Comment by cestith | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cestith | Hacker News Reader

I care about nine numbers, in the order of the groups given.

    Group A
    1. How many deaths and serious injuries per standard distance does AP have?
    2. How many deaths and serious injuries per standard distance do other self-driving cars have?
    3. How many deaths and serious injuries per standard distance do human drivers have?

    Group B
    1. What is the financial impact of crashes per distance driven with AP?
    2. What is the financial impact of crashes per distance driven with other self-driving cars?
    3. What is the financial impact of crashes per distance driven with human drivers?

    Group C
    1. How many crashes per distance does AP have?
    2. How many crashes per distance do other self-driving systems have?
    3. How many crashes per distance do human drivers have?

Anything not comparing these numbers one to the other is incomplete and potentially propagandistic. Tell me about the human impact. Tell me about the monetary impact. Tell me about the number of total crashes.

Without all three numbers in each group and all three groups, we can't tell if 273 is a high number or a low one. We can't tell how it's impacted by total distance driven with the systems. We can't tell if the accidents are more or less serious. We can't tell if these systems are dangerous convenience features or if they're actually improving on numbers from human drivers. We need real data, and real comparisons.

That's a very clean way of dividing up the data, I'd be curious about those figures too.

I was going to question the relevance of comparing tech-caused accidents with human-caused accidents since, despite the growing evidence that tech is the better driver under normal circumstances, we have this cognitive bias around lower perceived safety when someone/something else is driving. People just want to feel in control, even though they're more likely to crash, and my guess is that this will slow down adoption of self-driving technology more than necessary. But then I realized that evidence like this would probably be the best argument no matter what, so in the end, it makes even more sense to compare those numbers!

Humans have a fatal crash about once per million miles. Self Driving is complicated by the fact that humans can intervene. Human drivers have no such backup.

So comparison may require compensating for the fact that automated drivers have that human backup preventing them from otherwise killing more people.

> Self Driving is complicated by the fact that humans can intervene.

And that self driving "opts out" of any conditions it finds too challenging, requiring the human to take control. Meaning self driving has more miles in relatively safe conditions.

You and parent make very good points. These would still be relevant if we had all the data. It'd be nice to have the data and this context for it.

Aren’t level 2 systems supposed to be exactly this backup for humans?

Yes, that's important to keep in mind.

If the overall system of auto driving plus human turns out to be safer than a human alone, that could still be a good thing.

I'd also like to see data, come to think of it, for systems with the safety systems that aren't self driving like lane departure warnings, front and rear collision warnings, adaptive cruise control, automatic braking, driver awareness warnings, head position warnings, directional headlights, night-vision HUDs, and such.

lol thanks for the broken down version. I was saying the exact same thing but too lazy to break it out into all the rates. Seems like the dumbed down version is "what is the rate vs other equivalent autopilots" and "what is the rate vs your average fleshbag"

Oh, you're a tesla apologist then? For each of those groups, the AP case is much more forgiving as both the self-driving case and human driving case need to handle all driving conditions whereas AP only needs to handle the safest of conditions (especially safest on a per-mile basis).

Oh, and bonus: "other self-driving systems", Tesla's AP and FSD (despite it's name literally being "full self-driving") are not self-driving systems.

Your comment ignores the parent and therefore misses their point. It is _irrelevant_ which conditions need to be handled by AP. If we don't have even basic data, we can't make any useful comparisons.

No need for the strawman.

Literally just omit the word "other" and the point stands. Without data we don't know numbers for Tesla or other manufacturers. That's literally what data means - the quantitative and possibly qualitative information about the topic.

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