4 ms·

Just because they have weird failure cases does not mean they fail more often than human drivers. FWIW as a biker in SF i feel much more comfortable around dri

Just because they have weird failure cases does not mean they fail more often than human drivers. FWIW as a biker in SF i feel much more comfortable around driverless than actual drivers, especially in areas like the Mission where people don’t check their right before turning onto streets like Guerrero or Valencia. The self driving ones always do

fsckboy 3y ago
but just because they have weird failure cases does not mean they fail less often than human drivers either.
- gruez 3y ago
  Right, but the OP seems to be skipping that part entirely. The only metric we should care about is overall accident rates (controlling for reasonable variables of course), not "safely navigating situations that below-average human drivers rarely struggle with".
  - hef19898 3y ago
    Given that driverless cars are slim minority on our roads, if they exist at all, failure modes actually do matter a lot. Human drivwr failure modes are what everybody is used to, and trained by everyday life to cope with. The radom, unpredictable stuff driverless cars do is in itsrlf dangerous from that perspective.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - Retric 3y ago
      This isn’t the kind of thing you need to theorize about when there’s real world data to look at. American drivers have 13.5 deaths per billion vehicle miles, you can try and adjust that for conditions etc but people still fuck up driving good cars in nearly perfect conditions. The fully autonomous cars without safety drivers haven’t yet crossed the threshold to compare fatalities, but you can compare vs the 5 million car accidents in the U.S. each year 43% of which resulted in injuries. So there’s enough data to know they aren’t wildly dangerous.
      - lancesells 3y ago
        I think the jury is still out since these cars are deployed in very specific, limited environments. In my opinion you need to compare only the areas they are driving in vs the accidents in only those areas. If they don't use freeways or specific streets, or drive in the rain, than those needed to be excluded in the data. There are other factors like if they make unintended stops, cause traffic, etc. that don't get marked as accidents. I would love it if they all worked and saved lives but I'm not yet sold on this.
  - Gabrys1 3y ago
    I don't think that IS a fair metric. Be it for Tesla or for robotaxi and let me explain why. Tesla vehicles should be compared to similar vehicles driven by people that can afford a Tesla. (Not to a national average that includes lots of small, cheap or old cars). Robotaxis incident rates should be compared to taxi incident rates in the specific areas. There should be some way of factoring in the overly-cautious driving causing other drivers to do stupid shit because they got annoyed by the cars in question. (Not sure how exactly though)
    - gruez 3y ago
      >Tesla vehicles should be compared to similar vehicles driven by people that can afford a Tesla. (Not to a national average that includes lots of small, cheap or old cars). >Robotaxis incident rates should be compared to taxi incident rates in the specific areas. That's what I said in the original comment? >overall accident rates (controlling for reasonable variables of course)
      - Gabrys1 3y ago
        You did say that, not sure how I missed that. Sorry for that
        Tempest1981 3y ago
        Your example helped me. I wasn't thinking of that.
chaboud 3y ago
An unlicensed driver in the Mission plowed into me on my motorcycle because he panicked and slammed on the gas. Cruise cars, conversely, generally result in close calls due to aborted lane changes, cutting me off, or absurd double parking, but I can safely assume that a Cruise car will sit at a stop sign for minutes on end of other drivers don't give it a turn. Cruise vehicles operate like over-cautious student drivers, dangerously lacking assertiveness and commitment. Basically, if the Mission is your bar for quality, we may as well let elementary school kids drive. Nonetheless, Cruise vehicles for into that tapestry quite nicely. Unless I'm going to the Mission, it's best to avoid it altogether.
- bluGill 3y ago
  Assertiveness is a bad thing in drivers. Sure you wait longer for others to do the right thing, but you also don't force crashes because of your bad driving.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    It’s more expectedness. I find CA drivers to be very assertive, meaning they will accelerate to pass you while joining the freeway; in the Midwest people will slow down when merging to be polite, which causes many more issues.
    - admax88qqq 3y ago
      Neither of those is assertiveness IMO
    - whimsicalism 3y ago
      Shows how subjective it is - from my Boston/DC perspective, CA drivers are ridiculously diffident
- bombcar 3y ago
  You also have the situation where an assumed perfect car that drives exactly as you expect, but once in a million goes just kills you - is likely to be much less annoying (unless you’re dead) than a car that every single time you interact with it does weird things, even though it never kills you at all
j7ake 3y ago
Evaluating safety of self driving cars is not just a matter of comparing number of failures of number of accidents, or any one scalar number. Just to illustrate my point, imagine a case where self driving cars have same number of fatal deaths (normalised by whatever you need to convince yourself), but self driving cars disproportionately fail on dark skinned children. Then it is obvious that self driving cars are worse. Weird failure cases, cases where a bad human driver would do better, are bad for self driving cars.
- ajross 3y ago
  Your point is that we shouldn't have self-driving vehicles because... we can't prove they're not racist? I'm not following. I mean, yes, you're correct that there are edge cases in any moral analysis and it's not just about comparing two numbers (though in safety arguments, yeah, it's almost always about simple numbers). But you don't get to wave that fact as a get-out-of-jail-free card in an argument! You need to show us the edge case. And the best you can do is "the cars might be racist"?
  - ryanklee 3y ago
    GP's example is just to give a hypothetical instance of why qualitative analysis needs to be considered as well.

