5 ms·

> by the lower number of accidents that AVs are involved in per distance travelled compared to human-driven vehicles Just a note that this number is hard to ca

> by the lower number of accidents that AVs are involved in per distance travelled compared to human-driven vehicles Just a note that this number is hard to calculate accurately with an acceptable degree of certainty. Anyone claiming that AVs are involved in fewer accidents per distance traveled than human drivers is either extrapolating from incomplete data or baking some unreliable assumptions into their statement. Welch Labs has a good introductory video to this topic: https://youtu.be/yaYER2M8dcs?si=XEB4aWlYf6gnnTqM https://youtu.be/yaYER2M8dcs?si=XEB4aWlYf6gnnTqM

Steltek 3y ago
Can someone summarize the video? That was my first thought as well: crash data for humans is clearly underreported. For example, police don't always write reports or human drivers agree to keep it off the books.
- serial_dev 3y ago
  And I'm not even sure how reliable is the "miles driven" metric. I mean I'm sure you can estimate it somehow, but what's the margin of error there?
  - viraptor 3y ago
    Odometers are pretty well regulated and insurance companies will often have a good record of the readings over long periods. I'm not sure how the org doing the data collection does it precisely, but pretty accurate data is out there.
- CSMastermind 3y ago
  The probability of a human driver causing a fatality on any given mile driven is 0.00000109% (1.09 fatalities occur per 100 million miles driven). Applying some basic statistics to show to a 95% confidence level that a self driving system causes fewer fatalities than a human you would have to drive 275 million autonomous miles flawlessly. This would require a fleet of 100 vehicles to drive continuously for 12.56 years. And in practice self-driving vehicles don't drive perfectly. Best estimates on the actual number of miles driven to validate their safety is around 5 billion autonomously driven miles and that's assuming that they actually are safer than a human driver. Then you get into the comparison itself. In practice AVs don't drive on all the same roads, at the same times, as human drivers. A disproportionate number of accidents happen at night, in adverse weather, and on roads that AVs don't typically drive on. Then you have to ask if comparing AVs to all drivers and vehicles is valid comparison. We know for instance that vehicles with automated breaking and lane assist are involved in fewer accidents. Then of course if minimizing accidents is really what you care about there's something easy we could do right now: just mandate all vehicles must have an breathalyzer ignition. We do this for some people who have been convicted of DUI but doing it for everyone would eliminate a third of fatalities.
  - BobaFloutist 3y ago
    Then of course if minimizing accidents is really what you care about there's something easy we could do right now: just mandate all vehicles must have an breathalyzer ignition. We do this for some people who have been convicted of DUI but doing it for everyone would eliminate a third of fatalities. In a similar vein, if we put geo-informed speed governors in cars that physically prevented you from exceeding, say, 20% of the speed limit, fatalities would also likely plummet. But people haaaaate that idea.
    - whelp_24 3y ago
      I doubt it. Both of these methods are very intrusive.
    - ENGNR 3y ago
      Mostly because I think it would glitch and get the speeds wrong If it was 100% accurate and you couldn’t get a speeding ticket if it was active I’d be all for it
