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Comment by akamaka | Hacker News Reader

Saving any lives in great, but trucks are a very small part of the problem.

Out of 33883 US traffic deaths in 2009, 3380 involved trucks, and truck driver error was listed as a cause 26% of the time.

Self driving long-haul trucks probably won't save "thousands" of lives, but certainly hundreds.

http://www.trucking.org/ATA%20Docs/News%20and%20Information/...

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The 26% statistic is misleading in this case-- just because the death didn't involve truck driver "error" doesn't mean a different movement pattern for the truck wouldn't have made a difference.

For example, in the original video, if the Tesla autopilot hadn't braked, and the car had been involved in the crash, it's not clear to me that error on the part of the Tesla driver would have been listed as a cause.

Yeah, for sure. I was implying that the other 74% will be avoided by cars with self-driving features, since the parent comment was suggesting that getting driverless trucks was more important.

It's not more important. Automating trucks is easier, and the economics is all on the side of automation.

Automating cars will take much longer than trucks.

Exactly. There's a lot more economic impetus to automating trucks. It'll happen faster there than in cars, by a long shot.

It should be, though. Car #1 stopped shorted and car #2 hit it. Car #2 was at fault for hitting Car #1.

Car #3 (Tesla), if it didn't stop, would be at fault for not maintaining stopping distance, hitting Car #2.

You're implying that minimum following distance <= stopping distance. A brief Google search yields a stopping distance of 315 feet for travel speed of 70 mph.[0] We don't train drivers to leave a football field of space in between cars traveling at highway speed. At least where I live, the legal standard for minimum following distance is that a driver "shall not follow another vehicle more closely than is reasonable and prudent".

If Driver #3 can't see Car #1 past Car #2, and Car #2 is traveling at highway speed, I think it's a stretch to say that Driver #3 could be faulted.

[0] http://www.driveandstayalive.com/stopping-distances/

Saving a single life is worth the tech and disruption it will cause. That is one family that won't be missing a father, a mother, or a child.

Any saved is a win in my book, though point taken.

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