fsckboy 3y ago

but just because they have weird failure cases does not mean they fail less often than human drivers either.

gruez 3y ago
Right, but the OP seems to be skipping that part entirely. The only metric we should care about is overall accident rates (controlling for reasonable variables of course), not "safely navigating situations that below-average human drivers rarely struggle with".
- hef19898 3y ago
  Given that driverless cars are slim minority on our roads, if they exist at all, failure modes actually do matter a lot. Human drivwr failure modes are what everybody is used to, and trained by everyday life to cope with. The radom, unpredictable stuff driverless cars do is in itsrlf dangerous from that perspective.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - Retric 3y ago
    This isn’t the kind of thing you need to theorize about when there’s real world data to look at. American drivers have 13.5 deaths per billion vehicle miles, you can try and adjust that for conditions etc but people still fuck up driving good cars in nearly perfect conditions. The fully autonomous cars without safety drivers haven’t yet crossed the threshold to compare fatalities, but you can compare vs the 5 million car accidents in the U.S. each year 43% of which resulted in injuries. So there’s enough data to know they aren’t wildly dangerous.
    - lancesells 3y ago
      I think the jury is still out since these cars are deployed in very specific, limited environments. In my opinion you need to compare only the areas they are driving in vs the accidents in only those areas. If they don't use freeways or specific streets, or drive in the rain, than those needed to be excluded in the data. There are other factors like if they make unintended stops, cause traffic, etc. that don't get marked as accidents. I would love it if they all worked and saved lives but I'm not yet sold on this.
- Gabrys1 3y ago
  I don't think that IS a fair metric. Be it for Tesla or for robotaxi and let me explain why. Tesla vehicles should be compared to similar vehicles driven by people that can afford a Tesla. (Not to a national average that includes lots of small, cheap or old cars). Robotaxis incident rates should be compared to taxi incident rates in the specific areas. There should be some way of factoring in the overly-cautious driving causing other drivers to do stupid shit because they got annoyed by the cars in question. (Not sure how exactly though)
  - gruez 3y ago
    >Tesla vehicles should be compared to similar vehicles driven by people that can afford a Tesla. (Not to a national average that includes lots of small, cheap or old cars). >Robotaxis incident rates should be compared to taxi incident rates in the specific areas. That's what I said in the original comment? >overall accident rates (controlling for reasonable variables of course)
    - Gabrys1 3y ago
      You did say that, not sure how I missed that. Sorry for that
      - Tempest1981 3y ago
        Your example helped me. I wasn't thinking of that.

chaboud 3y ago

An unlicensed driver in the Mission plowed into me on my motorcycle because he panicked and slammed on the gas. Cruise cars, conversely, generally result in close calls due to aborted lane changes, cutting me off, or absurd double parking, but I can safely assume that a Cruise car will sit at a stop sign for minutes on end of other drivers don't give it a turn. Cruise vehicles operate like over-cautious student drivers, dangerously lacking assertiveness and commitment. Basically, if the Mission is your bar for quality, we may as well let elementary school kids drive. Nonetheless, Cruise vehicles for into that tapestry quite nicely. Unless I'm going to the Mission, it's best to avoid it altogether.

bluGill 3y ago
Assertiveness is a bad thing in drivers. Sure you wait longer for others to do the right thing, but you also don't force crashes because of your bad driving.
- bombcar 3y ago
  It’s more expectedness. I find CA drivers to be very assertive, meaning they will accelerate to pass you while joining the freeway; in the Midwest people will slow down when merging to be polite, which causes many more issues.
  - admax88qqq 3y ago
    Neither of those is assertiveness IMO
  - whimsicalism 3y ago
    Shows how subjective it is - from my Boston/DC perspective, CA drivers are ridiculously diffident
bombcar 3y ago
You also have the situation where an assumed perfect car that drives exactly as you expect, but once in a million goes just kills you - is likely to be much less annoying (unless you’re dead) than a car that every single time you interact with it does weird things, even though it never kills you at all

j7ake 3y ago

Evaluating safety of self driving cars is not just a matter of comparing number of failures of number of accidents, or any one scalar number. Just to illustrate my point, imagine a case where self driving cars have same number of fatal deaths (normalised by whatever you need to convince yourself), but self driving cars disproportionately fail on dark skinned children. Then it is obvious that self driving cars are worse. Weird failure cases, cases where a bad human driver would do better, are bad for self driving cars.

ajross 3y ago
Your point is that we shouldn't have self-driving vehicles because... we can't prove they're not racist? I'm not following. I mean, yes, you're correct that there are edge cases in any moral analysis and it's not just about comparing two numbers (though in safety arguments, yeah, it's almost always about simple numbers). But you don't get to wave that fact as a get-out-of-jail-free card in an argument! You need to show us the edge case. And the best you can do is "the cars might be racist"?
- ryanklee 3y ago
  GP's example is just to give a hypothetical instance of why qualitative analysis needs to be considered as well.