6 ms·

IMO these are a slightly fake stat. You're comparing to overall stats, that include the drunk, the high, the sleep deprived, and the crazy wild aggressive wreck

• resolutebat 3y ago
  You're making a classic is-ought fallacy here. Drunk, high, sleep deprived or "crazy wild aggressive reckless" human drivers ought not to exist, but they do, and thus it's absolutely fair to compared autonomous drivers against them.
  • eurleif 3y ago
    If GP's mother switches from driving for herself to having Waymo drive for her, her risk of injury will increase. Therefore, if her goal is to avoid injury, it would be counterproductive for her to make that switch. That conclusion does not require any is-ought fallacy.
    • hot_gril 3y ago
      Exactly. I know that my odds are different from the average.
      • resolutebat 3y ago
        So are you one of the 88% who know they are better than average, or one of the 12% who are worse? https://www.smithlawco.com/blog/2017/december/do-most-drivers-really-think-they-are-above-aver/ https://www.smithlawco.com/blog/2017/december/do-most-driver...
        • eurleif 3y ago
          >Obviously, not everyone can be above average. Exactly half of all drivers have to be in the bottom half when it comes to driving skills and safety. This page is confused about the difference between mean and median. The 88% of drivers who think they are above average are not necessarily correct, but there would be nothing logically inconsistent about them being correct.
          • deleted 3y ago
            [deleted]
        • dns_snek 3y ago
          This has nothing to do with being "a better driver" than average. If you simply don't drive while intoxicated, extremely tired, or distracted with your gadgets, you're already beating the average when it comes to collisions and injuries.
          • pooper 3y ago
            > If you simply don't drive while intoxicated, extremely tired, or distracted with your gadgets, you're already beating the average when it comes to collisions and injuries. It still does not make you a good driver. I've personally been in situations where I'm on the right lane, going slightly below the speed limit, when the vehicle (usually a pickup truck) passes me from the shoulder on the right, often blaring it's horns in disapproval as if they were on their way to save lives. > Rules for Using the Shoulder. The laws for using a shoulder vary in each state, but it is illegal in all states to use the shoulder to bypass traffic or to pass another driver. I can't wait to make it illegal for humans to drive on public roads.
          • hot_gril 3y ago
            It's mostly that. I don't think I'm more skilled or something. Also, using a smartphone while driving is illegal, but somehow using a 17" touchscreen that mirrors your smartphone and shows incoming texts is OK and common in newer cars.
        • lupusreal 3y ago
    • concordDance 3y ago
      That may be true, but I expect there's no scalable way to assess drivers for GGP mother-ness. So for public policy purposes we should encourage and allow self driving. And possibly even ban manual driving if we can't distinguish GGP mothers from poor drivers.
    • TeMPOraL 3y ago
      All self driving > Reckless drivers only self-driving > current situation > small random population only self-driving > GGPs-mom-likes only self-driving. Unfortunately, identifying people like GGP's mother and excluding them from requirement for self-driving is prohibitively expensive (and icky in all kinds of ways), and so would be predicting reckless driving behavior (approximately every driver is reckless at some point anyway, GGP's mom included). So it's all self-driving or no self-driving, and all self-driving is strictly better for all of us, even if GGP's mom has to briefly accept slightly elevated risk.
      • mh- 3y ago
        > identifying people like GGP's mother and excluding them from requirement for self-driving is prohibitively expensive (and icky in all kinds of ways) Not sure I follow the thinking here. We already have ability tests in driver's license exams.
        • TeMPOraL 3y ago
          Yes, and every mad or reckless driver passed them with flying colors, kind of by definition, otherwise we'd be talking about drivers illegally operating road vehicles. Approximately all traffic accidents involving drivers is involving drivers with valid license, who passed ability tests.
          • eurleif 3y ago
            A simple Google search reveals that the number of accidents caused by unlicensed drivers is ~20%, not ~0%: https://usclaims.com/educational-resources/non-licensed-drivers-responsible-for-20-percent-of-all-auto-accidents/ https://usclaims.com/educational-resources/non-licensed-driv... Moreover, the requirement to receive a license is only to pass, not to pass "with flying colors".
        • shadowgovt 3y ago
          Those tests are dangerously insufficient to keep unsafe drivers off the road.
    • QuadmasterXLII 3y ago
      If your mother is a decent driver, then almost all the danger she faces while driving comes from other people being shitty.
  • kaba0 3y ago
    In no possible future would we see an immediate change from human drivers to 100% self-driving, so self-driving ought to co-exist with human drivers, both the better than average, and the drunk ones. I’m absolutely not convinced that an AI would fair better at handling a drunk driver’s driving style compared to a competent human. The statistics help AI due to them being good at handling monotony, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to safety in complex situations.
    • hot_gril 3y ago
      In a few places, driving too passively (as AI cars seem to do) will cause aggressive drivers to create dangerous situations for you. They don't want to be stuck behind someone who's letting people in. I also wonder if the AI cars go the speed limit on freeways, cause sometimes that's worse than matching traffic that's speeding a bit.
