the human teenager. Which is my point — the road is full of hideously bad/dangerously inexperienced human drivers holding driver licenses. Given this, it's hard for me to interpret the pearl-clutching around humans co-driving with FSD beta as anything other than confected paranoia.

kaba0 4y ago

Many (most?) accidents are due to a clearly in the wrong driver (drunk-driving, texting, etc), and the other parties have no way of avoiding that. How exactly would a few self-driving cars help here? They can’t prevent a collision when the other party goes over a red light at some insane speed. They could start breaking sooner, which is great, but that doesn’t need self driving, it is a feature of plenty of cars already. Of course if every car would be self driving we wouldn’t have crazy drivers, and accidents would diminish, but so would if we simply didn’t have crazy drivers. Neither is feasible in the near future, and in the short term, humans are much better at handling tricky situations (like.. not emergency braking at the sight of a plastic bag in the air)