Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

spectrum.ieee.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

611–620 of 738 posts

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#611

Post by kakwa_ »

alexpotato wrote: post #105

The most likely scenario at this point it: - autonomous cars cause fewer accidents - so either insurance will be cheaper for them - AND/OR human driving car insurance goes up - even if only one happens, the relative cost of insurance will change in favor of autonomous - driving your own car becomes a kind of "prestige" thing where only really wealthy people do it (similar to owning your own plane etc)

That's assuming people are rational with their money.

Cars already are extremely wasteful assets in terms of resource, space and money if you live in a decently served urban area. It already irrational to have one 90% of the times.

An indirect and somewhat hidden cost like insurance is unlikely to move the needle anywhere near significantly.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#612

Post by ArnoVW »

wahern wrote: post #558
ArnoVW wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Criminal liability aside, if I am in a wheelchair all my life, requiring expensive medical care, someone will need to pay for that. So civil liability will need to be sonewhere.

The manufacturer would still be liable, same as if the brakes malfunctioned.

Is that not precisely the point of the current discussion? Currently, the manufacturer is not liable. The liability can not be delegated by the driver.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#613

Post by belorn »

timster6442 wrote: post #528
jonas21 wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Waymo says it has 170 million miles and I found 2 fatal accidents it was involved in (fault doesn't matter as fault is not included in the other stat either) I suppose you can claim fault doesn't matter. But if you read the narratives of both fatal incidents, they are so clearly not the Waymo's fault that I don't see how you can hold it against them. In the first [1], the Waymo was stopped at a red light when the c…

I agree that these cases are ridiculous to blame on the waymo entirely, but to give logic to their reasoning here you're unsure if on average the 1.3 fatalities per 100 million miles (FPMM) may also be on average ridiculously not the drivers fault as well. Perhaps if you were to throw out all ridiculous cases you'd have an average of CDL's having a 0.3 FPMM vs Waymo's having 0 FPMM. The nuance you describe at the end…

If we want to get closer to the "real" number, we would also need to account for mechanic failures of the car, wildlife, and suicide. We don't usually attribute people jumping in front of trains as the fault of the person driving the train. Fatalities per mile driven may very well be biased in favor of waymo that has nothing to do with safety of drivers, which in turn create uncertainty when trying to estimate the statistical result of making all cars Autonomous. For example, car owners can have a higher variance in maintenance than waymo, they can use the car in areas with more wildlife than city traffic, and they can commit suicide through other means than personal being behind the wheel (suicide statistics is itself quite complicated).

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#614

Post by andy12_ »

dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #603
himinlomax wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 2h train ride is not a problem, but what is is the trip to and from the stations. A 2h autonomous car ride removes that entirely.

In most places where train travel is an option, you'll probably be a 10-15 min walk from a station, or a 5 minute cycle, or a short connecting trip on a bus or tram. Multi-modal trips and short walks are normal in a lot of places - I know this isn't the case in America because of how American owned mapping apps like Google Maps go out of their way to hide routes with more than a 5 minute walk involved.

Meanwhile, my job commute is a 30 minute walk to the train station or... a 30 minute bus trip to the station (yeah, taking a bus literally saves no time at all). Plus a 50 minute train ride plus another 30 minute walk.

Honestly, I would 100% use a car for this if it weren't for the fact that doing so is literally 10 times more expensive. I'm sure this is the case for the vast majority of people that use public transport. And I just can't wait for a world of cheap electric autonomous cars where I don't need to waste my time and I can sleep comfortably on my commute.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#615

Post by 21asdffdsa12 »

timster6442 wrote: post #528
jonas21 wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Waymo says it has 170 million miles and I found 2 fatal accidents it was involved in (fault doesn't matter as fault is not included in the other stat either) I suppose you can claim fault doesn't matter. But if you read the narratives of both fatal incidents, they are so clearly not the Waymo's fault that I don't see how you can hold it against them. In the first [1], the Waymo was stopped at a red light when the c…

I agree that these cases are ridiculous to blame on the waymo entirely, but to give logic to their reasoning here you're unsure if on average the 1.3 fatalities per 100 million miles (FPMM) may also be on average ridiculously not the drivers fault as well. Perhaps if you were to throw out all ridiculous cases you'd have an average of CDL's having a 0.3 FPMM vs Waymo's having 0 FPMM. The nuance you describe at the end…

It also gets better depending on the medical services nearby and there competence. So having more competent medical services in cities, lowers murder statistics and car-fatalities. Thus the actual accident rate would only be visible in the countryside.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#616

Post by tsimionescu »

redox99 wrote: post #350
tsimionescu wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that good public transport makes cars unnecessary for the vast majority of everyday life in an urban setting. And, in particular, it means that taking away someone's license, even for a long period of time, doesn't have to be as crippling as it is in cities that don't have good infrastructure - hopefully leading to society being way more willing to apply drastic driving penalties to repeat offenders.

