3 ms·

Until they're driving everywhere humans drive, I don't see how it's possible to make any such comparison. Is Waymo taking skiers on I-70 in Colorado on a powder

Until they're driving everywhere humans drive, I don't see how it's possible to make any such comparison. Is Waymo taking skiers on I-70 in Colorado on a powder day? Heck, how about we get central Boston[1]? It's rather telling that the only areas of Boston were tiny slices of the very spacious, well-marked, and recently developed expansions of the city. It's been 10 years, and the real driverless car scene has been unchanged in that time. The Silicon Valley Season 1 jokes about them have yet to age out out of relevance. Until then we're extrapolating safety by comparing the car equivalent of train tracks to, well, people driving cars. 1. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/08/29/business/san-francisco-vs-boston-self-driving-cars/ https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/08/29/business/san-francisc...

tjmc 3y ago
Exactly right. Try driving past a mob of kangaroos at the side of the road. There's a definite pace that works and they'll often break straight in front of you with little warning. Until self driving cars have been deployed internationally in a huge range of driving environments I'll take my chances behind the wheel.
zuminator 3y ago
> Until they're driving everywhere humans drive, I don't see how it's possible to make any such comparison. You raise a good point but surely it's at least possible to compare the safety records of driverless cars vs. human operated cars within the domain that driverless cars typically operate. One way to do that would be to only examine all trips, human and driverless, that occur entirely within a bounded area that driverless cars are known to operate. Another option would be to look at the total safety record of a city like SF in the years prior to widespread driverless car usage and in the years after common adoption and see if there is a broad reduction in accidents generally. Apropos of this, the other day I was thinking about the adoption of mobile devices. Originally the unadorned word "phone" referred to a wired home/office telephone, and if you needed to refer to a mobile device, you'd say, call me on my mobile/cellphone. Over the course of a generation it's now that if you say "phone," the assumption is that you are talking about a mobile device, and the exceptions become either landline or office phone. It makes me wonder how long, if ever, it will be until "car" almost universally refers to driverless vehicles, and you'll need to say "manual car," "meatmobile," or something similar to those to refer to a human-driven vehicle.

tjmc 3y ago

Exactly right. Try driving past a mob of kangaroos at the side of the road. There's a definite pace that works and they'll often break straight in front of you with little warning. Until self driving cars have been deployed internationally in a huge range of driving environments I'll take my chances behind the wheel.

zuminator 3y ago

> Until they're driving everywhere humans drive, I don't see how it's possible to make any such comparison. You raise a good point but surely it's at least possible to compare the safety records of driverless cars vs. human operated cars within the domain that driverless cars typically operate. One way to do that would be to only examine all trips, human and driverless, that occur entirely within a bounded area that driverless cars are known to operate. Another option would be to look at the total safety record of a city like SF in the years prior to widespread driverless car usage and in the years after common adoption and see if there is a broad reduction in accidents generally. Apropos of this, the other day I was thinking about the adoption of mobile devices. Originally the unadorned word "phone" referred to a wired home/office telephone, and if you needed to refer to a mobile device, you'd say, call me on my mobile/cellphone. Over the course of a generation it's now that if you say "phone," the assumption is that you are talking about a mobile device, and the exceptions become either landline or office phone. It makes me wonder how long, if ever, it will be until "car" almost universally refers to driverless vehicles, and you'll need to say "manual car," "meatmobile," or something similar to those to refer to a human-driven vehicle.