I mean, even if autonomous cars are x100 times safer to be around than human-driven cars, they're still orders of magnitude more of a risk factor for ordinary (U.S.) citizens than say, terrorists, or sharks.
Keep in mind that some version of “killled by robots” has been in the zeitgeist of fear for decades now. In that sense, “sharks amd terrorists” might not be a bad comparison. It will not take much to ruin a good thing (automation) with typically scummy practices. The important thing to remember is that automation doesn’t require the likes of Uber playing fast and loose with it to become a reality.
Agree. And I'd like to see an approach similar to an NTSB investigation of an air crash. Not to place blame, but to identify root causes and mitigate the chance that they recur.
Air travel is exceptionally safe. Has been for many decades. Yet we still investigate any air crash because any crash means something went wrong, perhaps something that can be corrected.
Self driving cars need to be treated the same way, at least for now, and until well after they have demonstrated themselves to be safer than human drivers.
IIRC the NTSB is investigating this case too.
The idea of the investigations compared to air-travel is pretty good and also much easier to execute given they record everything on camera.
Until you consider the _billions_ of miles that cars in the US drive every month. Cars are exceptionally safe, and they're getting better every year.. because we keep driving _more_ miles year after year, yet fatalities continue to drop.
Also, how do you interpret facts like: California has 30% more people living in it than Texas, yet TX has a _greater_ number of roadway fatalities than CA?
> they're still orders of magnitude more of a risk factor for ordinary
The problem is: you absolutely cannot view vehicles as a _single_ risk factor. Thus, any comparison between human drivers and AI drivers on these terms is flawed from the outset.
Yes, it's great that fatalaties are trending downwards.
Same for autonomous vehicles: until the NTSB or whatever federal or state agency is responsible decides which tech is mature enough and issues licenses for a given AV system. A person has to have a driver's license, however AV systems do not. Why not certify which of them are able to operate heavier/more powerful/faster vehicles without human intervention (meaning they'd slow down to a stop when the driver would take his/her hands off the wheel).
There are many age and other cohorts of the population for which the leading cause of death is vehicles.
And compare against commercial aviation, which has a per-mile death rate three orders of magnitude less than driving.
It's actually yourself, and it's worse when you're at work. Deaths due to vehicles: 36k per year. Deaths due to suicides: 44k per year. Deaths due to accidents: 190k per year.
> There are many age and other cohorts of the population for which the leading cause of death is vehicles.
This is not true for any cohort. [1] And yes, I'm aware that accidental deaths include vehicular deaths, but if you dig into the FARS data [2] and do a comparison between the two sets, you'll see that this statement can't be correct.
It is; however, true that young men 15-24 exhibit the highest risk rate in vehicles compared to anyone else.. it's even 8x higher than females of the same age, but it doesn't make vehicles the greatest risk they face.
> And compare against commercial aviation, which has a per-mile death rate three orders of magnitude less than driving.
Yea, but a "deaths-per-journey" that's three times worse [3]. By the way, the aviation insurance industry uses the per-journey statistic, not the per-mile. Which further reveals my point, I don't think you can't take a single axis view on this information and come to any meaningful conclusion.
[1]: https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/leading_causes_of_dea...
[2]: https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety#Transport_comp...
Edit: it seems like it is the other way around. Planes are 3 times as worse than cars per journey, so flip that number around a bit (3 times better, but 500 more trips, so cars are only 166 times more dangerous than planes).
In terms of fatalities, yes. My data completely discounts non-fatal car accidents; however, there are far fewer "non fatal aircraft accidents" for obvious reasons. So, there's not a lot to glean from this, particularly given the highly regulated nature of aircraft operations in the USA and most of the world.
You could reduce vehicle fatalities by a huge amount just taking motorcycles off the road. They afford no protection to their passengers and increase fatalities just by existing.
You could reduce vehicle fatalities a huge amount by not allowing young men under the age of 24 to have a vehicle with more than 90 horsepower. They have a tendency to lose control of their vehicles and drive them off the road and into trees or other solid objects. Many also die because they weren't wearing a seatbelt and got ejected from the vehicle. Some survive all of that and die because while laying in the road injured, they got hit by a vehicle completely unrelated to their crash.
You could also get some reduction by creating safety systems that do less damage to elderly bodies in an accident. Protection of the heads and necks of adult passengers in the rear of the vehicle needs a lot of work currently. Way more elderly passengers die in the back of the car than in the front, even in low velocity (< 40mph) accidents.