Unnecessary is a very strong word. It's also unnecessary to have your own private house, sharing it with other people would be more efficient.

The point is this: if you live in a city with bad/no public transport, then a car is necessary for going about everyday life. If you live in a city with good public transport, it's really not.

Given the fact that car infrastructure competes for resources with public transport infrastructure, and is vastly more expensive per person-km, and vastly more dangerous as well, prioritizing efficient use of public resources trumps personal comfort when looking at this. The same can't be said for housing, so the comparison is not relevant. Plus, there are very objective reasons for which privacy is an absolute requirement at home (mostly to do with vulnerability and sexual behaviors), which also don't apply to cars; especially since the kind of privacy you get in your own car is actually quite limited anyway - it would be both illegal and quite unsafe to drive around naked, at least in a bad neighborhood, for example.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#617

Post by oblio »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #575
koyote wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So at 2am you would have thousands of cars driving around empty? Or would you still need a giant spot of land to park these things outside of peak hour?

The giant spot of land could be in a much less convenient (= valuable) location if the car can take itself to and from there.

No. That's false. Riders will want a car to be at their location ASAP, or they will try to call another company.

So the incentive will be to put/drive cars very close to where people are.

That whole "cars will be stored at the periphery" is propaganda.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#618

Post by oblio »

dfabulich wrote: post #505
cbondurant wrote: post #125

I'd much rather all of the resources that are going into autonomous cars was instead going into proper public transit infrastructure. Cars are so hopelessly space and energy inefficient, and I hate driving them. If I could get around by bus, light rail, bike, and all of the wasted city space devoted to parking could be turned into more housing and amenities, that would be great. I think it would be meaningful to also…

Small self-driving busses would do exactly what you want. The cost of increasing bus service is overwhelmingly the cost of bus drivers. If the busses could drive themselves, cities could afford to deploy a lot more busses, especially smaller busses, running much more often. As for light rail, in the US, light rail projects can typically cost hundreds of millions of dollars per mile. The NYC 2nd Avenue subway expansio…

> And, if you want people to stop wasting city space on parking, self-driving taxis are exactly the right solution.

Self driving taxis have to be parked (or cruise around continuously), I guess, and that parking better be close cause ain't no one waiting for a self driving car parked 30 minutes away to get moving.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#619

Post by oblio »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #239
cbondurant wrote: post #125

I'd much rather all of the resources that are going into autonomous cars was instead going into proper public transit infrastructure. Cars are so hopelessly space and energy inefficient, and I hate driving them. If I could get around by bus, light rail, bike, and all of the wasted city space devoted to parking could be turned into more housing and amenities, that would be great. I think it would be meaningful to also…

>all of the resources that are going into autonomous cars was instead going into proper public transit infrastructure. They need not be separated. This is the entire point of the Cybercab and the Cybervan: Get self-driving cars, vans, etc. with the one job of moving people around. They only park to recharge or repair.

Demand is based on time of day/week/month/year.

Where do all those cars needed during peak demand go? They're going to be parked somewhere and it's not going to be in the middle of nowhere, because that's an awful customer experience.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#620

Post by toasty228 »

nonethewiser wrote: post #482
toasty228 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in a 200 inhabitants village in eastern Europe, we have 3 bus stops in the village (so at most you're 10min away from a stop), the bus goes to the closest city every hour from 4:30 to 22:30 except on Sunday (every two hours from 6 to 21), from there you can take a train to every major city in the country, my neighbor is a 76 year old widow who goes to the city by bus regularly and who bikes around a lot. Half of…

>we bought the propaganda of freedom &Co and now we're all collectively stuck in this dumb system in which every household need to own two 2500kg hunks of steel and plastic to transport 70kg of meat 1% of the time and use public space the other 99% Didn't you just say you can get around fine on the bus? Can't you just get a car if it suits you? For me personally it's nice to have a car. It would certainly be tough if…

Many things are "nice", a lot of these things aren't compatible with long term sustainable living on earth though
Post reply on HN