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Two major issues I see with this are: 1) It's very important to do an apples to apples to comparison when you're looking at accident rates, and you can't just

Two major issues I see with this are: 1) It's very important to do an apples to apples to comparison when you're looking at accident rates, and you can't just do that by looking at averages for the US for all miles traveled. There have been issues with numbers for Tesla autopilot before where it looked like autopilot was safer than it was because Tesla compare autopilot against the average accident rates for all miles driven but in reality for the types of situations where autopilot was used, human drivers actually had fewer accidents on average. 2) Waymo has a low accident rate because its vehicles are operating very conservatively right now. If it could scale up and still operate the same way, that wouldn't be an issue, but its vehicles are already causing problems by getting stuck which suggests that it wouldn't be practical for them to operate a significantly larger number of vehicles the way they are operating right now. To scale up, they would need to drive less conservatively, and in that case they very likely would not be safe in their current state. IMO, this means it isn't really meaningful to say that they're "already safer" than human drivers.

ilyt 3y ago
One example: Bad weather/road conditions where human might have problems but autonomic cars currently will go "no, you drive it".
- jansan 3y ago
  This. Once autonomic cars can safely and with confidence steer through a crowded IKEA parking lot on Saturday morning when it's raining we can say they are ready.
  - bhouston 3y ago
    Even if they can do that, they cannot drive in most of Canada almost half the year -- we have snow and icy roads 3-6 months a year.
    - danielbln 3y ago
      Since human drivers can do this, what's missing from autonomous systems to perform here as well? More training data? Different optical or radar systems? Assuming our ability to drive isn't some God given gift, there shouldn't be a hard limit on what autonomous cars can do, yes?
      - bhouston 3y ago
        I am sure they will do this eventually, but it is next level. They would likely have to setup in a Northern location and run their cars in that location for a while. Also need to update their simulations to account for snow and icy roads. So more complex driving models and more challenging road detection. Sometimes there is light snow over the whole road and there are no markings. You just have to position yourself relative to street signs or ditches where you think your lane is.
        Ekaros 3y ago
        Also we then get to some more interesting challenges. Certain snow conditions can have rather bad traction like very muddy roads do. And self-driving should be able to navigate these better than regular drivers.
        giantg2 3y ago
        How can the car determine the road condition, especially if it varies (snow here vs ice under the snow in this spot vs that's a drift)? It seems like a lot of this is based on driver experience whereas traction controls today are based on things like differential wheel speed comparison. It won't determine a bad situation until you're in it. Autonomous vehicles are good at making routine repeatable decisions based on clear data. I'm not sure how we can sense and input this sort of data clearly enough.
        bhouston 3y ago
        Eventually these autonomous vehicles should share driving condition data in real-time-ish. If one car finds a stretch of the road slippery, it should basically mark it on the map as a bad location, and then other cars and be careful. I think weather conditions can also predict road conditions pretty well. And the combine that with historical data on where things were slippery, I bet you can create a pretty good model of what conditions to expect across a driving environment. Although in Canada, sometimes all roads in a city are just horrid - dozens of cars in ditches or hitting each other because no one can stop. And maybe in those cases, autonomous vehicles should refuse to drive until it is improved.
  - konschubert 3y ago
    Why is that the bar? It they are safe and useful in other situations, they can already be used in those other situations, no?
