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That's an absurd concern. Children are already the most at-risk on our roads right now, with humans behind the wheel. We're already living your nightmare. The

That's an absurd concern. Children are already the most at-risk on our roads right now, with humans behind the wheel. We're already living your nightmare. The rise of autonomous vehicles isn't going to increase the likelihood of basketballs accidentally bouncing into the street. Nor will it cause a wild swing in the demographic mix of people using pedestrian crossings. By the time they're widely deployed, autonomous vehicles aren't going to be a little bit safer than the average human driver. They will have to be superior by at least one order of magnitude. As in, the number of deaths per million miles at least 10X lower than the human average. I think one order of magnitude is the least we should demand. I would consider it a rather low bar. I suspect that it'd need to be more like two orders of magnitude in order to retain sufficient community consent. So if that's the threshold of acceptability, then we'd be talking about slashing deaths by 90% or possibly even 99%. Either way, autonomous vehicles could kill children exclusively and they'd still be safer around children than human drivers.

grecy 3y ago
> I think one order of magnitude is the least we should demand. I would consider it a rather low bar. I suspect that it'd need to be more like two orders of magnitude in order to retain sufficient community consent. So right now we have 125 deaths every single day on the roads in the US. Same today. Same tomorrow. 45,625 every single year. Year after year. You're saying it would need to be < 12.5 per day to be acceptable, but really we should aim for < ~2 per day. So that means if we invent some system that reduces the number of deaths PER DAY from 125 down to, let's say, 30, you think we SHOULD NOT implement it, because that's not enough of an improvement? Let's say that system is the best we can ever make, but we decide to never turn it on, because it's not a whole order of magnitude better. You're choosing to kill an additional 34,675 people per year, because a reduction in deaths from 125 per day down to 30 per day is "not good enough".
- simondotau 3y ago
  I’m saying that 10x should be a low expectation for a system that doesn’t get distracted, doesn’t get drunk, doesn’t get drowsy, doesn’t get angry, doesn’t get a bruised ego, doesn’t have a TikTok account, and can look in every direction at every moment. But if the best we can do is a 9x improvement of course we should still deploy it. The question is whether society will accept it. I’m not sure it would. I’m not sure it would accept a system that reduced deaths by two orders of magnitude, or 100x. Imagine for a moment, Tesla fully cracks the FSD nut, and every car on the road is replaced with a self driving Tesla, 100 times safer than humans. “One person is dying at the hands of the pedestrian butcher Elon Musk every single day!” the headlines will cry.
  - grecy 3y ago
    > “One person is dying at the hands of the pedestrian butcher Elon Musk every single day!” You're absolutely right, but it won't make any difference if the laws are passed.
    - simondotau 3y ago
      It will still matter. Unpopular new laws aren't guaranteed to survive swings of political power. Local/state governments could permit it, and a politically motivated national/federal government could amend the manslaughter laws in a way that would make autonomous vehicles untenable. (It's sad that society is obsessed with politicising everything and everyone. I don't agree with some of Musk's political views, but so what? I never expected to be in perfect alignment with him or anyone else anyway. And it would be the height of arrogance to assume that my views are consistently better than his, rather than a different order of priorities resulting in a different set of trade-offs.)
- friend_and_foe 3y ago
  Nobody is choosing to kill anybody, we are talking about ideal scenarios, you should quit trying to moralize the discussion to impune those you disagree with. Address the points they're making rather than harping on the fact that they don't agree with yours.
kbenson 3y ago
I think you misunderstood the point of my comment. If indeed it is an order of magnitude less deaths, then it probably doesn't matter if the demographics shift, but we actually have to see that change and know the demographics to actually know that. I'm just saying that we should pay attention, as we should with anything that has the capability to change per-capita figures for adverse actions, as to what is actually happening and not assume. That said, since we're already seeing an increase in these cars and the use of their autonomous options which match "self-driving" to greater or lesser degrees, I doubt we're going to see a 10x decrease before they are inthe wild, because to some degree they already are. I just want us to know what that means by looking at as much info as we can rather than a single metric.

grecy 3y ago

> I think one order of magnitude is the least we should demand. I would consider it a rather low bar. I suspect that it'd need to be more like two orders of magnitude in order to retain sufficient community consent. So right now we have 125 deaths every single day on the roads in the US. Same today. Same tomorrow. 45,625 every single year. Year after year. You're saying it would need to be < 12.5 per day to be acceptable, but really we should aim for < ~2 per day. So that means if we invent some system that reduces the number of deaths PER DAY from 125 down to, let's say, 30, you think we SHOULD NOT implement it, because that's not enough of an improvement? Let's say that system is the best we can ever make, but we decide to never turn it on, because it's not a whole order of magnitude better. You're choosing to kill an additional 34,675 people per year, because a reduction in deaths from 125 per day down to 30 per day is "not good enough".

simondotau 3y ago
I’m saying that 10x should be a low expectation for a system that doesn’t get distracted, doesn’t get drunk, doesn’t get drowsy, doesn’t get angry, doesn’t get a bruised ego, doesn’t have a TikTok account, and can look in every direction at every moment. But if the best we can do is a 9x improvement of course we should still deploy it. The question is whether society will accept it. I’m not sure it would. I’m not sure it would accept a system that reduced deaths by two orders of magnitude, or 100x. Imagine for a moment, Tesla fully cracks the FSD nut, and every car on the road is replaced with a self driving Tesla, 100 times safer than humans. “One person is dying at the hands of the pedestrian butcher Elon Musk every single day!” the headlines will cry.
- grecy 3y ago
  > “One person is dying at the hands of the pedestrian butcher Elon Musk every single day!” You're absolutely right, but it won't make any difference if the laws are passed.
  - simondotau 3y ago
    It will still matter. Unpopular new laws aren't guaranteed to survive swings of political power. Local/state governments could permit it, and a politically motivated national/federal government could amend the manslaughter laws in a way that would make autonomous vehicles untenable. (It's sad that society is obsessed with politicising everything and everyone. I don't agree with some of Musk's political views, but so what? I never expected to be in perfect alignment with him or anyone else anyway. And it would be the height of arrogance to assume that my views are consistently better than his, rather than a different order of priorities resulting in a different set of trade-offs.)
friend_and_foe 3y ago
Nobody is choosing to kill anybody, we are talking about ideal scenarios, you should quit trying to moralize the discussion to impune those you disagree with. Address the points they're making rather than harping on the fact that they don't agree with yours.

kbenson 3y ago

I think you misunderstood the point of my comment. If indeed it is an order of magnitude less deaths, then it probably doesn't matter if the demographics shift, but we actually have to see that change and know the demographics to actually know that. I'm just saying that we should pay attention, as we should with anything that has the capability to change per-capita figures for adverse actions, as to what is actually happening and not assume. That said, since we're already seeing an increase in these cars and the use of their autonomous options which match "self-driving" to greater or lesser degrees, I doubt we're going to see a 10x decrease before they are inthe wild, because to some degree they already are. I just want us to know what that means by looking at as much info as we can rather than a single metric.