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Comment by LightBug1 | Hacker News Reader

//Remember boys and girls: self driving cars don’t need to be perfect, just better than humans.

Fudamentally disagree.

Self driving cars need to be effectively perfect (almost impossible) for me to consider them.

I would rather be in a situation where the circumstances mean that there is a greater probability of me crashing, but under my control, rather than a "random" coding error or AI hallucination taking me and my family out.

Slow traffic auto stop/start, cruise control and lane assist were always enough, and they've been around for a decade or more.

But then, I actually enjoy driving when not in traffic or long drives.

Ymmv, literally.

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So you want to deliberately put your family in more danger just so that it'll be your fault if they get hurt?

I think part of the problem is that random failure modes that auto driving does is extremely terrifying, even if you know statistically it is safer. The nature of the failures are unpredictable and alien to a human understanding of driving, and therefore appears something akin to “a small portion of the time, your car will randomly, catastrophically explode, but it happens less often than when you would statistically have an accident”. People would 150% not drive that thing!

Thank you for putting that in terms people here may understand better.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusion_of_control

It's a cognitive bias in all of us, including the lawmakers approving the use of self driving cars.

I disagree, I'm aware of that fallacy and that's not quite what I'm getting at.

I've driven cars for 20 years and my driving has (imo) improved over that time.

I'm at a level where I don't see a reason for me to get into any serious accident by my hand. It's just not going to happen * fingers crossed *.

I know my driving style. I know I'm a safe driver.

Now, why would I give that security over to "FSD", which is clearly a decade (if that) away from being user-ready?

Don't get me wrong, as said, certain automation is cool ... stop/start in heavy traffic, lane assist, cruise control, crash avoidance even ... but beyond that? I'm A-ok ... don't need to introduce the risk from half-baked code (no offense, but that's true at this stage) or AI where we don't really yet know what the output will be (despite being impressive "most" of the time).

Now, I'm speaking about me. You can do what you like. And if you're willing to hand over the reigns of your life to some beta programme, be my guest. Just don't drive in the opposite direction to me for, say, another 10 years. Thanks.

So would you do it if it was a better driver than you? Your earlier comment said you wouldn't even if it made a crash less likely. I'm not really sure how to parse that given this followup.

Yes, but as said, an automated system would need to be almost perfect, which it is nowhere near.

At it's best, and most of the time, an automated system will be a far superior driver than me.

However, coding error and AI hallucination mean I will not touch these systems until extremely proven. And we're at least 10 years from that, if at all.

(note I'm talking about true FSD not the current nonsense. An experience where you can have hands and eyes off the road. With the current nonsense, the novelty is cool, but when that wears off you're just a manager of your car. The worst of both worlds. You have to pay attention to the road and get none of the pleasure of driving. What a fail).

Perhaps a more generous interpretation is that just because a self-driving performs better than humans overall doesn't mean it performs better the specific situations you drive in. Though even then I think it might be dubious.

Self driving cars can be effectively perfect - if we finally stop designing cars that cater to human drivers and stop trying to look like current cars. IMHO, if we finally accept that AI cars are different, we can achieve that level today. It starts with making use of AI's fast reactions and designing the car around that. Put the humans in the middle, and accept that the passengers have no role in driving, so you can pad them (and the front) so that crashes have much less effect. etc.

While I'm perhaps with you on "Self driving cars need to be effectively perfect (almost impossible) for me to consider them", we aren't the market which, by typical human nature, will accept 'good enough'. So IMO you wouldn't make a good salesman or company exec.

It's all about control, folks. I despise that you consider yourself the "savior" here because you saved your family from AI driving. Nope, you'd rather cast doubt on something than embrace it because of insignificant human ego. It matters to you and your precious family, but does it matter in the grand scheme of things? Huh?

Thanks for missing the core of my point. But your comment did give me a chuckle.

Your saviour has spoken.

Now. Kneel before your saviour.

I mean, why just stop at me and my family?

Are you kneeling yet?

you gotta earn that knee, son!

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