    - Cyphase 3y ago
      > prevented you from exceeding, say, 20% of the speed limit I initially read this as "20% of the speed of light", and though you were being sarcastic.
    - Vecr 3y ago
      Yeah, because need to be able to use your vehicle to escape pursuers and also as a ramming weapon. I assume police would get an exception from this rule, but they don't actually have more of a legal right to use their vehicle as a weapon than anyone else, they are just less likely to be questioned on their judgement of the situation as an emergency by the DA. Probably also a second amendment violation, but the Supreme Court might be too originalist (and not textualist enough) to buy that argument, as cars did not exist in the decades surrounding the founding.
    - Dylan16807 3y ago
      Did you mean exceeding the speed limit by 20%? Because what you actually said is true too, and hints at why "it would be safer" is not a good enough reason to implement something.
- kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
  I sustained traumatic injuries a few months ago when a driver on a suspended learner's permit hit me. The lazy cop issued no tickets for the multiple traffic violations. He couldn't be bothered to show up for the trial and the lazy prosecutor who only notified me of the trial three days in advance went with a bare minimum wrist slap for the suspension. It's as if it officially never happened.
  - xnx 3y ago
    That's awful. The amount of egregious vehicular violence the US has tolerated is disgusting. Waymo seems like the best bet to making experiences like yours a thing of the past.
jjoonathan 3y ago
Tesla just announced 500 million miles driven by FSD [1]. Per the video, were it fully autonomous they could have a 95% CI on "safer than human" at only 275 million miles [2], but obviously having human supervision ought to remove many of the worst incidents from the dataset. Does anyone know if they publish disengagement data? [1] https://digitalassets.tesla.com/tesla-contents/image/upload/IR/TSLA-Q3-2023-Update-3.pdf https://digitalassets.tesla.com/tesla-contents/image/upload/... [2] https://youtu.be/yaYER2M8dcs?t=477 https://youtu.be/yaYER2M8dcs?t=477
- CSMastermind 3y ago
  Note that it would need to drive those 275 million miles without incident to be safer than a human. Which for Tesla's FSD is obviously not the case. https://www.motortrend.com/news/tesla-fsd-autopilot-crashes-investigations https://www.motortrend.com/news/tesla-fsd-autopilot-crashes-...
  - jjoonathan 3y ago
    Your video and my response were talking about fatal crashes. Humans don't go 100 million miles between crashes. Has FSD had a fatality? Autopilot (the lane-follower) has had a few, but I don't think I've heard about one on FSD, and if their presentations on occupancy networks are to be believed there is a pretty big distinction between the two.
    - JonChesterfield 3y ago
      Isn't "FSD" the thing they're no longer allowed to call self driving because it keeps killing cyclists? Google suggests lots of Tesla+cyclist+dead but with Tesla claiming it's all fine and not their fault, which isn't immediately persuasive.
      - jjoonathan 3y ago
        > Google suggests lots of Tesla+cyclist+dead but with Tesla claiming it's all fine and not their fault, which isn't immediately persuasive. With human drivers -- are we blaming Tesla for those too? You do you, but I'm here to learn about FSD. It looks like there was a public incident where FSD lunged at a cyclist. See, that's what I'm interested in, and that's why I asked if anyone knew about disengagement stats.

