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The framing for these reports is always the same: the journalist refers to other recent incidents involving autonomous vehicles, ignoring the very high base rat

The framing for these reports is always the same: the journalist refers to other recent incidents involving autonomous vehicles, ignoring the very high base rate of incidents not involving autonomous cars. Accidents that don’t involve autonomous cars are not interesting to them or their readers because they are so common. If the SF Chronicle actually wanted to inform their readers they would publish a table of all motor vehicle crashes in the city by type of vehicle.

lancesells 3y ago
Cruise gets a ton of positive press from being on the road compared to self-driven cars. There are no stories about a person buying a car and driving it around their city because it's not interesting or novel. At some point it won't be news when driverless cars are involved in accidents but for now they are. Personally, I think the public should be informed about what a new technology is doing and capable of whether it's good or bad. Especially one that can kill people rather easily.
- minwcnt5 3y ago
  Right now Waymo is operating at a larger scale than Cruise, and driving in more difficult conditions, yet seems to have an order of magnitude fewer problems. The fact there's no way to objectively differentiate the two seems like a regulatory failure.
coldbrewed 3y ago
The thing that stands out to me is that the driverless car parked on top of the victim until the fire department arrived and extricated the victim. There are few vehicle-pedestrian crashes where the offending vehicle parked on top of the vehicle and wouldn't be moved; screaming bystanders are usually effective at compelling a driver to roll off the victim. This isn't a simple matter of "humans good drivers, robots bad drivers"; it's an example of "humans can improvise and respond reasonably to novel situations; robots cannot reliably interpret and respond to novel situations."
- wskinner 3y ago
  It’s not at all clear to me that a hypothetical scenario where the driver moved the car after running over the person would have a better outcome than waiting for first responders to jack up the car (see e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37753867 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37753867). You claim “ There are few vehicle-pedestrian crashes where the offending vehicle parked on top of the vehicle and wouldn't be moved” - what is your evidence for that? 2.3 million people are injured in car accidents in the United States per year. Finally, it is plausible that AVs will have a higher frequency of certain very specific failure modes relative to human drivers, while having dramatically lower overall frequency of accidents where people are injured. This type of reporting obscures that.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- lsaferite 3y ago
  > According to Cruise, police had directed the company to keep the vehicle stationary, apparently with the pedestrian stuck beneath it. > While spokespeople for the Police Department did not have an officer’s report Tuesday morning to clarify exactly when police made the order, they said it is standard procedure not to move cars at the scene of wrecks — regardless of whether a human is operating them.
system16 3y ago
It’s because of the nature of some these accidents and incidents by autonomous vehicles being under circumstances that would be very unlikely with even the most careless driver. They highlight the helplessness and cold hard reality of being at the wrong end of a miscalculation. So even if the overall number of accidents is less, the number of times a human driver would park on top of a victim of a hit and run and turn on the hazard lights is near zero.

lancesells 3y ago

Cruise gets a ton of positive press from being on the road compared to self-driven cars. There are no stories about a person buying a car and driving it around their city because it's not interesting or novel. At some point it won't be news when driverless cars are involved in accidents but for now they are. Personally, I think the public should be informed about what a new technology is doing and capable of whether it's good or bad. Especially one that can kill people rather easily.

minwcnt5 3y ago
Right now Waymo is operating at a larger scale than Cruise, and driving in more difficult conditions, yet seems to have an order of magnitude fewer problems. The fact there's no way to objectively differentiate the two seems like a regulatory failure.

coldbrewed 3y ago

The thing that stands out to me is that the driverless car parked on top of the victim until the fire department arrived and extricated the victim. There are few vehicle-pedestrian crashes where the offending vehicle parked on top of the vehicle and wouldn't be moved; screaming bystanders are usually effective at compelling a driver to roll off the victim. This isn't a simple matter of "humans good drivers, robots bad drivers"; it's an example of "humans can improvise and respond reasonably to novel situations; robots cannot reliably interpret and respond to novel situations."

wskinner 3y ago
It’s not at all clear to me that a hypothetical scenario where the driver moved the car after running over the person would have a better outcome than waiting for first responders to jack up the car (see e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37753867 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37753867). You claim “ There are few vehicle-pedestrian crashes where the offending vehicle parked on top of the vehicle and wouldn't be moved” - what is your evidence for that? 2.3 million people are injured in car accidents in the United States per year. Finally, it is plausible that AVs will have a higher frequency of certain very specific failure modes relative to human drivers, while having dramatically lower overall frequency of accidents where people are injured. This type of reporting obscures that.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
lsaferite 3y ago
> According to Cruise, police had directed the company to keep the vehicle stationary, apparently with the pedestrian stuck beneath it. > While spokespeople for the Police Department did not have an officer’s report Tuesday morning to clarify exactly when police made the order, they said it is standard procedure not to move cars at the scene of wrecks — regardless of whether a human is operating them.

system16 3y ago

It’s because of the nature of some these accidents and incidents by autonomous vehicles being under circumstances that would be very unlikely with even the most careless driver. They highlight the helplessness and cold hard reality of being at the wrong end of a miscalculation. So even if the overall number of accidents is less, the number of times a human driver would park on top of a victim of a hit and run and turn on the hazard lights is near zero.