You could eliminate 1/6 of all vehicle fatalities, 6000 per year, by removing pedestrians from the road. The fatalities are pretty well split across setting (rural/urban), sex, age and time of day. Sidewalks and traffic > 20mph is pure insanity.
You could also definitively figure out _why_ Texas has not only higher fatalities _by number_ but a much greater fatality _rate_ over California. A statistic I opened with because this is a _huge_ point. Seriously, look up the numbers per state; because, when I do, I _cannot_ come to a blanket conclusion like "cars are dangerous."
When really: Cars present _multiple_ and often _unrelated_ risk factors and we still have room for all kinds of incremental improvements in their overall safety.
Unrelated to my argument, but still a worthwhile thought: How much room is left for improvements in Aircraft safety? The most highly regulated and automated vehicle and transport system in service today?
I think it is, for a pretty reasonable slicing of the data. Here[1] you can find a table on pages 33-34 that contains cause of death by age cohort - the 15-24 group has only a single row that beats motor vehicle accidents, and it is "accidents", which motor vehicle accidents is considered a subset of.
I think part of the confusion from the table you linked to is that it doesn't contain motor vehicle deaths, and they are hidden in a weird way - in the 15-24 cohort, motor vehicle deaths are a substantial subset of all of the top 3 causes - unintentional injury, suicide, and homicide.
> By the way, the aviation insurance industry uses the per-journey statistic, not the per-mile.
That's perfectly reasonable for insurance purposes; a lot of the risk is concentrated in the takeoff and landing, so risk per journey is a more stable measure than risk per mile. But as a person who doesn't want to die, that's a nonsensical choice - I don't fly across the country because I wanted to take one journey; I fly across the country because I wanted to get somewhere that was 3000 miles away.
You missed the reference.
> group has only a single row that beats motor vehicle accidents, and it is "accidents", which motor vehicle accidents is considered a subset of.
Right, but then you have to ask why? You might find a dataset which further breaks the cohort down into "Male" and "Female" categories; because when you do that, you'll see the data does not line up between the two at all. There will, last time I checked, be about an 8x difference between the two.
This highlights the fact that the driver of the vehicle carries the risk, _not_ some inherent property of the vehicle itself. Ask yourself this question: if we took cars away from young men, would they be any less prodigious when it comes to fatally injuring themselves? History and psychology suggest that they wouldn't fare any better.
> in the 15-24 cohort, motor vehicle deaths are a substantial subset of all of the top 3 causes - unintentional injury, suicide, and homicide.
Suicidal behavior is not a risk factor that you can then translate to vehicles, neither homicide for the reasons I stated above. Finally, when you compare total vehicle fatalities for the cohort to the accidental death category for the same cohort, you realize it's around 30% of the overall deaths. When the 15-24 group injures themselves, it most often _does not_ involve a vehicle.
> a lot of the risk is concentrated in the takeoff and landing
Aircraft bodies are only rated for a certain number of "pressure cycles." There's genuine risk baked right into the airframe.
How many people do pedestrians kill per mile? Or bicycle? Or subway?
And either way, cars are still the number one killer if you look at miles per death.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_U...
It is disgusting we allow this to encroach on society and kill so many people.
Cars don't stop on a dime. Everyone knows that. If there's ok visibility there's no excuse for getting hit by one that isn't going absurdly fast (assuming you don't use a circular definition for "absurdly fast")
Sure, the car isn't supposed hit the pedestrian but the pedestrian also has an equal obligation not to just dart out into the road.
And before you ask, I don't drive to work.
What if that person were your son, daughter, wife, husband, parent, or whatever? Would you be so blasé over their losing their life, and all because somebody couldn't even be bothered to just move their foot a bit and press a pedal?
The ability that drivers do have is to drive defensively and keep a look out for pedestrians. That is what I'm talking about, not by frustrating Newton's 3rd law. And because of that extra ability to do damage, they must be subject to harsher scrutiny than those who can more easily suffer damage.
When you cross the road you know there is a risk. Driving down the road you dont typically have a huge risk.
Especially when its legal to drive down the road and illegal to cross the road outside the crosswalks.
A car can kill people. A car can create a large amount of property damage if it is driven carelessly. Cars can even, in extreme circumstances, be fire and chemical hazards.
Are you really sure driving doesn't include a massive amount of risk to yourself and others compared to walking period?
Do you stand on train tracks and blame the train ?
How is this difficult to understand ?