    - hulitu 3y ago
      > Why is that the bar? It they are safe and useful in other situations, they can already be used in those other situations, no? Unlike in SW, choosing a different path might lead to accidents. My car can keep the lane very good in a sunny day, when the sin shines from above (i.e. midday). In heavy rain or snow, i can rely only on my senses. For an automatic driving car to be useful, it must function correctly in 100 % of the cases (ok, 99,999 %).
    - jansan 3y ago
      I was talking about general purpose autonomous driving. Special cases of autonomous driving have been in use for a while like trains (the Yurikamome in Tokyo started operation in 1995), buses driving on designated routes, Waymo cars that operated in certain areas etc.
bhouston 3y ago
> been issues with numbers for Tesla autopilot Not surprising. > To scale up, they would need to drive less conservatively Can you quantify this? I think that self-driving cars should drive conservatively. Human drivers who are aggressive or risk taking are idiots even if they get to where they are going on time. Driverless cars should drive like public transport buses (at least around here) / school buses. Conservative, slower than you would like and safe.
- quantumwannabe 3y ago
  They drive more conservatively than the most conservative human driver, mainly because they don’t try at all to cooperate with other vehicles. It’s clearly due to technical reasons, not because they’re being more safe. For example, if they need to make a lane change for a turn on a congested street, they will wait for someone to let them in rather than “pushing” their way in like a human driver (especially a bus driver) would. When that inevitably doesn’t happen, they are forced to go around the block and try again. That exact behavior happened during the “Uber” ride I took on a Waymo, and it is possible they have improved since then.
- jabradoodle 3y ago
  It depends how conservative you mean by conservative. If you compare a traffic light intersection where there is a clear moment at which you should stop or continue with a roundabout where you need to make a judgement call; being overly conservative would mean stopping at the roundabout until there is 0 traffic. There was a discussion on this in ep 454 of Freakonomics radio.
- brookst 3y ago
  > self-driving cars should drive conservatively I agree, but the specifics get tricky. It is possible to drive so conservatively that it’s unpredictable and therefore dangerous. I’ve known some terrible conservative drivers in my time; I was a passenger with someone who stopped abruptly in an intersection despite having a green light because they were afraid someone else was going to run the red (while it’s fair to say the person who rear-ended us was at fault, it was an accident that would not happen with a more normal driver). Maybe I’m nit picking on the difference between conservative and unsurprising.
giantg2 3y ago
The third important point about not comparing averages is that there are many human drivers that are outliers - people who are on a suspended license, intoxicated (over 1/2 of injured drivers are intoxicated), people who should have never had a license to begin with (either unable or needed more training) due to our joke testing, etc. I would much rather see comparisons to safe/prudent drivers vs the average. Try to sell me autopilot as being as safe or marginally better than the average driver and I'll never use that shit - the average driver sucks. https://www.npr.org/2022/12/13/1142598789/drivers-crashes-drugs-alcohol-nhtsa-study https://www.npr.org/2022/12/13/1142598789/drivers-crashes-dr...
- elif 3y ago
  I would call 600% improvement over average more than "marginal"
  - atoav 3y ago
    Imagine the following scenario: your hometown is encircled by forest fires, the only way out is a single road. That road sees some abnormal conditions, smoke, vehicles on the side, maybe burning debree on the road. Would you trust a self driving vehicle to attempt to drive your family into safety? If not, then you probably got some food for thought about averages.
  - giantg2 3y ago
    Where did you get that number? Only from the limited test scope of SF taxis? Or is this fromba more comprehensive testing?
