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Comment by Vetch | Hacker News Reader

Humans are not so bad as drivers. Your example is an event from over 2 decades ago and was deemed newsworthy. Humans drive in all kinds of conditions but death rate is about 1 per 100 million miles driven. A search reveals crashes to be on the order of hundreds of collisions per 100 million miles driven. Age, country, intoxication level, road design and laws, road and environmental conditions also play a major role such that accident rates for someone aged 30+ in a Northern European country are going to be a lot less than teenagers in a country where road laws are merely friendly suggestions (and considering the chaos of driving in those countries, the rates are actually surprisingly low).

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I will go further and say that almost everytime there is an accident the driver is somehow impaired. Lack of sleep, drugs, illness (old age included, mental disease), poor judgement (young age included, emotional distress)

Humans are surprisingly good at driving under normal conditions.

Some are. Some are not. Last week, I was nearly in two accidents on maybe a 1 mile trip to the store from my house. Both times were people pulling out of traffic, ignoring right of way. I prevented the accidents that would have resulted from these two separate idiots. I have also been in over 20 accidents in my 25 years of driving, the vast majority of those having been rear-ended and none were my fault.

In my experience, I've not been in an accident with a teen, nor someone elderly, though I know people that have (both causing and being involved). Neither have I been in an accident with someone that I could tell was impaired by drugs or alcohol. I don't know for sure any of them involved a phone for that matter. Weather was only a factor in one accident (pouring rain, low visibility).

I have nothing to suggest that any of my accidents were caused by anything other than inattentiveness, even the one time weather played a minor role. I also see a lot of dangerous behavior every time I drive: people running lights and stop signs, completely ignoring yield signs (seriously, they must be invisible to everyone else), failing to yield right of way, failing to signal turns and lane changes (my favorite is turning the signal on after moving into the turn lane), lots of phone usage (for everything except making a call, from maps to texting to watching videos!).

> I have also been in over 20 accidents in my 25 years of driving, the vast majority of those having been rear-ended and none were my fault.

Do you just drive a lot or do you brake too late / too hard? Because an accident rate that high is rather unusual.

> or do you brake too late / too hard

You mean live in a place where drivers tailgate?

Yeah, the “I'm like 5 sigmas deep in the probability distribution but I bear no responsibility” sounds a bit suspicious.

No, I don't drive that much. Most of my driving is in bumper to bumper traffic on 3-4 lane roads, though and people do tail gate a lot. None of the accidents have been because I've braked too hard. Of the most recent accidents, two were due to people not checking their blind spots while changing lanes. One, I was waiting at a stop light and the car behind rolled into me. And the fourth, a neighbor backed into me. Most of the accidents I've been in are after having been stopped at lights for nearly the entire duration before the accident occurs. The worst, I got hit by a guy speeding in a 45 mph zone while stopped at a light. He totaled his car. I've also had several hit and runs while I wasn't even in the car.

As I stated in my post, most of them are due to people being inattentive and not following the basics like keeping a reasonable distance checking blind spots. Others I suspect phone use, but can't prove it.

> I have also been in over 20 accidents in my 25 years of driving, the vast majority of those having been rear-ended and none were my fault.

That's way too many to take your word for it. Where there's smoke, there's fire. Well, maybe not... but you sure as shit should suspect a fire.

> a country where road laws are merely friendly suggestions (and considering the chaos of driving in those countries, the rates are actually surprisingly low)

I wonder how well self driving algorithms would compare if tested in such a "hostile" environment? Perhaps we shouldn't allow them on more "friendly" roads until they can consistently surpass human performance under such adverse conditions.

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