Autonomous vehicles will have challenges that human drivers do not -- like software vulnerabilities -- but those are problems worth overcoming if it means that poor decision making by humans can be reduced.
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Escalator accidents kill 17 Americans a year. So I wonder if the average American travelled as many miles per year on escalators as they do in cars if the death/injury rates would be higher or lower?
In short, accidents of all varieties are hard to classify. In this case, though you seem to vastly underestimate the numbers involved. According to latest reports [0], the Uber program is only driving about 20K miles a week. Further more, the rate of human-interventions is about once every MILE.
Normal human driving is bad, of course. But how many times in the last 1,000 miles you've driven have you needed your passenger to intervene to prevent an accident?
[0] http://www.recode.net/2017/3/16/14938116/uber-travis-kalanic...
In 2016, Waymo cars drove 636,000 miles with 124 disengagements [1].
Uber’s autonomous cars drove 20,354 miles and had to be taken over at every mile [2].
Uber is a menace.
[1] https://www.wired.com/2017/02/california-dmv-autonomous-car-...
[2] http://www.recode.net/2017/3/16/14938116/uber-travis-kalanic...
For example, I believe Waymo cars drive mostly on a fixed number of preplanned routes. You would expect limited disengagements over time, as it's got tons of data on those specific routes.
It's probably fair to say that, in the course of a day, many of us are in driving situations where we avoid potentially dangerous situations whether or not it might technically have been someone else's fault were there an accident. Most of us (hopefully) learn to drive defensively to minimize the likelihood of an accident, not to take whatever space on a road we have a "right" to.
> If I need to break traffic laws to avoid hitting another vehicle, or being struck, that's easy.
IMO based on anecdotes and observation, not enough people do that because of the "it's not my fault" attitude. The first consideration is fault, the second is safety.
But this is misleading because there are far more non-self-driving cars than self-driving cars.
Many articles and press releases make it look like self-driving is "already here" when it's actually still very much a work in progress and not at all a solved problem
So why pretend like it's not important to cite how many people die today? We write laws and rules for how to operate vehicles that can be observed and operated by a computer. It's very likely that at a certain point those computers will exceed our aggregate ability to prevent deaths.
There are likely also wins we could get from the design of vehicles by not having to accommodate a human driver. Take for example the window that a person can be ejected from the vehicle through or debris can easily penetrate.
There are 23 other companies with permits to test autonomous vehicles in CA and they're all doing pretty much the same thing. Waymo is way out in front, Cruise/GM is doing well, but there are maybe a half dozen large, deeply invested players (including Tesla) not nearly as advanced as Uber.
But then again, you're defending a clickbait headline about a robot getting into an accident that it may or may not be responsible for that didn't even result in someone being injured.
Some hype is useful, to be sure, but it is a delicate balance with avoiding a situation where the pace of innovation has been oversold.
ps: thanks for reminding me that statistics are hard to get right.
Wait a minute: I don't think the argument is whether machines can drive better than humans. It's whether these companies that are desperate to make money (Uber, Tesla) are pushing potentially dangerous technology on to society before it's ready.
Because if the answer is yes we should get the dangerous technology off the roads ASAP -- namely humans.
It's a good question whether society is ready to accept this, though.
How much better? 1% over median? That means it's still worse than 49% of the drivers on the road. Statistically, the automated driver would be "better" for society at large, but it's still going to cause a lot of accidents and kill a lot of people.
I also wonder if there might be even more accidents with an automated system which is still in the fat portion of the bell curve, since there will be no "good" drivers to reduce conditions ripe for an accident in the first place.
Hah, "it" being ready as in the technology, not society. Poor writing on my part.
But I guess either works.
Seriously, I get the point you're trying to make, but at least try to find some data that actually makes sense for a comparison.
We already have things like taxis, Uber and Lyft and people still get drunk and drive under the influence of alcohol and kill people.
Why would ride services with autonomous vehicles change that?
If someone is going to get drunk and drive a car rather than calling an Uber with a human driving they are no more likely to get drunk and call Uber because Uber has driverless vehicles.
The target for self driving cars is ride services not individuals.
Many reasons for that, from being cheap (I already own a car, I won't pay some random guy money!) to mere convenience. But such incidences are bound to get fewer once self-driving cars make up the majority of cars on the road and can take over from drunk drivers.
>The target for self driving cars is ride services not individuals.
In the short-term for Uber maybe, but not in the long-term for everybody else. I doubt that traditional car manufacturers, like BMW, Audi, Honda, Jaguar or Mercedes-Benz are pursuing self driving cars merely to offer ride sharing services, after all these companies are in the business of selling cars to individuals.
1 )That we will see the demise of self-ownership of cars when you state:
>"once self-driving cars make up the majority of cars on the road"
2) Car makers will continue to market car ownerships to individuals when you state:
>"I doubt that traditional car manufacturers, like BMW, Audi, Honda, Jaguar or Mercedes-Benz are pursuing self driving cars merely to offer ride sharing services, after all these companies are in the business of selling cars to individuals"
The problem with inebriation is that people don't exercise good judgement which is the reason they get behind the wheel and drive because they "think" they are OK.
Someone who has a car that has a "self-driving mode" can just as easily get behind the wheel and operate the car in manual mode because in their impaired state they also "think" they are ok to drive.
Self-driving cars don't solve the problem of impaired judgement.
I stated no such thing, a car having self-driving capabilities has literally nothing to do with the ownership/proprietor status of said car.
>Someone who has a car that has a "self-driving mode" can just as easily get behind the wheel and operate the car in manual mode because in their impaired state they also "think" they are ok to drive.
You are still thinking way too much in the present. Try to imagine a future where pretty much every vehicle on the street is autonomously self-driving, legalities have changed that no human "security driver" is required anymore. In such a setting it would become the norm to do something other than driving while traveling in a vehicle, like being productive or having some leisure time. Sure enough, there will still be people who would want the "thrill" of controlling their vehicles themselves, but manual driving will probably be reserved to special lanes/circuits, due to how rare it will become and it negatively impacting the performance of the fully autonomous traffic.
We won't get there from now to tomorrow, we will only get there with many small baby steps until we are actually there.
Is that the "BMW" defence to the "Tesla" defence?