It won't be long after self driving arrives and you won't get that option. Humans are terrible drivers, even in the best cases. Once self driving is better survival than humans it won't be legal to drive on public roads.
This type of change isn’t instant, but it can happen faster than a human lifespan. Think about someone born in the 70s and what they’ve experienced with cigarettes. They were born into a world where close to half the US population smoked, and they’re now retiring in a world where smoking is de facto banned in most non-residential buildings. That is a drastic change, and remember that tobacco is addictive, which hampers change much more effectively than habits like driving.
That rules out de facto driving ban. That leaves driving ban by fiat. Also never gonna happen in this century, unless it carves out an exception for "classic cars."
As far as hazard ratios go, cigarette smoking is orders of magnitude more dangerous than driving. Not a good comparison.
I’m not, you didn’t read what I wrote. I specifically predicated my theory on if it was possible, and indicated my reservations there.
https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/heal...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
They do not! Are you comparing computer driving in "easy" situations with human driving in all situations?
If we can get rid of, or vastly reduce, the problems of inattention, exhaustion, rage, chemical impairments and the like, we have a huge improvement. I think that improvement is vastly more, cost measured in human life, than the problems we see with computer control in odd situations.
So yes. They do drive better than humans. The fact that their failings are wack-doodle to us (you drove _right_ into that truck??) is swallowed in the fact that their failings are profoundly fewer than ours.
Better start showing off some statistics along with that claim.
But the big benefit that I see of self-driving is that a lot of manual driving becomes safer. Autonomous vehicles won't overlook motorcycles and Miatas.
Autonomous cars will go a long way to making small, fun vehicles safe again.
The used car market is a $150bn industry. A quick spot check found that a 2010 Honda Civic still costs between $5k and $10k depending on mileage, etc.
By the time that self driving is required by the NHSA or whatever body requires backup cameras and the like in new cars self driving will be standard.
A $20k Subaru will come with it out of the box, no add ons, just like a backup camera today.
The National Driver's Association will arise with bumper stickers: "You can pry the steering wheel from my cold, dead hands"
As self driving becomes common, people won't bother with getting a driving license. States that do can actually put in decent levels of restrictions and competency to get one rather than letting an 16 year old with 5 minutes driving round a car park out on the road.
As fewer people get new licesnse, the demand for self-driving goes down as people who can drive the legacy way die off.
Humans drive correctly 99.99999% of the time. We can't can't even keep a computer up and running that well, never mind driving perfectly.
See this thread with the math: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12012166
The future you are expecting is never going to happen.
This comparison doesn't make any sense. You're comparing _continuous_ operation with the aggregate of the average human's bouts of driving. Even robotaxis aren't going to run constantly. A sensible analogue would be something like aircraft software, which I'd guess does have near the reliability of human drivers (and can last much longer continuously than humans do).
I don't understand what you mean. I'm comparing actual time behind the wheel - hours of correct driving vs hours (well minutes) of incorrect driving.
Do the math yourself, take total hours behind the wheel and divide by the accident rate, like I did. You'll get the same results. Depending on your assumptions anywhere from 99.999 to 99.99999% correct driving by humans.
> Even robotaxis aren't going to run constantly.
Again, I'm not comparing constantly, I'm comparing actual hours behind the wheel.
That number also means no situations where the computer gives up and hands control back to the driver.
If autonomous cars can never hand back (at most stopping legally, safely and out of traffic) and cause 1 death per 10 million hours, that would seem about right.
[0] https://www.volpe.dot.gov/news/how-much-time-do-americans-sp...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
> We can't can't even keep a computer up and running that well
That's the comparison that I quoted in my comment and that I was responding to. You're comparing continuous uptime to humans' disconnected (and brief) bouts of driving.
Does automobile software development have the level of oversight that aircraft development has in terms of regulation and approval for use? I know the NHTSA approves safety with crash tests (and are currently working on AV standards) but I'm not sure it's an equivalent to what the FAA currently does.
Not to say they won't be equivalent in the future, but I don't know how well the analogue holds up if they don't have equivalent levels of quality oversight currently.
Nothing in my comment implied this, and I don't disagree that it doesn't. The question is immaterial to the specific topic of discussion: the comparison of server uptime to human-driver reliability as an indicator of the feasibility of functional AV software.
I am legitimately asking how much parity there is regarding oversight regulation between flight and autonomous software, which would help make your point clearer since it has a direct relationship to reliability.
However, I do think it’s relevant to the point. If you are making an analogy about reliability but one is legally forced to demonstrate reliability while the other is not, does that comparison really make sense with that additional context? While I've worked in the aerospace software domain, I don't know to what standard AV is held which is why I was asking.
Not quite attacking, but disagreeing with an implied assumption that I didn't make (ie, that I was arguing that AVs were ready for primetime instead of narrowly disputing the flawed reliability comparison in the parent comment).
> I am legitimately asking how much parity there is regarding oversight regulation between flight and autonomous software, which would help make your point clearer since it has a direct relationship to reliability
The reason I figured it was rhetorical is that I thought it was fairly universally known that there's no comparable regulatory apparatus for AVs (yet?). But you're mistaken that this is relevant to my point: the parent comment was discussing the feasibility of AVs by saying "we can't build computers with the uptime of human drivers", and I was pointing out that he had this backwards.
> If you are making an analogy about reliability but one is legally forced to demonstrate reliability while the other is not, does that comparison really make sense with that additional context?
I didn't say AVs were as reliable as aircraft software, nor that they would definitely get to that pt (perhaps they don't need to, as safe stops are much easier on the ground). I was disputing the claim that computer system uptime can't be made as reliable as humans in the current day, using aircraft systems as an in-production example.
My point was that AV-aircraft comparison is only valid iff they are held to the same quality standard. It sounds like we agree they are not.
I think it’s important to include that caveat, that’s all. If you assume everybody already knows that, I can understand why you didn’t include it in your original point.