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Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

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211–220 of 721 posts

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#211

Fatality data is extremely skewed. 44% of drivers aren't using a seatbelt, 29% are speeding related, I recall alcohol involvement being about 30%, though it's not listed in the link I checked. About 20% of automobile fatalities aren't in cars but are pedestrians or bicyclists struck by cars (add another 16% if you want to include motorcyclists, though only half of which involve another vehicle). I recall the percenta…

Does that skew really matter? Nearly all of those conditions are avoided by autonomous vehicles.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagreed with you and went looking in the article for evidence (yeah bad, epistemologically). I actually found evidence for your point. The largest cause of fatal crashes is Generally distracted or "lost in thought" (daydreaming) at 64%. That happens to most people,.

The human brain was not designed for a task which requires hours of siting down doing mostly nothing while being hyperfocused the entire time ready to take over in an instant on the rare occasion something happens. While running or cycling your brain is actively engaged keeping yourself upright and avoiding obstacles which keeps you alert.

Seems at least somewhat comparable to walking through a forest full of predators, while, say, hunting/gathering.

Evidence that is is compatible with our psyche is the fact that we're at 1.19 fatalities per 100 million miles driven, and ~50% of those being booze and/or speeding.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rental scooters/bikes cover last mile service very well in my experience. I use transit a great deal more than I would if I had to walk so much on either end of the trip.

Let me guess… you live somewhere warm and mostly dry? Probably on the younger side and don’t have any kids.

The famously warm and dry countries of Norway[1] and Finland[2]!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCedclz03uI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Automatic braking alone is a huge deal: if you're a bit late in braking, you get a warning. If you go past that, brakes auto apply. When configured correctly, I don't even notice it's there 99.9% of the time...and the times I do I'm glad it's there, because the beep pulls you out of a momentary distraction. The only problem is not every car on the road has it yet.

>Automatic braking alone is a huge deal Except I had to turn it off for my Ford E-Transit, because it will freak out at nothing. Sometimes it screams at me for cars that aren't even in my lane that suddenly slowed. Sometimes it misjudges a ripple in the crappy asphalt here as an obstacle I'm going to hit. There is a high chance its going to brake for no reason at all and cause an accident. I left the warning system o…

I wonder if there will be some extra liability if the driver kills someone and the logs show automatic braking would have engaged. Something similar happened near me where a lamborghini driver disabled traction control, spun out and killed a girl on the way to school. They had to add new laws increasing the liability if you disabled TC.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rental scooters/bikes cover last mile service very well in my experience. I use transit a great deal more than I would if I had to walk so much on either end of the trip.

>Rental scooters/bikes cover last mile service very well in my experience. Not so great for family trips, shopping around, etc.

Those (rare) occasions are when you rent a car. You can do it many times per year before it becomes a financially worse option.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've only had a couple weeks in rentals with automatic emergency braking, and was very nearly been rear-ended twice due to false positives. Anecdotal, and I'm sure they'll improve with time, but I would never allow the system I experienced anywhere near a car I owned. It was profoundly unsafe.

>was very nearly been rear-ended twice due to false positives To be fair, if the cars behind you had automatic emergency braking you would be at much lower risk of getting rear-ended when there's a false positive.

Pretty much, they would have been getting chimes about being too close to start with.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The majority of drivers are good, but some drivers are really bad." I take issue with this. The majority of drivers are "mostly fine as long as circumstances are favorable", not "good". People for the most part do not even know about the concept of defensive driving let alone practice it. Even the best people are fundamentally complacent in basically everything they do. They zone out sometimes, they get too close,…

I disagreed with you and went looking in the article for evidence (yeah bad, epistemologically). I actually found evidence for your point. The largest cause of fatal crashes is Generally distracted or "lost in thought" (daydreaming) at 64%. That happens to most people,.

How many of those 64% had their accident because of phones/drugs/recklessness and claimed to be distracted instead? With all the liability and shame involved in fatal crashes there's absolutely no way people are going to honestly self report illegal behavior.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagreed with you and went looking in the article for evidence (yeah bad, epistemologically). I actually found evidence for your point. The largest cause of fatal crashes is Generally distracted or "lost in thought" (daydreaming) at 64%. That happens to most people,.

The human brain was not designed for a task which requires hours of siting down doing mostly nothing while being hyperfocused the entire time ready to take over in an instant on the rare occasion something happens. While running or cycling your brain is actively engaged keeping yourself upright and avoiding obstacles which keeps you alert.

That's true. Humans are bad at this task. On the railways they have a problem with this too, "Lookout" seems like a ludicrously easy job, but it's basically impossible because you must pay attention to an incredibly boring thing for hours or your friends might die. Getting rid of human lookouts should be a priority but it feels easy and so it's hard to motivate this.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#220

It'd be really nice to have bolt-on after-market automation. I'm not sure if the car companies will want to accommodate this, but I'd really love to make my old Honda self-driving. I remember a company called Ghost Locomation that was working on this.

OpenPilot and comma.ai are very close to a bolt-on after-market solution; not FSD 14 quality but you can get a lot of autonomy and intelligence with a $1000 Android device and thirty minutes for installation.
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