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I don't think this is apples-to-apples. You need to somehow filter to people who are not speeding or otherwise breaking traffic laws. My problem with studies li
by aithrowawaycomm 2y ago
I don't think this is apples-to-apples. You need to somehow filter to people who are not speeding or otherwise breaking traffic laws. My problem with studies like these is "human-operated" is an enormous catch-all that blends together too many causes for accidents.
1) Not filtering out drunk drivers is downright misleading. I am less interested in "is mandatory self-driving safer than human drivers?" than "is mandatory self-driving safer than mandatory breathalyzer ignition?" There are some
uniquely human downsides which are fair comparisons to AI - distractions, slowness, anger -but drunk drivers should be removed from this.
2) The bigger problem is people rationally speeding or running red lights. Waymo is strictly legal, but Tesla self-driving historically encouraged speeding, rolling stop signs, etc. Ubers and Lyft are preferred if you're in a hurry precisely because human drivers bend the law. Human speeding is not caused by a lack of intelligence and needing an AI to figure it out that it's dangerous: humans do it because they are selfish and reckless, and someone like Tesla will make a driving AI that fulfills their selfish demands. There is absolutely no reason to think that a speeding Waymo would be safer than a speeding human.
Studies like this makes me worry about a medium-term where driving is more dangerous for everyone: lawful drivers get in more accidents because they're using sub-human AI, whereas nothing changes for unlawful drivers because they are using dangerous AI, turning off the AI and driving drunk, etc.
- viraptor 2y agoIt depends what you want to know. "Are autonomous cars better than good drivers?", or "am I safer in Waymo than a random human driven taxi?". Both are very valid questions.
- aithrowawaycomm 2y agoBut "random human-driven taxi" is arbitrary since random humans are not driving taxis. This study doesn't at all show that Waymos are safer than Ubers driven by Uber drivers (though I suspect that is the case).
- nmca 2y agoYou’re trying to to characterise personal risk and they were tying to characterise societal risk; both are valid.
- aithrowawaycomm 2y agoNo, I am saying that it is misleading to draw conclusions about societal risk from this study.
- hnaccount_rng 2y agoWhy? They are measuring an accident rate per mile driven. Assuming that miles driven is a constant (which I'm actually not sure about), they show a reduction of accidents to be expected if all miles were driven by their cars. Which is the thing that society may care about?