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Comment by akira2501 | Hacker News Reader

> If you're an American, you're twice as likely to die with a steering wheel in your hands as you are to die at the hands of a murderer. Human-driven vehicle deaths cause grave second-order suffering for families and friends - and hurt the economy.

If you're an American you're more likely to die from suicide than you are from motor vehicle related injuries. You're more likely to be poisoned than to die in a motor vehicle crash. You're 16 times more likely to die from heart disease or cancer.

Compared to 1950, motor vehicle death rates have more than halved.

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There are 30,000 motor vehicle deaths in America each year. In perhaps 30 years, fully autonomous vehicles could cut all of that needless carnage to nearly nothing.

And what about the hundreds of thousands of injuries we'll be spared?

Worldwide, fully-autonomous vehicles will be a public health victory on the scale of vaccines or antibiotics.

> Americans spend a million days each year in the hospital due to injuries sustained in motor vehicles.

Sustained _due_ to motor vehicles. The base statistics also include pedestrian deaths. There's also a skew due to vehicles being multi-passenger.

Interestingly, it _is_ the leading cause of deaths for Americans between 15 to 29 years old. For females 15-24 the motor vehicle related death rate is 8.7. For males 15-24 the death rate is 21.5. From 24-75 the rates drop a few points for both sexes and then increase again after 75.

> In the medium term, fully-autonomous vehicles will eventually cut both of those numbers to virtually zero.

My point is, the statistics may be painting a different picture when viewed in the whole. Even if this specific case is true, we may just be trading one cause of death for another. There's no guarantee overall injury or "suffering" will be reduced.

> When they're available worldwide, fully-autonomous vehicles will be a public health victory on the scale of vaccines or antibiotics.

Maybe, and maybe when everyone can afford them. Yet still, even today in America, more likely to die to the Flu than you are to motor vehicle related injuries.

I'm all for automated cars, but I'm skeptical of the rhetoric that gets tossed around.

Blind "cause of death" stats are fairly meaningless.

I believe a better standard is to look at QALY -- quality-adjusted life years. That deducts relatively little for, say, a heart-attack at age 85 (you're already at your maximum life expectancy), but would put a heavy weight to, say, a pre-teen girl crippled by an auto accident, but surviving for life.

https://plus.google.com/+MarlaCaldwell/posts/BUZH36tmjso

http://www.cbs46.com/story/31596864/two-children-hospitalize...

True, and that's a fair way to look at things. To me, the overall picture is that young men are exceptionally self-destructive when compared to anyone else.

While self driving cars are part of the picture towards reducing deaths in this group, it's incomplete; and you might do just as well with better parental controls and driver behavior reporting embedded into vehicle control software. Some of this is already available, but I have a feeling it's used far less often than it otherwise could be; which speaks to differing levels of parental involvement in the safety of their teenagers.

At the same time nobody's discussing taking motorcycles off the road and we're not at a point where we can put the requisite technologies in motorcycles to grant them the same safety we're supposing automated vehicles will possess. These vehicles in particular kill a disproportionate amount of young males.

Even if we do add these technologies to a motorcycle, you can still buy an ATV, or a snowmobile, or a farm tractor or any number of other off-road gasoline powered gadgets that can quickly become lethal.

I have nothing against the advancement of the safety of human society through technology, but I don't like the taste of the automated vehicle kool-aid that gets passed around and I'd like us to hedge our bets. That's all.

> My point is, the statistics may be painting a different picture when viewed in the whole. Even if this specific case is true, we may just be trading one cause of death for another. There's no guarantee overall injury or "suffering" will be reduced.

The same is true when you prevent death by any means at all. Everyone dies eventually by some cause. This does not mean we shouldn't try to prolong life where we can by avoiding early, needless death! (Otherwise why would we even have airbags or seatbelts, etc?)

I'm thinking more of the public mental health victories. The reduction in stress would be MASSIVE.

Also, you can sleep in the car, which would greatly solve our sleep deprivation problem, which would boost productivity massively.

Commuting is the worst part of my day by a big margin. If I can get 2 hours of extra sleep instead, I'd be way more productive

> Worldwide, fully-autonomous vehicles will be a public health victory on the scale of vaccines or antibiotics.

While autonomy is great and will definitely save many lives, it is absolutely not on the scale of vaccines or antibiotics. Not even close.

You're comparing the deaths of millions to thousands.

https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+people+die+in+car+c...

1.3 million people die every year. This very well may be on that scale.

Even if you don't consider the accidents, autonomous cars would relieve millions of people from the daily frustration of a commute on congested roads.

Specifically car crashes are the number one cause of death in people between the ages of 15 and 24.

Except for most accidents humans bring it on themselves. SDV are more like sewer pipes to me.

>There are 30,000 motor vehicle deaths in America each year. In perhaps 30 years, fully autonomous vehicles could cut all of that needless carnage to nearly nothing.

There is a huge assumption underlying this: That computer systems would be more intelligent than humans.

I believe the opposite: Computer systems will be much dumber than humans, and increase the number of accidents if ever adopted on large scale.

It's not a question of intelligence, but of attention. Few crashes are caused by wrong inferences; most are caused by lapses in attention or impaired judgement. Computer systems do not necessarily suffer from those.

Computer systems can't handle unexpected events, at all. They can only do what they're told (execute instructions). They do not have judgment.

True....

But... I quite like the theory that a developer has spent time (whilst not under much pressure) analysing crashes and potential crash scenarios, and programming to accommodate; rather than me trying to make a good-and-safe decision in milliseconds in the heat of the moment.

I wonder how many of those cancers are due to petrol car pollution ;-)

> Compared to 1950, motor vehicle death rates have more than halved.

This is due to safer cars, no doubt.

I'd love to see some stats between 2008 and 2015, which I believe would show the abundant increase in distracted drivers thanks to smart phones.

That's easily Googlable. No such increase exists.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/USA_annu...

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