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Comment by Retric | Hacker News Reader

Excessive caution also costs lives when it comes to self driving because it pushes adoption further into the future. Tesla is overall near parity with human drivers in terms of casualty rates, though with different people at risk. Assuming Waymo’s system is significantly better than that it’s therefore safer than human drivers and thus should be deployed to save lives.

Of course that’s valuing everyone’s lives equally, there are some arguments to be made that slight improvements aren’t enough.

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> Tesla is overall near parity with human drivers in terms of casualty rates, though with different people at risk.

Unproven claim.

If it was much worse than people everyone would be talking about it, insurance rates would match etc.

I am not saying it’s as good on average and clearly it’s much worse at some things. That said it’s not say ten times as likely to result in a fatal accident.

That's much different than making a positive claim the autopilot has parity with human drivers for casualty rates, as there are a number of different reasons that is the case.

I didn’t say Autopilot was as good as the average driver. I said it was within the ballpark of the average driver. The fact that some major insurance companies offer discounts for Teslas with self driving over those without seems like strong evidence for such.

Unless you have some evidence why there isn’t a huge story around Autopilots overall safety?

First, that's not true. Most people don't even have FSD beta, let alone use it. Secondly, Teslas are notoriously expensive to insure.

It’s not about the rate for a Tesla it’s about the rate for Teslas without and without autopilot. Direct Line, the largest car insurer in the UK, still offers a 5% discount for Tesla with Autopilot in 2021 over those that don’t have it.

That’s a very clear indication for near parity.

Do they also give discounts for assistive driving features like adaptive cruise control? Because a fair number of insurers do.

Are you talking about the discount that they introduced with this disclaimer [0]:

> Direct Line said it was too early to say whether the use of the autopilot system produced a safety record that justified lower premiums. It said it was charging less to encourage use of the system and aid research.

That was back in 2017 and they probably have better numbers now, but it's not exactly an indication of autonomy and being safer-than-humans. These sorts of discounts are also widely available for other ADAS systems.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-direct-line-ins-tesla-idU...

It’s still available in 2021, that’s plenty of time to collect all relevant data.

And again I am not using it as evidence that Autopilot is better, just that it’s within the same ballpark as human drivers. Offering a significant discount bounds how bad autopilot can be.

> Tesla is overall near parity with human drivers in terms of casualty rates

Not it is not. It's on parity with human drivers IN IDEAL CONDITIONS. Autopilot is frequently flummoxed by rain, snow, or other high glare conditions.

It's kind of cheeky for these companies to claim their driver assist technologies have a better record than humans when they get to disengage every time the conditions are less than ideal. Humans don't have that option.

Hell, I could claim I'm an expert at anything as long as I get to tap out once I'm in over my head...

Weather conditions only contribute to ~16% of fatal road accidents. https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-...

So, that doesn’t actually change the near parity question much. Further, the question isn’t if the 100% self driving is available today for all roads and weather conditions, the question when is it good enough to start saving lives.

If the problem is millions of traffic accidents from individual human drivers then it will be far cheaper and faster to bet big on public transportation, high speed/light/etc. rail, instead of a fully autonomous self-driving car future that has always claimed to be just 5 years away (for the last 15 years).

I can’t think of any affordable public transportation system ready to replace rural roads. What exactly are you suggesting?

On the other hand if you’re keeping rural roads then self driving cars could make a huge difference even if cities banned cars.

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