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Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

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Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#721

Post by BugsJustFindMe »

Retric wrote: post #523
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot measure driver goodness (skill and vigilance) by looking at crash statistics, because crashes are definitively circumstantial. Most very clearly bad/dangerous/unskilled/unvigilant operations of automobiles do not lead to crashes.

Population level statistics let you look for statistical aberrations that you can’t detect at the individual level. Further suppose you define “good driving” as a set of behaviors but failed to include narcolepsy or similar medical conditions in your definition, then some of your “good” drivers would represent a significant risk to the general public. Thus the actual criteria the defines good driver behavior is accid…

Why would I fail to include driving with untreated narcolepsy in my definition?

> as a set of behaviors

I think you're thinking about "set" and "behaviors" incorrectly here. The definition wouldn't need to state "and doesn't fall asleep", because abstractions like "being attentive" and "anticipating things that might go wrong" already cover that.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#722

Post by jgerrish »

snackbroken wrote: post #320
EA-3167 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The famously small conurbations and the reality that Finns and Norwegians only are able to bike part of the year . They have cars and public transit for the rest. I'd add that these discussions tend to handwave the reality of safety when you're on an open platform movie at high speeds, the reality that not all people are physically able, and a lot of others issues that the vocal "cars are the devil" folks don't engag…

> Finns and Norwegians only are able to bike part of the year. They very much bike all year round, even in the north where it regularly gets to -20C(-4F) in winter. Biking in snowy sub-freezing weather is really not a big deal as long as you maintain the bike paths as well as the streets. Source: have lived there, everyone I knew had a bike they regularly used. The only time I can recall where people I knew who usual…

> Source: have lived there, everyone I knew had a bike they regularly used.

I don't live in Finway or Norway. It would be nice to be in a country that accepted a more pescetarian / fish-based diet. It might help with the able-bodied reasoning given elsewhere for car driving.

But I live in the US. Here in the US, the loudest advocates we have for biking are groups like Critical Mass. Up in Chicago they have a winter biking campaign. But we know how Critical Mass is perceived by people on the fence about more biking investment. It's a radical group. So discussion digresses into sidewalk safety issues and identity politics. And yes, sidewalk safety impacts people, falls are dangerous for many populations. But all that media bandwidth means simple messages of celebrating biking and transit get lost. There's only limited time on the news.

This isn't an isolated issue. I honestly think that's by design. At this point, in 2026, it's not an accident.

So you have people like me, jobless pervert civil libertarian hipster techbros being the group advocating for more biking. What do you think is going to happen US?

Waymo will be the same thing.

It will be turned into a drama show about saving people feom drunk driving accidents, a very good thing. But then there will be pushback about it encouraging more drinking among the population and increasing rates of domestic abuse. A very horrible and tragic thing.

And some of us will be going to a food pantry wondering why it can't be a more bike oriented endeavor and knowing the truth in our hearts. The US wants drama, even after Trump is gone. And that drama takes focus from just rolling out programs to encourage love of public transit and biking. Media saturation matters. And I don't believe anymore.

So, I'm sorry, Chicago or up north doesn't seem like a great choice personally. It's not healthy for me to dream about up families up there. I'll be biking out west.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#724

Post by infecto »

jokteur wrote: post #700
infecto wrote: post #691

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did a poor job with my example. My point is that your example is just a cherry picked anecdote from an extremely small country that has the luxury of a handful of dense cities and a large number of smaller towns that sit on the couple of major roads arteries. I think you don’t have enough exposure. Yes yes road design great. Bike lanes great. Higher density great. It still does not solve the problem in American. My…

I am aware that the country is extremly small. Here is the thing: the DFW metro area (from Wikipedia) has > 8.3M residents, Switzerland has 9.1M residents. The DFW metro density sits at 339.9/km2 (I took the conurbation number which has a lower number), and Switzerland sits at 207/km2. So, in your example, Switzerland has less density than the metro area you mentionned, and yet it has much better public transit. Half…

These become such silly arguments. Why are you arguing against autonomous vehicles in America? Your examples on a base general case are not applicable and while I agree there are areas where things can be improved, for most American cities it does not make sense. Most all European examples including Switzerland are not applicable. Yes yes you have 5k population towns but they are all connected to very few arteries and in probably most cases it’s a single major road and commuter rail. Your summers are much more mild and winters (in the plains) around slightly warmer at the extremes. Doesn’t something like 60% of the Swiss population live in flats? You live in a small town probably in a flat and you take a train a few miles away to another larger city that is also relatively small and compact and you have much nicer weather if you walk around. These are such silly comparisons. What works in your geography because it’s small, highly concentrated in apartments, lack of sprawl, usually only one major road, more mild weather, makes it a lot easier to solve.

Let’s say you have redesigned a road in DFW, the question is so what? What does that accomplish? There are definitely pockets of improvement to be had but largely nobody is commuting via bicycle in DFW unless you have an extremely short commute. Those few miles of road won’t help a bus and again highlighting it’s a distribution last/first mile problem. The Swiss and most of Europe just by historical design, lower growth and cultural differences don’t have to solve for last and first mile (keep in mind a last mile could easily be 5 miles). There is no solution at scale short of rebuilding and designing an entire city. Autonomous vehicles are a nice solution here. They may support first and last mile allowing cities to implement concentrated transit options but they will also just get some number of cars off the road and create safer and better traffic.

