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Humans are astonishingly and unreasonably good at driving. There are, indeed, a lot of traffic deaths but this is because we drive a mind-boggling amount so ev

by nullc 2y ago

Humans are astonishingly and unreasonably good at driving. There are, indeed, a lot of traffic deaths but this is because we drive a mind-boggling amount so even a very low rate of fatalities adds up to a substantial number. A significant portion of traffic deaths also occur in special conditions-- at night, with intoxicated persons, in bad weather. Existing self driving cars won't even drive in those more difficult conditions. In terms of the passenger miles driven if you compare to non-intoxicate humans the expected number of deaths for self driving cars is still below 1 if they were as safe as non-intoxicated human drivers. Safer cars are an excellent goal but they're not automatically a given result for self driving. > Waymos avoid many of the Uber challenges: foul-smelling "air fresheners," dubious music / talk radio choices, etc. And introduces new ones like being dropped off blocks from your destination because the car refuses to drive on perfectly fine roads, service being unavailable in poor weather, and extending Google's tracking of everything you do online to offline. :D Aside, you can just ask uber drivers to turn off the radio.

tzs 2y ago
> Humans are astonishingly and unreasonably good at driving. There are, indeed, a lot of traffic deaths but this is because we drive a mind-boggling amount so even a very low rate of fatalities adds up to a substantial number To put some numbers on it in the US cars are driven about 3.2 x 10^12 miles per year, and around 4 x 10^4 people are killed in car accidents (drivers, passengers, pedestrians, and cyclists). That's one death per 8 x 10^7 miles. There are around 2 x 10^6 people non-fatally injured in car accidents per year in the US. That's an injury every 1.6 x 10^6 miles. There are around 4 x 10^6 non-injury car accidents per year in the US, which is one every 8 x 10^5 miles. If we assume all miles driving are equally risky and that we drive 40 miles per day 365 days a year, then we would expect to be in a non-injury car accident around once every 55 years, be injured in a car accident around once every 110 years, and be killed in a car accident around once every 5500 years. Of course almost no one drives all their miles at times and in conditions when the risk per mile is average so when estimating your personal risk you need to take that into account.
- jogjayr 2y ago
  An injury every 1.6m miles isn't amazing. That is almost a 1/3 lifetime chance of injury if you drive an average of 12k miles annually for 50 years. (Sidenote: human units are easier to read). A comment I wrote 3 years ago has more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26950254 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26950254 The old "look at the person to your left, now look to the person on your right" meme comes to mind. One of you will probably have an accident with an injury in your lifetime. I ran the same calculation for dying in a car accident and got a lifetime probability of 0.7%, but I'm not sure I did it right.

by nullc 2y ago

tzs 2y ago

> Humans are astonishingly and unreasonably good at driving. There are, indeed, a lot of traffic deaths but this is because we drive a mind-boggling amount so even a very low rate of fatalities adds up to a substantial number To put some numbers on it in the US cars are driven about 3.2 x 10^12 miles per year, and around 4 x 10^4 people are killed in car accidents (drivers, passengers, pedestrians, and cyclists). That's one death per 8 x 10^7 miles. There are around 2 x 10^6 people non-fatally injured in car accidents per year in the US. That's an injury every 1.6 x 10^6 miles. There are around 4 x 10^6 non-injury car accidents per year in the US, which is one every 8 x 10^5 miles. If we assume all miles driving are equally risky and that we drive 40 miles per day 365 days a year, then we would expect to be in a non-injury car accident around once every 55 years, be injured in a car accident around once every 110 years, and be killed in a car accident around once every 5500 years. Of course almost no one drives all their miles at times and in conditions when the risk per mile is average so when estimating your personal risk you need to take that into account.

jogjayr 2y ago
An injury every 1.6m miles isn't amazing. That is almost a 1/3 lifetime chance of injury if you drive an average of 12k miles annually for 50 years. (Sidenote: human units are easier to read). A comment I wrote 3 years ago has more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26950254 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26950254 The old "look at the person to your left, now look to the person on your right" meme comes to mind. One of you will probably have an accident with an injury in your lifetime. I ran the same calculation for dying in a car accident and got a lifetime probability of 0.7%, but I'm not sure I did it right.