Comment by AdieuToLogic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AdieuToLogic | Hacker News Reader

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> U give far to much credit to human drivers.

The data available challenges this contention. According to here[0], one estimate is that there are approximately 18,000,000 people driving at any given time in the U.S. And according to here[1], there were 34,439 traffic fatalities in the U.S. for the calendar year of 2016.

For the sake of discussion, let's assume that of the 18 million drivers in the U.S. on the road at any given time, there are at least two other drivers which are not on the road at that same time. Further, let's assume these are all of the U.S. drivers for the entire 2016 calendar year.

This would put the estimated set of unique drivers at 54,000,000. A conservative estimate by any means.

This makes the estimated probability of a human driver being involved in a traffic fatality for the 2016 calendar year to be 34439 : 54000000, or 0.00063776.

According to here[2], the probability of being struck by lightning in the U.S. is approximately 1 : 280000, or 0.00000357.

While the former is mathematically 200x more probable, the latter is statistically insignificant.

> Capable human drivers as a subset of human drivers.

Hence my qualification of "capable", included in order to obviate edge condition "whataboutism."

> At least an av cant get drunk.

But it can get defective updates, be unable to identify unknown conditions, suffer from misidentification of threats, and susceptible to cascading failures affecting all autonomous vehicles in the same situations.

0 - https://www.quora.com/How-many-drivers-are-on-the-road-at-an...

1 - https://safer-america.com/car-accident-statistics/#US

2 - http://www.lightningsafety.com/nlsi_pls/probability.html

this is all wrong. first you don't need to normalize by r ruining vehicles, both metrics are yearly. second the real signal is death per mile driven, now that's something you should look for, not abstract drivers. third using drivers as base assume all cars vehicles have no passenger.

this should at least get you in the right direction, but you'll likely want to put motorbikes into their class at some point.

anyway short story long you want the cumulative chance of getting killed, basing the estimate on the average person lifetime miles, which varies widely anyway one person to another making a synthetic number over such variability unfit for any purpose

> this is all wrong.

Okay, let's go through what you identify as being wrong point-by-point.

> first you don't need to normalize by r ruining vehicles, both metrics are yearly.

I provided the (active/daily) running vehicles metric in order to establish a (very) conservative estimation of 54m distinct human drivers in calendar year 2016. This was to ensure subsequent analysis was reasonably well founded by way of using common base units.

> second the real signal is death per mile driven, now that's something you should look for, not abstract drivers.

Perhaps that signal is significant for other premises, but mine was to provide a probability of any given human driver causing or being involved in a vehicular fatality. This was to ensure that the derived probability was reasonably correct based on referenced data.

> third using drivers as base assume all cars vehicles have no passenger.

Perhaps my use of the descriptor "driver" was improper for the entirety of the analysis. Given the limitations of the medium, it was a trade-off I was willing to make.

Your point is correct and, yes, it would affect the probability iff the intent was to determine driver liability.

> this should at least get you in the right direction, but you'll likely want to put motorbikes into their class at some point.

> anyway short story long you want the cumulative chance of getting killed, basing the estimate on the average person lifetime miles, which varies widely anyway one person to another making a synthetic number over such variability unfit for any purpose

Your analysis is keen and one which is goes beyond what I was trying to illustrate to the GP. To wit, the specific point being addressed by my terse analysis was:

> U give far to much credit to human drivers.

Highways rack up a lot of miles, but is a really easy environment to drive in. Intersections, pedestrian crossings, busy streets, parking etc don't yield a lot of miles to the statistics, but is where most interaction with other people, and most edge cases show up.

So I'm not sure that accidents per mile is necessarily the best metric either.

parent was specifically talking fatalities, so that changes the incident mix from just generic accidents to favour again rural roads

18,000,000 seems pretty high. That might be peak. I doubt >5% of the population is the driver (not passenger) in a vehicle all day.

> 18,000,000 seems pretty high. That might be peak. I doubt >5% of the population is the driver (not passenger) in a vehicle all day.

True, that estimation may be peak load. Which is why I kept the total estimate of distinct drivers at 54m instead of the much more likely number of well above[0] that.

0 - https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/pubs/hf/pl11028/c...

This is the shittiest handkerchief math ever. Your only considering fatalities- which comprise a small subset of the total number of accidents.

Secondly, you didn't actually provide a comparison. You simply remarked "Oh the chances of dying in a car accident is comparable to the chances of dying due to lightening therefor cars are safe" (whilst ignoring the 2 ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE difference between them, people struck by lightening != people killed by lightening and the fact that cars are not safe, as anyone who has ever driven will tell you).

> This is the shittiest handkerchief math ever.

I provided data and analysis therein. You provided an emotional attack, and a vulgar one at that.

If you have data which supports your premise of:

  U give far to much credit to human drivers.

Then please do so. I await the edification your reasoned data-driven retort will afford.

There's no need for this kind of language. You can make your point and be polite at the same time.

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