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Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

economist.com

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Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#151

Post by cosarara »

mr__y wrote: post #92
sliken wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, but likely at a lower rate than the general public. In any case the general idea is to find as fair a comparison as possible with the Tesla published numbers. I suspect $60k BMW owners driving on the highways in good weather are much safer per mile than random folks in random cars on random roads in random weather.

while I generally agree with your point, that new cars with great braking, enhanced safety and in perfect technical conditions are safer than average, I'm not entirely convinced if BMW is the right make for this kind of examples edit: typo

Do BMWs have a bad safety track record?

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#152

Post by close04 »

megablast wrote: post #120
crocal wrote: post #8

The article misses an important point. It’s not only a problem of technology, it’s also a problem of risk acceptance. While we accept to be killed by our own mistakes at the wheel, society (we) will not accept that a machine makes the same, even if the failure rate is on average /better/. This is the fundamental issue Elon Musk has. The driverless bar for safety is way higher than very clever driver assistance or eve…

> While we accept to be killed by our own mistakes at the wheel, society (we) will not accept that a machine makes the same, even if the failure rate is on average /better/. We seem to accept being killed by someone else, since that is how most of the 40,000 people are killed every single year in the US. I don't hear too many drivers complaining about that.

I'd say it's also because today we instinctively know FSD cars have not proved their skills in the same conditions a human driver does every day. Racking up millions of miles by following a line or the car in front on the highway is far from dealing with a crowded city center, bad weather, unexpected issues that have no clear rules of engagement, etc.

Tomorrow the situation will be different. But it's hard to trust such a broad safety claim knowing it's based on partial data and say "the failure rate [for self driving] is on average /better/". Comparing failure rates obtained is such different conditions is misleading.

Self driving cars are like a student driver with supervision. They currently drive in relatively controlled environments, or at least ones with very forgiving conditions, and are learning. And just like student drivers with supervision they are relatively safe. Until the moment they're exposed to the full set of driving conditions without supervision. We intimately and instinctively know and trust how the learning process work in humans. For cars not so much. Not yet anyway.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#153

Post by bonoboTP »

bogle wrote: post #133

If we expect driverless cars to be further delayed and we continue building our cities to encourage micromobility (bikes, electric scooters, segregated lanes, car free streets, etc.) then at which point does the value of the driverless car become moot because we no longer drive? Does this sound unlikely? Consider European cities like Copenhagen and Amsterdam which have encouraged cycling over the last two decades and…

Not everyone lives in cycling distance to work, not all are fit enough to cycle regularly (old age, disability, obesity).

In many countries such people use public transportation, but that's crowded and inconvenient for the richer folks who can afford cars.

Why do you think people still have cars in Amsterdam?

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#154

Post by nytesky »

simion314 wrote: post #61
zaroth wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quarterly safety numbers that Tesla releases are difficult to draw conclusions from, because they do not represent a controlled experiment over the same road conditions. However here are the numbers for millions of miles per crash (higher is better). With AutoPilot, Without AutoPilot but With Active Safety Measures, Without AutoPilot or Active Safety Measures, and NHTSA Average Vehicle 19Q3 - 4.34 2.70 1.82 0.50…

Those numbers are useless for concluding anything about what would happen if you remove the human completely, there are videos that show how the human intervened and saved the car from certain crash and I this situation should be counted as "Deaths" for the AI only column. Driving assistants would improve safety certainly, but removing the driver and letting the assistant drive will need real world like tests, for no…

Actually I’m not convinced assistants will improve safety.

Level 4 for example could be a blood bath, where cars drive all the easy situations, and hand over emergency control to out of practice drivers barely paying attention at a moments notice.

I believe our driving skills were better when we had manual transmission, and were more involved in overall operation. Hard to determine if safer, b/c of advances in crumple zones, airbags, etc as manual declined.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#155

Post by glangdale »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #43
baroffoos wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>While we accept to be killed by our own mistakes at the wheel, society (we) will not accept that a machine makes the same Ideally we should not be accepting either. It is outrageous how many people we allow to be killed regularly for slightly more comfortable transport.