  • scott_w 3y ago
    Others have made better points but I want to add another thing to point out you can also be making the same "is-ought" mistake yourself: Impaired drivers (drink, drugs, sleep), bad drivers, dangerous drivers, etc. who ought to use the self-driving function are exactly the kinds of people who won't and continue to drive badly. What this means is the safer drivers leave it off (because they outperform the system), while dangerous drivers also leave it off because they mistakenly believe they outperform the system. The traits that it's meant to protect people from are the very traits that ensure it can't do its job.
    • pooper 3y ago
      When it is good enough, we should remove the ability for humans to drive cars manually in all new cars after that point.
      • shadowgovt 3y ago
        Or even migrate the testing schema to more frequent re-checks and a harder pass condition. If people don't have to drive to thrive in society, we can make driving far more of a privilege. Contrast what a private pilot has to do to get certified.
• shadowgovt 3y ago
  Unfortunately, we can't replicate your mother and put her behind the wheel of every vehicle in America. But we can crank out thousands of autonomous vehicles with thousands of identical copies of highly tuned safety algorithms.
  • talldatethrow 3y ago
    If you had a new born to take home from the hospital and were 20 miles from home.. would you take an autonomous car or have you or a family member drive you home?
    • fragmede 3y ago
      With emotions running high surrounding this newborn, me, or a family member, is likely to be stressed, under-slept, possibly drinking. Why wouldn't I want this hypothetical autonomous car to take us all home safely?
      • talldatethrow 3y ago
        Because the math shows that currently it drives about as bad as a sometimes high, drunk, sleepy, angry person. If you had a family member that cared about you available to drive, they would be much safer than the typical ai car right now.
        • concordDance 3y ago
          > Because the math shows that currently it drives about as bad as a sometimes high, drunk, sleepy, angry person. This is surprising. Got a cite for that?
    • resolutebat 3y ago
      The closest I've come to killing another human was when I was driving to the hospital at night to pick up my wife & newborn, sleep-deprived and high on adrenaline, and came this >< close to taking out a cyclist I completely failed to see.
• darkwater 3y ago
  But one of the points of self-driving cars is to remove those bad drivers from the driving seat.
  • littlestymaar 3y ago
    Maybe in theory, but then you have a bigger social/psychological/economic problem because these populations are necessarily the ones that are going to be compatible with the business model for autonomous cars. And if you get a bigger proportion of “good drivers” in autonomous cars than there is in the overall population, you're on fact increasing the overall number of accidents.
    • darkwater 3y ago
      I agree that a very probable outcome is that the real bad drivers will, for one reason or another, keep using non-self-driving cars way longer than good drivers. But also a good self-driving car should have faster reflexes than a good human driver, so it might mitigate anyway the damage done by a drunken driver.
  • kaba0 3y ago
    How? There will be multiple decades of self-driving — human driver co-existence. I’m not convinced that this phase would be safer than the human-only one, as AI might very well handle bad human drivers much worse (as it is an edge case).
  • xorcist 3y ago
    I have never once heard self-driving cars sold with the argument "they're great for sleep deprived and alcoholics". Maybe they should be.
    • willvarfar 3y ago
      I have always wanted a self-driving car so there's no more "designated driver" hassle with going out.
• godelski 3y ago
  You're in the write direction but I think you don't have the right words to describe what you're trying to describe. I made a sister comment, but if I correctly understand you, then it would be more accurate to say that the averaged statistic removes important variables for making accurate conclusions. We need not look at your mother, but we can consider different environments. I think most of us would say it would be silly to compare accidents on the highway to accidents to those in an urban street, but an "average by mile" is doing precisely this. We'd call this "marginalization" and it is why you should be suspicious when anyone discusses averages (or medians!). (On that note, the median and average are always within one standard deviation of another. It's useful because if you have both and they are far apart you know there's a lot of variance). I hope I accurately understood you and can help make a clearer message.
  • littlestymaar 3y ago
    > why you should be suspicious when anyone discusses averages I like to say that the average human being has one testicle and half a vagina, which is not very representative of anyone around. > On that note, the median and average are always within one standard deviation of another Oh really? That's cool.
    • godelski 3y ago
      Haha yeah that is accurate. The right language is situational though haha. People are generally overconfident in their ability to mathematically describe things. There's a clique "all models are wrong" and like all cliques it is something everyone can repeat but not internalize lol
      • agos 3y ago
        you should not forget the second part: all models are wrong, some are useful
        • littlestymaar 3y ago
          Yes, but unfortunately the second part is usually employed by people who want to put under the rug the fact that their model is dubious. All models are wrong, only some of them are useful, and only when handled with care.
• cm2187 3y ago
  But your mother is still better off with the drunks not driving (they may crash into her car). So she may still have less accidents in a world where everyone goes self driving. This will still leave us with the random and dangerous behaviours of cyclists and motorcycles though.