Steltek 3y ago

Can someone summarize the video? That was my first thought as well: crash data for humans is clearly underreported. For example, police don't always write reports or human drivers agree to keep it off the books.

serial_dev 3y ago
And I'm not even sure how reliable is the "miles driven" metric. I mean I'm sure you can estimate it somehow, but what's the margin of error there?
- viraptor 3y ago
  Odometers are pretty well regulated and insurance companies will often have a good record of the readings over long periods. I'm not sure how the org doing the data collection does it precisely, but pretty accurate data is out there.
CSMastermind 3y ago
The probability of a human driver causing a fatality on any given mile driven is 0.00000109% (1.09 fatalities occur per 100 million miles driven). Applying some basic statistics to show to a 95% confidence level that a self driving system causes fewer fatalities than a human you would have to drive 275 million autonomous miles flawlessly. This would require a fleet of 100 vehicles to drive continuously for 12.56 years. And in practice self-driving vehicles don't drive perfectly. Best estimates on the actual number of miles driven to validate their safety is around 5 billion autonomously driven miles and that's assuming that they actually are safer than a human driver. Then you get into the comparison itself. In practice AVs don't drive on all the same roads, at the same times, as human drivers. A disproportionate number of accidents happen at night, in adverse weather, and on roads that AVs don't typically drive on. Then you have to ask if comparing AVs to all drivers and vehicles is valid comparison. We know for instance that vehicles with automated breaking and lane assist are involved in fewer accidents. Then of course if minimizing accidents is really what you care about there's something easy we could do right now: just mandate all vehicles must have an breathalyzer ignition. We do this for some people who have been convicted of DUI but doing it for everyone would eliminate a third of fatalities.
- BobaFloutist 3y ago
  Then of course if minimizing accidents is really what you care about there's something easy we could do right now: just mandate all vehicles must have an breathalyzer ignition. We do this for some people who have been convicted of DUI but doing it for everyone would eliminate a third of fatalities. In a similar vein, if we put geo-informed speed governors in cars that physically prevented you from exceeding, say, 20% of the speed limit, fatalities would also likely plummet. But people haaaaate that idea.
  - whelp_24 3y ago
    I doubt it. Both of these methods are very intrusive.
  - ENGNR 3y ago
    Mostly because I think it would glitch and get the speeds wrong If it was 100% accurate and you couldn’t get a speeding ticket if it was active I’d be all for it
  - Cyphase 3y ago
    > prevented you from exceeding, say, 20% of the speed limit I initially read this as "20% of the speed of light", and though you were being sarcastic.
  - Vecr 3y ago
    Yeah, because need to be able to use your vehicle to escape pursuers and also as a ramming weapon. I assume police would get an exception from this rule, but they don't actually have more of a legal right to use their vehicle as a weapon than anyone else, they are just less likely to be questioned on their judgement of the situation as an emergency by the DA. Probably also a second amendment violation, but the Supreme Court might be too originalist (and not textualist enough) to buy that argument, as cars did not exist in the decades surrounding the founding.
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    Did you mean exceeding the speed limit by 20%? Because what you actually said is true too, and hints at why "it would be safer" is not a good enough reason to implement something.
kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
I sustained traumatic injuries a few months ago when a driver on a suspended learner's permit hit me. The lazy cop issued no tickets for the multiple traffic violations. He couldn't be bothered to show up for the trial and the lazy prosecutor who only notified me of the trial three days in advance went with a bare minimum wrist slap for the suspension. It's as if it officially never happened.
- xnx 3y ago
  That's awful. The amount of egregious vehicular violence the US has tolerated is disgusting. Waymo seems like the best bet to making experiences like yours a thing of the past.

jjoonathan 3y ago

Tesla just announced 500 million miles driven by FSD [1]. Per the video, were it fully autonomous they could have a 95% CI on "safer than human" at only 275 million miles [2], but obviously having human supervision ought to remove many of the worst incidents from the dataset. Does anyone know if they publish disengagement data? [1] https://digitalassets.tesla.com/tesla-contents/image/upload/IR/TSLA-Q3-2023-Update-3.pdf https://digitalassets.tesla.com/tesla-contents/image/upload/... [2] https://youtu.be/yaYER2M8dcs?t=477 https://youtu.be/yaYER2M8dcs?t=477

CSMastermind 3y ago
Note that it would need to drive those 275 million miles without incident to be safer than a human. Which for Tesla's FSD is obviously not the case. https://www.motortrend.com/news/tesla-fsd-autopilot-crashes-investigations https://www.motortrend.com/news/tesla-fsd-autopilot-crashes-...
- jjoonathan 3y ago
  Your video and my response were talking about fatal crashes. Humans don't go 100 million miles between crashes. Has FSD had a fatality? Autopilot (the lane-follower) has had a few, but I don't think I've heard about one on FSD, and if their presentations on occupancy networks are to be believed there is a pretty big distinction between the two.
  - JonChesterfield 3y ago
    Isn't "FSD" the thing they're no longer allowed to call self driving because it keeps killing cyclists? Google suggests lots of Tesla+cyclist+dead but with Tesla claiming it's all fine and not their fault, which isn't immediately persuasive.
    - jjoonathan 3y ago
      > Google suggests lots of Tesla+cyclist+dead but with Tesla claiming it's all fine and not their fault, which isn't immediately persuasive. With human drivers -- are we blaming Tesla for those too? You do you, but I'm here to learn about FSD. It looks like there was a public incident where FSD lunged at a cyclist. See, that's what I'm interested in, and that's why I asked if anyone knew about disengagement stats.