Source? (I’ll believe it for Cruise.)
> human drivers can't comprehend or anticipate a driverless car hitting the brakes for no apparent reason
Human drivers tailgate. If you have a safe cushion in front of you, an erratic stop won’t cause a collision.
This is why in my state, if you rear-end someone then you are automatically presumed to be at fault. "They slammed on the brakes unexpectedly" is not a defense. You should have left adequate braking distance so that wouldn't cause an accident.
You absolutely should be expecting the driver in front to slam on the brakes at full force without warning. There’s an infinite number of things that could cause any driver - human or autonomous - to do this. If you drive without this expectation then you’re a very dangerous driver and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near you on the road.
It doesn't change the fact though that human drivers don't slam the brakes out of the blue because their "AI" got confused about nothing in particular, and that it is dangerous.
There is a world of difference in those word choices. Saying “no reason” certainly gives you an excuse to write a sanctimonious comment like this, but it’s misrepresenting what was said.
There’s a significant number of people who feel personally attacked by a car merging in front of them, despite the fact that a merging vehicle has right of way (in all countries I’ve ever driven in). There’s a video that keeps popping up on my Instagram where a car changes lanes, and the car behind has plenty of time to react and slow down slightly, but they instead crash into the merging vehicle intentionally without touching the brakes at all. Most of the comments side with the driver who caused the incident, not the merging vehicle who did nothing wrong.
Anyway, my point is, there are a lot of people who refuse to give space to merging vehicles, which increases the chance of these accidents happening (fraud or not).
If you put your ego aside and immediately back off when a vehicle in front merges, you’ll be far more likely to avoid this type of accident. Alternatively, if you tailgate a merging vehicle out of “principle” you’re just inviting an accident.
During a freeway slowdown I try to dampen the brake-waves by going slow and not braking so much, but if I leave too much space in front of me (for coasting), another driver moves in and we're back to playing accordion.
If all cars could sync up and move together like train cars on the freeway there'd be less brake dust and more efficient travel, but then I'd rather take a train anyway.
Every time I have to use the brake - rather than downshifting - for anything other than holding the car in place, makes me feel like I've committed a failure in planning and/or situational awareness.
stop caring about this and just slowly back off a little more.
someone else will eventually leave your lane in front of you and make up for it.
National Law Review (look it up or see associated link below).
>>> Human drivers tailgate. If you have a safe cushion in front of you, an erratic stop won’t cause a rear-end collision. <<<
That's the theory --- and the misinterpretation.
It's true that almost all human driver's tailgate at some point --- but they do so while being involved in half the accidents that self driving cars are --- 4.1 accidents per million miles versus 9.1 for driverless.
https://carsurance.net/insights/self-driving-car-statistics/
Your Carsurance source cites the National Law Review, which cites the Carsurance source for that statistic [1]. It’s important to consider from when they polled data and how they’re segregating by manufacturer.
EDIT: Found the study [2]. It’s for 2012 to 2015. Given these are decade-old data, I’m actually surprised the gap is only 2x while fatality and injury rates were already lower.
[1] https://www.natlawreview.com/article/dangers-driverless-cars
[2] http://websites.umich.edu/~umtriswt/PDF/UMTRI-2015-34.pdf