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Computers don't drink, don't text and don't have road rage, so their claims might be plausible in a broad statistical way. My guess is that if you excluded huma

Computers don't drink, don't text and don't have road rage, so their claims might be plausible in a broad statistical way. My guess is that if you excluded humans that drink, text, have anger issues etc. then the humans probably win out.

IshKebab 3y ago
Maybe, but do you have a way to exclude those humans from life?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- zw123456 3y ago
  Actually, the idea would be to NOT exclude them from life. Just the opposite. Say a person is convicted of drunk driving. Maybe they need to travel to work where mass transit is not an option but we want them to continue to be employed, support their family, pay taxes and so forth. If they were to have the option of using a self driving car or car service at a reasonable price, then such people can continue to be productive members of society and maybe even that might allow them to afford to address their underlying issue. Maybe I am being a Pollyanna but we begin by imagining.
sfn42 3y ago
Why would you exclude them? They're relevant.
- 8organicbits 3y ago
  We're approaching a time when people get to choose to drive themselves vs use a self-driving car, and that decision is personal. There's a lot of nuance hidden in these statistics. If a self-driving car is slightly safer than drink driving, but otherwise slightly worse than the average sober driver, that's relevant to people who never drink. Using a self-driving car would, statistically, lower their personal safety given those assumptions. From another angle, imagine if we could aggressively ban drink drivers from the road, enforce regular eye exams, suspend the licenses of speeders, etc. Currently the lack of alternate transportation options makes these policies unpopular. Banning a driver could make it difficult for someone to commute to work, for example. Banning poor eye-sight could isolate the elderly. It's "too harsh". If affordable self-driving cars were an option (or damn it... public transit...) then these policies would likely have public support. So there could be a future where the bottom x% of drivers aren't allowed to drive.
Kichererbsen 3y ago
sure. but now your sample only contains the outliers of humanity.
fragmede 3y ago
Unfortunately, we can't exclude humans that drink, text, have anger issues etc. from driving on the road with you. At any point, the driver next to you could have a stroke, pass out from doing drugs, have a panic attack, etc.
- 8organicbits 3y ago
  The other drivers on the road shouldn't be a factor here as it's not the thing being studied. A human driving and a self-driving car driving the same route are both equally exposed to danger from the cars around them. The study should control for that variable. But I think you're getting at a really interesting question. If the ratio of self-driving cars increases in your zip code does your insurance, as a human driver, decrease? I.E. is if safer to drive next to a self-driving car or a human driven car?
- zw123456 3y ago
  Right, that's the point, although there have been some ideas where a self driving car could prevent those people from driving if they have been previously identified as having committed those offenses. Example, someone convicted of drunk driving could continue to be employed and travel to work (assuming mass transit is not an option) and continue to pay taxes but would not be allowed to drive. Probably impractical now but if the technology were to advance far enough then it could possibly reduce fatalities due to things like drunk driving. Just a thought.
brabel 3y ago
The goal here is not to see who is the best under imaginary conditions, it's to determine whether driverless cars are safe in real life as currently deployed. The question you're asking is irrelevant because a world in which all humans don't drink, text or have anger issues is not real.
- graeme 3y ago
  I think the question would be better framed as “would I, someone who doesn’t do dumb things while driving, be safer in a driverless car?” Despite the universality of what you cite, driving accidents are likely an 80:20 issue where a small fraction of people cause most of the harm.
  - brabel 3y ago
    "Would I" is the wrong question entirely. Almost everyone thinks they're better than average, which is statistically impossible, of course. No one caring about public safety will ever ask "would i", but "would the average person" because while they cannot avoid one specific accident, they're not trying to, they're trying to reduce the average: hence only average matters. To be completely honest, that's not completely true either, but it's the starting point... other things they must definitely consider is "would this AI cause fatal accidents by doing extremely dumb things, even if very rarely?" - because imagine that deaths are reduced by 90% when most vehicles are self-driving... but that every accident that happens is due to some extremely dumb bug, like "every 2 million parkings, the car will just reverse too fast without checking for obstacles and runover a child". That kind of thing would make for very bad PR and people are very sensitive to that kind of thing - even though that's not the most rational behaviour (as countless other children would've been saved in the grand scheme of things).
- _xivi 3y ago
  >> "if you excluded humans that drink, text, have anger issues etc. then the humans probably win out." > The goal here is not to see who is the best under imaginary conditions, it's to determine whether driverless cars are safe in real life as currently deployed. But the cars are constrained within specific geographic zones. Ignoring anything else, that alone lead to many assumptions that need to be taken into consideration. This isn't "real world". This is more like open air lab expirement, where some subjects (Waymo) have special constraints. The drivers they're comparing against, don't share the same constraints. You can't draw a generic statement from that, no matter how you twist it. This is a marketing stunt first and foremost.
johnfn 3y ago
As someone who spends a lot of time biking and scootering on roads, I would rather you do not exclude those people.

