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Comment by tyrw | Hacker News Reader

I'd disagree here too. Trains and planes have extremely catastrophic failure modes, while cars do not. Cars have the added benefit of being able to quickly come to a stop in most situations.

An even bigger driving factor (pun intended) will be that the cost of a driver relative to operation is much, much higher in a car. A solution that is better on both safety and cost will be quickly adopted.

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For the first paragraph, I don't understand the logic behind your comparison between a train failure mode and a car failure mode. However your assumption on braking capability is wrong and it is a crucial point.

It does not matter how well your car can brake. Can your autonomous driving system guarantee it will always brake as hard and as fast as required when you will need it? Can you guarantee that the system will not have a bug the day it needs to brake?

Trains brake very well. There are even rubber wheel metros that brake so well we have to limit them in order not to sent everyone flying in the wagons :).

But in the safety calculations, standards like IEEE 1474 assumes degraded braking capability, and also considers that the preceding train is at stop. In other words, to be declared safe for mass usage, you can't assume average case. You must assume adverse case. You will not have a driver to notice that the car brakes poorly or to be confident enough to drive very close to the preceding car.

For the second paragraph, again, this is certainly true for driving assistance, but will most likely not be enough for driverless, as it was / is not enough for trains. Of course you may disagree.

EDIT: this is a good reference: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/safe-braking-model-explained-...

dude. this is not logical. if a system kills less people, we should use it. otherwise, you're just choosing to kill more people for a false sense of authority/security. not only foolish, but i resent that you believe you can make the choice for others.

you are using appeals to authority and emotion rather than the scientific method.

He's arguing from a position of someone who's familiar with the socio-political process. It's a different axis than technical arguments or ideological arguments.

I have no substantial comment other than to note that when a driverless car is insurable by Liberty Mutual at normal rates, with all liability held by Tesla, then it's probably reasonably safe.

Maybe autobuses would be the difficult medium — disastrous consequence of failure with at least the same operational complexity as cars.

However I don't see how the fears of an industry that needed to have extremely good results immediately need to be extended to one in which all signs point to progressive improvement. The danger being that the general public is fast to jump on blind trust, but to be compared with a vastly different ratio of number of people who are / can be in control to number of people affected, at least for cars and trucks which as far as I know are the first POIs in this industry. Autobuses might get automation slower than the rest of the fleet (no source, just from the top of my head).

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