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Comment by Flammy | Hacker News Reader

Stock tracking websites don't need to be perfect, just need to be better than the humans they replaced. Faster, free, and less errors doesn't mean they must be error free.

Self driving cars just need to be better than humans, and given the number of teens and senior citizens on the road...

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Statistically that's true but realistically I wouldn't want to use a self-driving car that's only a little better than the average driver. It's one thing to have a friend that's a bad driver and another thing to ride in their car.

But they are still on the road. They're still a hazard to everyone around them. Pedestrians, cyclists, and other drivers are all at risk.

Yes but they'll continue to be on the road until they can get in a self-driving car that they can trust.

Never mind trust: teens and seniors generally don't have the disposable income to spend on high end brand new cars (or expensive retrofits of sensor devices). The first buyers, apart from the wealthy, would be people and corporations that spend the most time on the road: generally tending towards being better than average drivers.

And even if self-driving cars were exactly as good as the drivers they replaced, half the purpose of buying them is to spend more time on the road...

Elon Musk said that he is aiming for his self-driving cars to be 10x safer than the average driver (without LIDAR btw).

This is true from a pure-risk perspective, but I suspect we will find that humans are far more forgiving of the errors of other humans than they are of the errors (or worse, harm-minimizing calculations) of machines.

As someone contemplating the purchase of one, a self-driving car needs to be better than me. That's a higher bar than better than average even if it's not objectively correct.

This is only true if you are on an otherwise empty road.

On the other hand, as a passenger on public transport, taxis and ride shares it only has to be better than (often over worked and over tired) average human drivers.

Do you ever use a taxi?

Because if you do, you are putting your life into the hands of someone who could be a much worse driver than you.

Instead of putting your life in the hands of a terrible taxi driver, would you put it in the hands of software that is on average better than a taxi driver? You are in a taxi, so you don't get to choose to drive it yourself.

Not gp, but I would personally expect a taxi driver to be better than me seeing the amount of time the diver spends on the road. The driver wouldn't be profitable otherwise.

That said, I also mirror gp in that any self-driving car must be at least better than myself for me to trust it. I imagine that's a sentiment shared by many people.

I agree this is the natural bar, but don't know how to reconcile it with the average person believing they are a better driver than average (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority)

What do you mean it wouldn't be profitable?

I am not paying the taxi driver money because they are a safer driver.

I am paying them for the convenience, and the ability to not take a car with me.

Also, taxi driver incentives are wrong. A taxi driver, even though they have lots of experience driving, have an incentive to drive very quickly and therefore dangerously.

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