IshKebab 3y ago

Maybe, but do you have a way to exclude those humans from life?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
zw123456 3y ago
Actually, the idea would be to NOT exclude them from life. Just the opposite. Say a person is convicted of drunk driving. Maybe they need to travel to work where mass transit is not an option but we want them to continue to be employed, support their family, pay taxes and so forth. If they were to have the option of using a self driving car or car service at a reasonable price, then such people can continue to be productive members of society and maybe even that might allow them to afford to address their underlying issue. Maybe I am being a Pollyanna but we begin by imagining.

sfn42 3y ago

Why would you exclude them? They're relevant.

8organicbits 3y ago
We're approaching a time when people get to choose to drive themselves vs use a self-driving car, and that decision is personal. There's a lot of nuance hidden in these statistics. If a self-driving car is slightly safer than drink driving, but otherwise slightly worse than the average sober driver, that's relevant to people who never drink. Using a self-driving car would, statistically, lower their personal safety given those assumptions. From another angle, imagine if we could aggressively ban drink drivers from the road, enforce regular eye exams, suspend the licenses of speeders, etc. Currently the lack of alternate transportation options makes these policies unpopular. Banning a driver could make it difficult for someone to commute to work, for example. Banning poor eye-sight could isolate the elderly. It's "too harsh". If affordable self-driving cars were an option (or damn it... public transit...) then these policies would likely have public support. So there could be a future where the bottom x% of drivers aren't allowed to drive.

Kichererbsen 3y ago

sure. but now your sample only contains the outliers of humanity.

fragmede 3y ago

Unfortunately, we can't exclude humans that drink, text, have anger issues etc. from driving on the road with you. At any point, the driver next to you could have a stroke, pass out from doing drugs, have a panic attack, etc.

8organicbits 3y ago
The other drivers on the road shouldn't be a factor here as it's not the thing being studied. A human driving and a self-driving car driving the same route are both equally exposed to danger from the cars around them. The study should control for that variable. But I think you're getting at a really interesting question. If the ratio of self-driving cars increases in your zip code does your insurance, as a human driver, decrease? I.E. is if safer to drive next to a self-driving car or a human driven car?
zw123456 3y ago
Right, that's the point, although there have been some ideas where a self driving car could prevent those people from driving if they have been previously identified as having committed those offenses. Example, someone convicted of drunk driving could continue to be employed and travel to work (assuming mass transit is not an option) and continue to pay taxes but would not be allowed to drive. Probably impractical now but if the technology were to advance far enough then it could possibly reduce fatalities due to things like drunk driving. Just a thought.

brabel 3y ago

The goal here is not to see who is the best under imaginary conditions, it's to determine whether driverless cars are safe in real life as currently deployed. The question you're asking is irrelevant because a world in which all humans don't drink, text or have anger issues is not real.

graeme 3y ago
I think the question would be better framed as “would I, someone who doesn’t do dumb things while driving, be safer in a driverless car?” Despite the universality of what you cite, driving accidents are likely an 80:20 issue where a small fraction of people cause most of the harm.
- brabel 3y ago
  "Would I" is the wrong question entirely. Almost everyone thinks they're better than average, which is statistically impossible, of course. No one caring about public safety will ever ask "would i", but "would the average person" because while they cannot avoid one specific accident, they're not trying to, they're trying to reduce the average: hence only average matters. To be completely honest, that's not completely true either, but it's the starting point... other things they must definitely consider is "would this AI cause fatal accidents by doing extremely dumb things, even if very rarely?" - because imagine that deaths are reduced by 90% when most vehicles are self-driving... but that every accident that happens is due to some extremely dumb bug, like "every 2 million parkings, the car will just reverse too fast without checking for obstacles and runover a child". That kind of thing would make for very bad PR and people are very sensitive to that kind of thing - even though that's not the most rational behaviour (as countless other children would've been saved in the grand scheme of things).
_xivi 3y ago
>> "if you excluded humans that drink, text, have anger issues etc. then the humans probably win out." > The goal here is not to see who is the best under imaginary conditions, it's to determine whether driverless cars are safe in real life as currently deployed. But the cars are constrained within specific geographic zones. Ignoring anything else, that alone lead to many assumptions that need to be taken into consideration. This isn't "real world". This is more like open air lab expirement, where some subjects (Waymo) have special constraints. The drivers they're comparing against, don't share the same constraints. You can't draw a generic statement from that, no matter how you twist it. This is a marketing stunt first and foremost.

johnfn 3y ago

As someone who spends a lot of time biking and scootering on roads, I would rather you do not exclude those people.