- JohnMakin 3y ago
  But for these types of analyses you have to take the average because autonomous driving will improve the safety of these “average” drivers quite a bit. I get what you’re saying though. I’ve been driving for 20 years, have had a single accident (rear ended at a stop light, not really my fault), no moving violations, and have driven about ~300,000 miles total (sounds like a lot but I was a full time lyft driver for a bit). I’m positive I’m an outlier but I’d also trust myself a lot more than some of the current autonomous vehicles. I’d still assume with AI assistance or partial autonomy, I’d be safer on average though.
Tee3993 3y ago
> are operating very conservatively right now If other drivers would not yield to robocar, it may get stuck on intersection forever. Robocars have no assertiveness to push themselves into traffic.
- aworks 3y ago
  Although I have limited expertise in Boston, there, anyway, "pushing" is part of the driving protocol and expected.
Stealthisbook 3y ago
In the same vein, the average car on US roads is 12 years old. So the average driver is dealing with the safety considerations of a vehicle that isn't a perfectly maintained current model. Maybe making the point of comparison with professional drivers in fleet cars would be more accurate, but I doubt that data is available.
sigmoid10 3y ago
>for the types of situations where autopilot was used, human drivers actually had fewer accidents on average. Do you have any source for that? As far as I'm aware, there simply isn't enough public data released to actually make an unbiased comparison here. So whichever side of this you're on, you can always twist the data to confirm your point of view. Only when Tesla and all other carmakers begin to hand out all of their data, we will get a useful comparison.
steveBK123 3y ago
Interesting actual useful stat would be - insurance companies covering Tesla owners, reported accident rates on that pool of owners before & after Tesla ownership. I raise this because the pool of people buying a Tesla is different than the full driver pool. There is likely serious sampling bias in this pool of drivers due to demographics, geographics, etc..
- yomlica8 3y ago
  Insurance seems really weird to me with self driving cars. It seems like the driver being insured is Tesla Motor Co not Bill Smith. Bill just owns the car, he doesn't drive it. I've noticed a lot of automation legally still require a warm body to take the blame. Seems like eating your cake and having it too.
  - tialaramex 3y ago
    Ignore Tesla. Yes Elon is going to keep saying they're selling a "Self driving" car but Elon's lawyers are going to keep telling anybody who gets into an accident they were driving because Elon isn't really selling a self-driving car. Waymo are driving, there is no warm body, in accidents where a Waymo self driving taxi struck somebody that's on Waymo, you're just a passenger the same as if you were in a New York cab, or a Uber, or if an A320 you're sat in smacks into a post because the pilots took a corner too close. You're not the one who needs insurance, because you're not driving, Waymo is.
    - steveBK123 3y ago
      Agree that Tesla isn't self driving in the technical sense. However, given public perception and number of units.. Tesla is what 99% to 99.9% of consumers will interact with in the "self driving" space. Even Waymo still has some safety drivers per the article linked. And if we are going to constrain our analysis to self driving pilot programs, then we need to constrain the comparison to the same geofenced area. Arguably there are not a lot of fatal accidents per 1M miles on the local roads of Phoenix/SanFran by human drivers either.
trickstra 3y ago
> If it could scale up and still operate the same way... Once they scale up, they will be encountering more other Waymo cars on the roads, eliminating a lot of the accidents where someone else crashed into Waymo, or made an upredictable move. So then they could afford to drive less conservatively. We are pretty sure that our roads would be much safer if all cars were self-driving, but that cannot happen overnight and there will be an interim phase when robo-cars have to mix with human drivers, which is the hard engineering challenge.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

