Hacker News Reader

Comment by boxcardavin | Hacker News Reader

This is absolutely the right analysis of how these systems work and why you can't expect autonomous cars to halt traffic deaths. What the Uber crash has shown us is that the tolerance for AVs killing people is probably exactly zero, not some (very meaningful) reduction like 10x or 100x less.

My company didn't start with this zero tolerance thing in our minds, but it turns out our self-delivering electric bicycles have a huge advantage for real world safety because they weigh ~60lbs when in autonomous mode and are limited to 12mph. This equals the kinetic energy of myself walking at a brisk pace, or basically something that won't kill purely from blunt force impact. I think the future for autonomy will be unlocked by low mass and low speed vehicles, not cars converted to drive themselves.

View on HN

> What the Uber crash has shown us is that the tolerance for AVs killing people is probably exactly zero, not some (very meaningful) reduction like 10x or 100x less.

It hasn't shown that at all. It has documented beyond reasonable doubt that Uber should not be allowed to participate in real world tests of autonomous vehicles.

There are plenty of situations where people would fully accept a self driving vehicle killing someone but this isn't one of those.

The Uber crash has shown us that the public tolerance for AVs killing people is somewhere lower than presumptively around 30x more dangerous than the mean human driver.

Uber had a fatality after 3 million miles of driving.

The mean fatality rate is approximately 1 per 100 million miles of driving.

It's a sample size of one, so the error bars are big, but it drives me insane that people are acting like the Uber cars are the ideal driverless cars of the imagined future, and are super safe. The available data (which is limited, but not that limited) is that Uber driverless cars are much, much, much more dangerous than mean human drivers.

My company didn't start with this zero tolerance thing in our minds, but it turns out our self-delivering electric bicycles

That actually sounds like a really interesting concept, one of those ideas that seems obvious only after someone suggests it. What company is this?

Right now, in the Seattle area, we are basically seeing a new littering epidemic in the form of sharable bicycles being left to rust away, unused, at random places. If the bike could cruise to its next user autonomously, that would be really be a game-changer. "Bikes on demand" would turn bikesharing from (IMHO) a stupid idea into something that just might work.

Plus, the engineering challenges involved in automating a riderless bicycle sound fun.

Weel, we're in Bellevue. It's a super fun problem to work on and one of the first thing we figured out was that trikes won't work because of their width and difficulty to ride, so we got a two-wheeled bike to balance. The autonomy problems are easier than cars in a lot of ways, and this Uber case is something we don't deal with because our bikes can always stop when presented with a no-go situation since we're only autonomous when no one is riding.

That's good to hear, sounds like a very cool project. I could see this living up to at least some of the hype that the original Segways received.

The biggest challenge will probably be to keep people from screwing with the bikes, of course. :( An unoccupied bicycle cruising down the street or sidewalk will fire all sorts of mischievous neurons that onlookers didn't even know they had.

Definitely, will be interesting to test. We have several cameras onboard so that we can see what happened but an equal concern with vandalism is how people feel about being watched. We want to avoid feeling like your neighborhood is suddenly a panopticon. Still unsolved.

How do you (plan to) deal with people trying to stop what looks like a runaway bicycle (esp. when it rolls ^W rides downhill)?

Hah, yeah it reminds me of a runaway shopping cart when you see our bike rolling. We expect people will get used to it eventually but we have some ideas to test in the future on how to make it more obvious, such as giving the bike a ‘face’ and having it lit up with LEDs that are visible from all angles. Def not a solved problem, but as far as design problems go it’s a pretty fun one.

Your analysis leaves much to be desired, though, as it comes perilously close to equating "we can't prevent 100% of fatalities" with "we shouldn't care about, learn from, or make changes in response to a fatality".

What the Uber crash has shown us is mostly the willingness of people on HN to excuse Silicon Valley darlings even when they actually demonstrably kill people.

I don't think it has anything to do with "Silicon Valley darlings" (of which Uber is certainly not anymore). It has more to do with "super cool future tech" that they really want to see implemented in their lifetimes - so much so that they may make dubious arguments to support thier position.

> This equals the kinetic energy of myself walking at a brisk pace, or basically something that won't kill purely from blunt force impact.

This is an analogy that cannot completely map to cycling.

A fall at any speed from a bike is literally a potentially crippling or deadly scenario.

Potentially deadly? Maybe, sure, but at low speeds, up to 10 mph say, it is incredibly unlikely that falling off a bicycle (even with no helmet) will do more than cause bruises and damaged ego.

Falling while stationary is the second most common type of accidental death, can't imagine a bicycle makes it any safer lmao

Is this including the elderly who often will break a hip that way and then die of the complications? Because if so, that would not be comparable to a healthy young (< 60 yo) person falling.

Are there numbers on the average height of those fatal falls? If they're from balconies, roofs, etc., I'd say being on a bike (a few feet from the ground) would make it much safer.

When you're balancing on two thin tires, you are lucky if you fall and don't slam your head on the pavement.

Curious if you have ever fallen off a bike? I have fallen over several times on a bike while stationary (when learning to ride with clipless pedals), I have crashed bikes at much higher speeds as well, and I have watched my kids fall off of bikes lots of times while learning. In all of that, I have never seen a (or had my own) head hit the ground. Typically you hit the ground with your arms (slow speed or stationary fall) or your hips, back, or shoulders (if at higher speed).

> A fall at any speed from a bike is literally a potentially crippling or deadly scenario.

For elderly people, I would guess that's accurate.

Don't underestimate how dangerous even a small fall can be, you can end up fine but you could also end up smashing your face into the curb.

A friend of mine, in his 50's very fit, cycling to work and back every day, broke both his arms while doing literally a 10-meter test drive in front of a bike store.

The bike's brakes were setup reversed compared to what he used to, so he ended up breaking with the front brake, flipping the bike over and breaking both his arms while landing. His fault? Sure, but still a rather scary story how quickly even mundane things can go really wrong.

Did he end up purchasing the bike?

I don't think he did, not much use for a bike when both your arms are in a plaster cast from hands to shoulders. Poor guy couldn't even go to the toilet without help.

Yeah, I mean those brakes were real GOOD!

Yet falling is the second most common cause of accidental deaths in the world.

When a rider is onboard there’s no autonomy, the bike is only self-delivering.

I get what you're saying but that feels like a reach

Reply on news.ycombinator.com