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Also, humans are pretty horrible at driving. They constantly commit traffic violations and kill eachother. Driving kills about 1 in 103 people in their lifetime

Also, humans are pretty horrible at driving. They constantly commit traffic violations and kill eachother. Driving kills about 1 in 103 people in their lifetime. There is no other day to day activity where this level of risk is considered acceptable.

samtho 3y ago
> Driving kills about 1 in 103 people in their lifetime. More people have been killed by cars than I have. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_illusion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_illusion
- bparsons 3y ago
  Let me be more precise. Human driving killed 42,939 people in the US in 2021.
  - rad_gruchalski 3y ago
    Apparently it’s 45,404. That’s still a little bit less than people killed by a gun the same year (48,830), and killed by opioids (nearly twice as many: 80,411). Let’s not forget an estimated 300k/year deaths related to obesity. Source: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/injury.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/injury.htm. Whataboutism but puts those numbers in perspective.
    - dghlsakjg 3y ago
      The obesity deaths are comorbidity, which is… not to say that obesity killed them, but that it may have been a factor. E.g. obese 55 year olds that have a heart attack are in there, even though it is entirely possible for non-obese individuals to have heart attacks at young ages. Guns… most of those are suicides, and that stat is uniquely American in terms of developed countries. Opioids… also almost entirely self-inflicted (not willingly, but getting flattened by a bus is different than getting accidentally hooked) Car stats also don’t count the incredible number of people who have lifelong or major injuries due to cars, which I would imagine is much higher. I feel pretty comfortable saying that a majority of people I know have been injured by cars, something that isn’t true for opioids or guns.
      - 0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
        >Guns… most of those are suicides, and that stat is uniquely American in terms of developed countries. That seemed unbelievable to me, so I had to do some checking. The CDC[0] put 48k suicides in 2021, and attributed 55% to guns. Leaving us with 26.4k suicide gun deaths. While still a large number, there are still a significant portion of GP's 48k gun deaths which were not self inflected. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/suicide-data-statistics.html https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/suicide-data-statistics.html
Veserv 3y ago
What are you talking about? Humans are shockingly good drivers. It is a average of ~80,000,000 miles, or ~5,000 years of regular driving between fatalitys and that includes the motorcyclists, drunks, and people who do not wear their seatbelts who account for ~70% of all deaths if I recall correctly. If you are a average driver who does not drive drunk and who wears your seatbelt and you started driving when agriculture was invented you would not be expected to have gotten into a fatal accident yet. Anybody who says humans are bad drivers is almost certainly underestimating the difficulty of replacing humans by a factor of 1000x.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  I don’t know how we could say humans are “good” or “bad” drivers. What are we comparing against? We’re the only thing that drives cars (other than a few self driving cars).
  - bparsons 3y ago
    Compared against any other activity or mode of transportation.
    - bee_rider 3y ago
      If someone had said said “trains are safer than cars” I’d agree with that comparison, but the question is are humans good at driving cars. I don’t know if we’re particularly better at driving cars than trains, trains are just better designs. I mean, you wouldn’t say humans are good at tic-tac-toe, and bad at chess, right? Chess is just a much harder game.
- vhcr 3y ago
  What does "started driving when agriculture was invented" even mean?
  - Noumenon72 3y ago
    If you Google "when was agriculture invented" it says, "approximately 10,000 years ago".

samtho 3y ago

> Driving kills about 1 in 103 people in their lifetime. More people have been killed by cars than I have. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_illusion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_illusion

bparsons 3y ago
Let me be more precise. Human driving killed 42,939 people in the US in 2021.
- rad_gruchalski 3y ago
  Apparently it’s 45,404. That’s still a little bit less than people killed by a gun the same year (48,830), and killed by opioids (nearly twice as many: 80,411). Let’s not forget an estimated 300k/year deaths related to obesity. Source: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/injury.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/injury.htm. Whataboutism but puts those numbers in perspective.
  - dghlsakjg 3y ago
    The obesity deaths are comorbidity, which is… not to say that obesity killed them, but that it may have been a factor. E.g. obese 55 year olds that have a heart attack are in there, even though it is entirely possible for non-obese individuals to have heart attacks at young ages. Guns… most of those are suicides, and that stat is uniquely American in terms of developed countries. Opioids… also almost entirely self-inflicted (not willingly, but getting flattened by a bus is different than getting accidentally hooked) Car stats also don’t count the incredible number of people who have lifelong or major injuries due to cars, which I would imagine is much higher. I feel pretty comfortable saying that a majority of people I know have been injured by cars, something that isn’t true for opioids or guns.
    - 0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
      >Guns… most of those are suicides, and that stat is uniquely American in terms of developed countries. That seemed unbelievable to me, so I had to do some checking. The CDC[0] put 48k suicides in 2021, and attributed 55% to guns. Leaving us with 26.4k suicide gun deaths. While still a large number, there are still a significant portion of GP's 48k gun deaths which were not self inflected. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/suicide-data-statistics.html https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/suicide-data-statistics.html

Veserv 3y ago

What are you talking about? Humans are shockingly good drivers. It is a average of ~80,000,000 miles, or ~5,000 years of regular driving between fatalitys and that includes the motorcyclists, drunks, and people who do not wear their seatbelts who account for ~70% of all deaths if I recall correctly. If you are a average driver who does not drive drunk and who wears your seatbelt and you started driving when agriculture was invented you would not be expected to have gotten into a fatal accident yet. Anybody who says humans are bad drivers is almost certainly underestimating the difficulty of replacing humans by a factor of 1000x.

bee_rider 3y ago
I don’t know how we could say humans are “good” or “bad” drivers. What are we comparing against? We’re the only thing that drives cars (other than a few self driving cars).
- bparsons 3y ago
  Compared against any other activity or mode of transportation.
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    If someone had said said “trains are safer than cars” I’d agree with that comparison, but the question is are humans good at driving cars. I don’t know if we’re particularly better at driving cars than trains, trains are just better designs. I mean, you wouldn’t say humans are good at tic-tac-toe, and bad at chess, right? Chess is just a much harder game.
vhcr 3y ago
What does "started driving when agriculture was invented" even mean?
- Noumenon72 3y ago
  If you Google "when was agriculture invented" it says, "approximately 10,000 years ago".