ilyt 3y ago

One example: Bad weather/road conditions where human might have problems but autonomic cars currently will go "no, you drive it".

jansan 3y ago
This. Once autonomic cars can safely and with confidence steer through a crowded IKEA parking lot on Saturday morning when it's raining we can say they are ready.
- bhouston 3y ago
  Even if they can do that, they cannot drive in most of Canada almost half the year -- we have snow and icy roads 3-6 months a year.
  - danielbln 3y ago
    Since human drivers can do this, what's missing from autonomous systems to perform here as well? More training data? Different optical or radar systems? Assuming our ability to drive isn't some God given gift, there shouldn't be a hard limit on what autonomous cars can do, yes?
    - bhouston 3y ago
      I am sure they will do this eventually, but it is next level. They would likely have to setup in a Northern location and run their cars in that location for a while. Also need to update their simulations to account for snow and icy roads. So more complex driving models and more challenging road detection. Sometimes there is light snow over the whole road and there are no markings. You just have to position yourself relative to street signs or ditches where you think your lane is.
      - Ekaros 3y ago
        Also we then get to some more interesting challenges. Certain snow conditions can have rather bad traction like very muddy roads do. And self-driving should be able to navigate these better than regular drivers.
        giantg2 3y ago
        How can the car determine the road condition, especially if it varies (snow here vs ice under the snow in this spot vs that's a drift)? It seems like a lot of this is based on driver experience whereas traction controls today are based on things like differential wheel speed comparison. It won't determine a bad situation until you're in it. Autonomous vehicles are good at making routine repeatable decisions based on clear data. I'm not sure how we can sense and input this sort of data clearly enough.
        bhouston 3y ago
        Eventually these autonomous vehicles should share driving condition data in real-time-ish. If one car finds a stretch of the road slippery, it should basically mark it on the map as a bad location, and then other cars and be careful. I think weather conditions can also predict road conditions pretty well. And the combine that with historical data on where things were slippery, I bet you can create a pretty good model of what conditions to expect across a driving environment. Although in Canada, sometimes all roads in a city are just horrid - dozens of cars in ditches or hitting each other because no one can stop. And maybe in those cases, autonomous vehicles should refuse to drive until it is improved.
- konschubert 3y ago
  Why is that the bar? It they are safe and useful in other situations, they can already be used in those other situations, no?
  - hulitu 3y ago
    > Why is that the bar? It they are safe and useful in other situations, they can already be used in those other situations, no? Unlike in SW, choosing a different path might lead to accidents. My car can keep the lane very good in a sunny day, when the sin shines from above (i.e. midday). In heavy rain or snow, i can rely only on my senses. For an automatic driving car to be useful, it must function correctly in 100 % of the cases (ok, 99,999 %).
  - jansan 3y ago
    I was talking about general purpose autonomous driving. Special cases of autonomous driving have been in use for a while like trains (the Yurikamome in Tokyo started operation in 1995), buses driving on designated routes, Waymo cars that operated in certain areas etc.

bhouston 3y ago

> been issues with numbers for Tesla autopilot Not surprising. > To scale up, they would need to drive less conservatively Can you quantify this? I think that self-driving cars should drive conservatively. Human drivers who are aggressive or risk taking are idiots even if they get to where they are going on time. Driverless cars should drive like public transport buses (at least around here) / school buses. Conservative, slower than you would like and safe.

quantumwannabe 3y ago
They drive more conservatively than the most conservative human driver, mainly because they don’t try at all to cooperate with other vehicles. It’s clearly due to technical reasons, not because they’re being more safe. For example, if they need to make a lane change for a turn on a congested street, they will wait for someone to let them in rather than “pushing” their way in like a human driver (especially a bus driver) would. When that inevitably doesn’t happen, they are forced to go around the block and try again. That exact behavior happened during the “Uber” ride I took on a Waymo, and it is possible they have improved since then.
jabradoodle 3y ago
It depends how conservative you mean by conservative. If you compare a traffic light intersection where there is a clear moment at which you should stop or continue with a roundabout where you need to make a judgement call; being overly conservative would mean stopping at the roundabout until there is 0 traffic. There was a discussion on this in ep 454 of Freakonomics radio.
brookst 3y ago
> self-driving cars should drive conservatively I agree, but the specifics get tricky. It is possible to drive so conservatively that it’s unpredictable and therefore dangerous. I’ve known some terrible conservative drivers in my time; I was a passenger with someone who stopped abruptly in an intersection despite having a green light because they were afraid someone else was going to run the red (while it’s fair to say the person who rear-ended us was at fault, it was an accident that would not happen with a more normal driver). Maybe I’m nit picking on the difference between conservative and unsurprising.

giantg2 3y ago

The third important point about not comparing averages is that there are many human drivers that are outliers - people who are on a suspended license, intoxicated (over 1/2 of injured drivers are intoxicated), people who should have never had a license to begin with (either unable or needed more training) due to our joke testing, etc. I would much rather see comparisons to safe/prudent drivers vs the average. Try to sell me autopilot as being as safe or marginally better than the average driver and I'll never use that shit - the average driver sucks. https://www.npr.org/2022/12/13/1142598789/drivers-crashes-drugs-alcohol-nhtsa-study https://www.npr.org/2022/12/13/1142598789/drivers-crashes-dr...

