Live data from Hacker News

Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

spectrum.ieee.org

261–270 of 745 posts

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#261

It could, but maybe not if your motto is, "Move Fast and Break Things." Article is short on data instead referencing a bunch of aggregated IIHS studies.

That’s a Facebook motto but Facebook (now Meta) isn’t in AVs. I suppose that excludes Facebook of pre 2016 from participating in AVs? I think everyone is fine with that.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#262

It doesn't really matter whether autonomous cars crash less than human drivers. A computer can never be punished, so a computer must never be allowed to kill any humans.

Suppose human drivers were killing 1 person every 100 miles driven, and software was killing 1 person every 10 billion miles driven. We should just accept that the human population will be decimated each day for accountability reasons?

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#263

Better driver education and higher test standards would save lives too. So would banning alcohol. None of these solutions, including automated cars, will be mandated any time soon. It's not enough to have data, you also have to have societal buy-in. Interesting that Waymo chooses to compare accident rates with the average driver vs the rideshare drivers their cars replace. The numbers wouldn't look as impressive beca…

Does n=2 give any statistical significance? Or does that come from the miles?

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A horrifying number of people flagrantly use their phones while driving. Im not talking about peaking at a text or google maps, but straight up scrolling tik tok while driving. At the end of the day there is going to be a lowest common denominator of selfish morons on the road, and the two practical solutions I see are 1) aggressive surveillance state grade distracted driving enforcement 2) self driving cars. I used…

It doesn't have to be a surveillance state for enforcement. Just preventing repeat offenders would practically remove that lowest denominator. For example, I knew a guy in high school who totaled 4 cars and had other minor accidents in 2 years. There's no reason for that person to be allowed to operate a vehicle. On the prevention side, we could require more training. If you tried to enforce self driving cars, you'd…

> There's no reason for that person to be allowed to operate a vehicle

Doesn't much of america outside of cities also have the secondary problem of you physically cannot feed yourself, get to appointments, or do anything without operating a vehicle?

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#266

It doesn't really matter whether autonomous cars crash less than human drivers. A computer can never be punished, so a computer must never be allowed to kill any humans.

How does punishing someone make crashes better? I would rather have fewer crashes because of a system that can't be punished than more crashes with punishment.

Being able to punish someone doesn't change the fact that a crash happened and it doesn't change the fact that someone died. There is a difference between punishment and justice, there is rarely ever perfect justice in life.

The best we can do is mitigate harms as much as possible, and it seems self-driving might be the best mitigation of traffic accidents compared to human drivers.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A horrifying number of people flagrantly use their phones while driving. Im not talking about peaking at a text or google maps, but straight up scrolling tik tok while driving. At the end of the day there is going to be a lowest common denominator of selfish morons on the road, and the two practical solutions I see are 1) aggressive surveillance state grade distracted driving enforcement 2) self driving cars. I used…

It doesn't have to be a surveillance state for enforcement. Just preventing repeat offenders would practically remove that lowest denominator. For example, I knew a guy in high school who totaled 4 cars and had other minor accidents in 2 years. There's no reason for that person to be allowed to operate a vehicle. On the prevention side, we could require more training. If you tried to enforce self driving cars, you'd…

>For example, I knew a guy in high school who totaled 4 cars and had other minor accidents in 2 years.

Wait, he did all that in high school?

I heard something about "20% of drivers are responsible for most of the insurance claims" but it sounds like that one guy is jacking up the averages!

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Good news, everyone. Soon you won't be able to switch it off.

I suspect this will just lead to people pulling the ABS fuse and losing ABS and ESC along with AEB.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insurance will just be bundled with the self-driving car software. Insurance and car are separate today because driver and car are separate today. Once they're the same, there's lots of money to be saved by bundling the sale.

> Once they're the same, there's lots of money to be saved by bundling the sale. There’s a lot of money to be made . Just look at the prices for travel insurance direct from the airline versus a third party. 2-3x. It’ll be like BMW with the heated seat subscription fee.

The actual money will be made because the driverless car manufacturer is self-insuring and cutting out the insurance company. Competition among manufacturers will then pass most of those savings on to you.

Similarly, many car makers offer heated seats without a subscription fee, because of the magic of competition.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#270

Better driver education and higher test standards would save lives too. So would banning alcohol. None of these solutions, including automated cars, will be mandated any time soon. It's not enough to have data, you also have to have societal buy-in. Interesting that Waymo chooses to compare accident rates with the average driver vs the rideshare drivers their cars replace. The numbers wouldn't look as impressive beca…

National Safety Council says passenger vehicles are 0.46 per 100M miles, trains are 0.01 and busses 0.009.

https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics...

Post reply on HN