Comment by andy_ppp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by andy_ppp | Hacker News Reader

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Firstly this is comparing autopilot to self driving; they aren’t the same thing and you are required to stay in control of the vehicle which clearly didn’t happen with this crash.

Second there is the fact that cars that are self driving will still crash at launch. I see this a bit like air travel where over time every kink in the software will be filtered out. The software will be safer than human drivers at launch so I’m not extremely concerned.

Finally, I guess, will people believe in the statistics or will they go with their beliefs. I don’t know but I’m sure this will happen in the next few years for Tesla and for non highway driving it will be extremely safe. N of one incidents (of real self driving) will probably still happen but as long as what went wrong is learnable from I think it’s acceptable.

"Firstly this is comparing autopilot to self driving"

No I was not. I understand autopilot is not self driving. But since even basic collision detection is still difficult the step from autopilot to self driving will take years imho.

"Second there is the fact that cars that are self driving will still crash at launch."

Maybe. But imho that day will still be years from now.

"Finally, I guess, will people believe in the statistics or will they go with their beliefs."

When self driving is ready for the road I believe it will be much safer than people behind the wheel. Systems like adaptive cruise control, lane keeping and autopilot are already safer than people.

The problem right now is that all the 'glitches' are potential deadly.

Imagine all the cars in the world would to become self driving with the current tech. It would be a mess. The moment self driving cars would make less of a mess than humans it will be ready for the road.

Not that I want to cast total doubt but it will take a lot of training before machines learn all the dumb crap that humans do whilst driving. What if you have a seizure whilst driving, or another self driving car from another company just went berzerk and shifts lanes for whatever insane reason? With planes its a lot simpler since its much less likely for planes to come into such close proximity typically.

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