elif 3y ago
I would call 600% improvement over average more than "marginal"
- atoav 3y ago
  Imagine the following scenario: your hometown is encircled by forest fires, the only way out is a single road. That road sees some abnormal conditions, smoke, vehicles on the side, maybe burning debree on the road. Would you trust a self driving vehicle to attempt to drive your family into safety? If not, then you probably got some food for thought about averages.
- giantg2 3y ago
  Where did you get that number? Only from the limited test scope of SF taxis? Or is this fromba more comprehensive testing?
JohnMakin 3y ago
But for these types of analyses you have to take the average because autonomous driving will improve the safety of these “average” drivers quite a bit. I get what you’re saying though. I’ve been driving for 20 years, have had a single accident (rear ended at a stop light, not really my fault), no moving violations, and have driven about ~300,000 miles total (sounds like a lot but I was a full time lyft driver for a bit). I’m positive I’m an outlier but I’d also trust myself a lot more than some of the current autonomous vehicles. I’d still assume with AI assistance or partial autonomy, I’d be safer on average though.

Tee3993 3y ago

> are operating very conservatively right now If other drivers would not yield to robocar, it may get stuck on intersection forever. Robocars have no assertiveness to push themselves into traffic.

aworks 3y ago
Although I have limited expertise in Boston, there, anyway, "pushing" is part of the driving protocol and expected.

Stealthisbook 3y ago

In the same vein, the average car on US roads is 12 years old. So the average driver is dealing with the safety considerations of a vehicle that isn't a perfectly maintained current model. Maybe making the point of comparison with professional drivers in fleet cars would be more accurate, but I doubt that data is available.

sigmoid10 3y ago

>for the types of situations where autopilot was used, human drivers actually had fewer accidents on average. Do you have any source for that? As far as I'm aware, there simply isn't enough public data released to actually make an unbiased comparison here. So whichever side of this you're on, you can always twist the data to confirm your point of view. Only when Tesla and all other carmakers begin to hand out all of their data, we will get a useful comparison.

steveBK123 3y ago

Interesting actual useful stat would be - insurance companies covering Tesla owners, reported accident rates on that pool of owners before & after Tesla ownership. I raise this because the pool of people buying a Tesla is different than the full driver pool. There is likely serious sampling bias in this pool of drivers due to demographics, geographics, etc..

yomlica8 3y ago
Insurance seems really weird to me with self driving cars. It seems like the driver being insured is Tesla Motor Co not Bill Smith. Bill just owns the car, he doesn't drive it. I've noticed a lot of automation legally still require a warm body to take the blame. Seems like eating your cake and having it too.
- tialaramex 3y ago
  Ignore Tesla. Yes Elon is going to keep saying they're selling a "Self driving" car but Elon's lawyers are going to keep telling anybody who gets into an accident they were driving because Elon isn't really selling a self-driving car. Waymo are driving, there is no warm body, in accidents where a Waymo self driving taxi struck somebody that's on Waymo, you're just a passenger the same as if you were in a New York cab, or a Uber, or if an A320 you're sat in smacks into a post because the pilots took a corner too close. You're not the one who needs insurance, because you're not driving, Waymo is.
  - steveBK123 3y ago
    Agree that Tesla isn't self driving in the technical sense. However, given public perception and number of units.. Tesla is what 99% to 99.9% of consumers will interact with in the "self driving" space. Even Waymo still has some safety drivers per the article linked. And if we are going to constrain our analysis to self driving pilot programs, then we need to constrain the comparison to the same geofenced area. Arguably there are not a lot of fatal accidents per 1M miles on the local roads of Phoenix/SanFran by human drivers either.

trickstra 3y ago

> If it could scale up and still operate the same way... Once they scale up, they will be encountering more other Waymo cars on the roads, eliminating a lot of the accidents where someone else crashed into Waymo, or made an upredictable move. So then they could afford to drive less conservatively. We are pretty sure that our roads would be much safer if all cars were self-driving, but that cannot happen overnight and there will be an interim phase when robo-cars have to mix with human drivers, which is the hard engineering challenge.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]