> slightly more comfortable transport. Slightly more comfortable than what? Horses? Bicycles? Walking? There were 158,493 registered deaths in Australia in 2018, [1] of which 1137 were due to motor vehicle accidents [1]. Motor vehicle related deaths don't even rate in the top 20 causes of death. [also 1] The rate of motor vehicle related deaths in Australia peaked in 1970 at 30.4 per 100,000 population per year, and…

It is a shame that while the the first link has a table of Years of Potential Life Lost, it only counts things that made it into the Top 20 (so it just rearranges things - obviously suicide shoots to the #1 and dementia falls from #2 to way down the list). Road deaths kill on average younger people than most of the items on that Top 20 list.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#156

Post by ghaff »

theieindjri wrote: post #38
crocal wrote: post #8

The article misses an important point. It’s not only a problem of technology, it’s also a problem of risk acceptance. While we accept to be killed by our own mistakes at the wheel, society (we) will not accept that a machine makes the same, even if the failure rate is on average /better/. This is the fundamental issue Elon Musk has. The driverless bar for safety is way higher than very clever driver assistance or eve…

I don't understand why so many otherwise smart people fell for FSD hype. I'm not talking about the many con artists - I'm talking about the tech-savvy people who genuinely bought into FSD hype. How is it not obvious that FSD most likely requires artificial general intelligence and is, thus, probably somewhere between "many decades away" and "humans will never achieve it"?

A combination of:

- People with a vested interest in FSD being RSN playing a game of topper with each other, investors, and the market

- Extremely rapid progress in supervised learning, especially vision, being extrapolated into thinking along the lines of "How much longer can getting to FSD really take if we've made this much progress in just a few years?"

- A bunch of young urbanites with dreams of never having to buy a car or even learn to drive bought into all the hybe because they so wanted to believe. (And no small part of the backlash is probably that many of the same group feel basically kicked in the teeth at this point as reality sets in.)

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#157

Post by glangdale »

_xnmw wrote: post #108
rocgf wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just being pedantic, but those are seven 9s, not five. For five 9s, the downtime is indeed 5 minutes per year, for seven 9s it's about 3 seconds.

Still an interesting question: is 3 seconds of erroneous/unreliable behaviour per year acceptable from an autonomous vehicle?

I would be interested to meet a human driver who didn't have 3 seconds of erroneous/unreliable behaviour per year.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#158

Post by ghaff »

_xnmw wrote: post #108
rocgf wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just being pedantic, but those are seven 9s, not five. For five 9s, the downtime is indeed 5 minutes per year, for seven 9s it's about 3 seconds.

Still an interesting question: is 3 seconds of erroneous/unreliable behaviour per year acceptable from an autonomous vehicle?

Depends what's happening. If those 3 seconds consist of randomly veering into something on a highway, that would be... Not good.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#159

Post by jfk13 »

IMTDb wrote: post #137
_xnmw wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still an interesting question: is 3 seconds of erroneous/unreliable behaviour per year acceptable from an autonomous vehicle?

Even 5 minutes per year is totally acceptable. 5 minutes is 300,000 miliseconds. Split over the course of 365 days at 86400 seconds per day, we are looking at roughly 1 milisecond of erratic behaviour every 105 seconds. Not enough to crash a car

Perhaps that'd be OK, if the 5 minutes per year is evenly spread across the entire year (including time the vehicle isn't even being used?!)

OTOH, if it means that the vehicle is liable to have a 25-second "blackout" in the middle of your morning commute roughly once a month, it seems very different.

Re: Driverless cars are stuck in a jam

#160

Post by maxerickson »

nytesky wrote: post #154
simion314 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those numbers are useless for concluding anything about what would happen if you remove the human completely, there are videos that show how the human intervened and saved the car from certain crash and I this situation should be counted as "Deaths" for the AI only column. Driving assistants would improve safety certainly, but removing the driver and letting the assistant drive will need real world like tests, for no…

Actually I’m not convinced assistants will improve safety. Level 4 for example could be a blood bath, where cars drive all the easy situations, and hand over emergency control to out of practice drivers barely paying attention at a moments notice. I believe our driving skills were better when we had manual transmission, and were more involved in overall operation. Hard to determine if safer, b/c of advances in crumpl…

The sudden control swap you describe is level 3.

Level 4 requires that the vehicle safely stop in situations it can't handle.

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