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One dead and nine wounded after accident with self-driving car

spiegel.de

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Re: One dead and nine wounded after accident with self-driving car

#71

Post by ethanbond »

yunohn wrote: post #54
ethanbond wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably for the exact reason that your comment substantiates: we have little to no reason at all to suspect the car flopped.

That still doesn’t mean the company needs to be censored? The media doesn’t answer to BMW shareholders.

My understanding is that in most of the civilized world (not in the US), the norm for media is not to report defaming information before its veracity has been established.

It’s a good thing when media shows some restraint not to make unsubstantiated claims that are impossible to fully retract in the public consciousness.

Note: This doesn’t mean media shouldn’t report on anything short of a conviction, but it probably shouldn’t report in a defaming way on something that may not even be reportable news at all (i.e. an ordinary fatal car crash)

Re: One dead and nine wounded after accident with self-driving car

#72

Post by yunohn »

ethanbond wrote: post #71
yunohn wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That still doesn’t mean the company needs to be censored? The media doesn’t answer to BMW shareholders.

My understanding is that in most of the civilized world (not in the US), the norm for media is not to report defaming information before its veracity has been established. It’s a good thing when media shows some restraint not to make unsubstantiated claims that are impossible to fully retract in the public consciousness. Note: This doesn’t mean media shouldn’t report on anything short of a conviction, but it probably…

I’m sorry, but you’re blowing this out of proportion.

Wanting the media to include the brand of the car involved in the crash (totally normal thing to do), is not equivalent to avoiding names of murder suspects. The brand is a fact, regardless of whether the self driving nature caused the crash.

Re: One dead and nine wounded after accident with self-driving car

#73

Post by pwinnski »

j7ake wrote: post #33
efitz wrote: post #19

Serious question: will we demand perfection from autonomous cars before we allow them out of “test” status? How many autonomous miles without an accident will be sufficient to prove safety? I am not diminishing this tragedy; I can only imagine the grief of the families involved and my heart goes out to them. I am also NOT making the “have to break a few eggs to make an omelette“ argument; clearly something went wrong…

“Autonomous miles without accident” is not the only metric. What matters is also how the algorithm fails. To give an example. If you have autonomous miles without accident that is two times better than humans, but every accident tends to involve dark-skinned children and women, then the algorithm can have better statistical numbers in safety but still be rejected by humans. Safety is a high dimensional problem that c…

Testing shows that Teslas specifically have trouble identifying young (short) children as people to be avoided[0]. To your point, if Tesla were able to provide in the future that they actually do result in fewer deaths, but that the deaths which remain were heavily concentrated in young children, I think people would have a serious problem with that, regardless of whether the overall count of children dying was higher or lower. It's irrational, but that's how humans are.

0. https://dawnproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/The_Dawn_...

Re: One dead and nine wounded after accident with self-driving car

#74

Post by pwinnski »

stavros wrote: post #67
pclmulqdq wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On highways, the number of human injuries is a lot lower than you think. Most accidents are on surface streets, which is not where most "self-driving" features are purported to be usable.

> On highways, the number of human injuries is a lot lower than you think. Sure, but it's not zero.

In the US in 2021[0], 5658 people died on rural and urban interstates combined. This was 13.2% of all roadway deaths.

0. https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...

Re: One dead and nine wounded after accident with self-driving car

#75

Post by tomjen3 »

Kaze404 wrote: post #61
efitz wrote: post #19

Serious question: will we demand perfection from autonomous cars before we allow them out of “test” status? How many autonomous miles without an accident will be sufficient to prove safety? I am not diminishing this tragedy; I can only imagine the grief of the families involved and my heart goes out to them. I am also NOT making the “have to break a few eggs to make an omelette“ argument; clearly something went wrong…

The reason why I'm against self driving cars is simply the fact that they're cars at all. I sincerely have no idea why we are collectively spending so much time and resources to avoid the solution we've had for years: public transportation. I would much rather live in a world where I have to deal with the minor inconvenience that is waiting 20 minutes for a train to arrive but get to my destination cheaply and easily…

If you cannot understand the position of your opponent, what hope do you have of a productive debate where we end up with a better outcome?

Re: One dead and nine wounded after accident with self-driving car

#76

Post by tomjen3 »

efitz wrote: post #19

Serious question: will we demand perfection from autonomous cars before we allow them out of “test” status? How many autonomous miles without an accident will be sufficient to prove safety? I am not diminishing this tragedy; I can only imagine the grief of the families involved and my heart goes out to them. I am also NOT making the “have to break a few eggs to make an omelette“ argument; clearly something went wrong…

As a minimum it must not switch lanes, because this is where the dangerous accidents happen, and you cannot fix this as the other driver.

Re: One dead and nine wounded after accident with self-driving car

#78

Post by sokoloff »

j7ake wrote: post #40
spywaregorilla wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if there's fewer deaths overall, including among black kids, but all the deaths are black kids that's not ok? I get your larger point but this one seems like a really poorly reasoned example.

It would depend on the details. If black kids are dying because the car accelerates in school zones and swerves directly into black kids at high speeds, you can imagine that would obviously be not okay no matter what the statistics are. My point is that a single metric like “deaths overall” is insufficient. The failure modes need to be reasonable and sympathetic to a human.

The premise of GP may have been slightly different. If a safety improvement reduces child pedestrian deaths by 100% in groups A, B, C, and D and by 50% in group E, that safety improvement should be welcomed, even though all child pedestrian deaths are now in group E (even though that group is also better off).

Re: One dead and nine wounded after accident with self-driving car

#79

Post by sokoloff »

chaoticmass wrote: post #77

I think autonomous car collisions should be handled similarly to how the FAA handles aircraft accidents.

The NTSB (not the FAA) handles the part of aircraft accident investigations that you're likely interested in. They then make recommendations to the FAA on matters of aircrew or aircraft certification or other deficiencies that were in the causal chain of the accident.

They also don't travel to the vast majority of aircraft accidents, even ones with fatalities. They do travel to jet (or airline turboprop) accidents with fatalities, but small general aviation aircraft crash fairly regularly with only a small portion of those crashes getting any meaningful investigation from the NTSB.

Re: One dead and nine wounded after accident with self-driving car

#80

Post by kuschku »

yunohn wrote: post #72
ethanbond wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that in most of the civilized world (not in the US), the norm for media is not to report defaming information before its veracity has been established. It’s a good thing when media shows some restraint not to make unsubstantiated claims that are impossible to fully retract in the public consciousness. Note: This doesn’t mean media shouldn’t report on anything short of a conviction, but it probably…

I’m sorry, but you’re blowing this out of proportion. Wanting the media to include the brand of the car involved in the crash (totally normal thing to do), is not equivalent to avoiding names of murder suspects. The brand is a fact, regardless of whether the self driving nature caused the crash.

The way facts are framed can make them dangerous nonetheless. Just because something is a fact doesn’t mean reporting it is harmless.
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