I am happy Switzerland has a natural fit for commuter rail. It’s simply not happening in most of America so we should not let perfect be the enemy of good enough.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#725

Post by lo_zamoyski »

robner wrote: post #360
socalgal2 wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my circle, everyone who's tried Waymo never wants to use Uber/Lyft with a human driver again. And, many of them wish they could own one or at least use one for much longer drives (100s of miles). I would visit my mom (2hrs by car) more often if that 2hrs (each way) wasn't so stressful and exhausting and I could just be chauffeured by a self driving car while I browse the net, play a game, watch a movie, or talk to…

In the Netherlands were I live we use trains for this

The American situation is a real quagmire.

The American auto lobby has spent nearly a century manipulating Americans and American culture by insinuating car ownership and transportation into what it means to be "American". The automobile is a symbol of freedom and independence and plays into the myth of rugged American individualism ("I can drive whenever I want, wherever I want") and masculinity ("I am a real man, because I am independent and because ownership demonstrates I have means"). Certainly, cars do afford a certain practical freedom and comfort for certain use cases—in part because public infrastructure and transport can be hostile to normal human activities instead of supporting them—but in the American mind, these aren't just weighed against a backdrop of practical concerns and superior goods. The car has a quasi-religious quality for many Americans. Getting your license and owning your first car is a practically institutionalized rite of passage into adulthood.

Gov't policy—some gladly endorsed by the auto lobby—also played a role. Zoning (like Euclidean zoning) and urban planning (or lack thereof), coupled with a lack of surviving and robust public transportation infrastructure (like public passenger rail), forced and continues to force Americans into car ownership even if they would prefer other means. The rise of postwar suburb, sprawl, and the death of walkable towns and cities has entrenched the need for car ownership. And we shouldn't forget the financial incentives. Mortgages underwritten by the FHA and VA rewarded sprawl with mortgages while penalizing denser development. Taxpayer revenue also funded roads while regulations capped what privately-owned "public" transportation could charge riders, forcing them into bankruptcy and opening transport up to the predation of companies like GM who snapped up their assets and ripped out rail in favor of their own buses.

However, we're seeing some pushback in Gen Z. American cities and certainly towns are no longer the polluted industrial centers they used to be. We also don't have the post-WWII pressure to divert wartime industry toward other ends to maintain employment, or Cold War fears of having too many people concentrated in large, easy-to-nuke urban centers.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#726

Post by oersted »

My_Name wrote: post #508

I have said for a while now that self driving cars do not need to be perfect. They will have accidents, of a different type than humans have, and sometimes they will be ones that most humans would avoid. What they do need to be is better than humans overall, and then it would make sense for them to be allowed onto the road. When they get far safer than humans, phasing out of human driving will make sense. They reache…

Yes but in practice the pushback is more about the shift on who is held responsible and who has the control to prevent a crash.

People understandably prefer to keep control of their own safety, even if on average they are worse at it. Because individuals that do care about safety can actually do many things to lower the risks well below the statistics, and likely remain much better than self-driving.

There’s also the question of responsibility and liability. In society we have such pressures so that there’s an incentive to continually reduce risks. It is dangerous to shift the responsibility to fast-growth tech companies that will care much less about individual accidents than the drivers involved, and are more capable of absorbing liability without substantive remediation.

Safety is outsourced in many contexts (aviation, police, military…), but it has to be substantially better than what the individual can achieve on their own. For instance, due to the expertise required, or because you can achieve more through coordinated collective action. And there has to be very high trust in the companies involved, the regulatory systems around them, and the technologies employed.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#727

Post by LanceH »

bdauvergne wrote: post #605
pfdietz wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope the cops showed up at his house and confiscated his vehicle. One advantage of existence of self-driving cars is the state can permanently revoke someone's ability to own or operate manually driven motor vehicles, without the argument this is ruining their lives.

Is is a receivable argument in a US court ? Or does it just influence a jury ?

There will always be some threshold at which this argument can be made.

Driving 200 in a school zone? License revoked, certainly.

Driving 60 in a 55? Just a speeding ticket.

Pick some line in between the two where that argument seems like it could go either way.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#728

Post by IslandRebel »

ifwinterco wrote: post #591
Gareth321 wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been following Tesla communities and a common response to using FSD is that it makes people nicer drivers. Thousands of people admitting that they can be angry drivers. That they get frustrated in traffic and can take risks or be aggressive on the road. With FSD they almost universally claim to be calmer, care less about being cut off, and almost never experience road rage.

Best way to improve the behaviour of other drivers (at least in the UK): drive a van, ideally an unmarked one with a couple of dents already. Miraculously everyone else suddenly learns how to drive and doesn't try anything stupid

Drive an Old Defender nobody will mess with you in one of those.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#730

Post by tim333 »

diydsp wrote: post #666
ArnoVW wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That second accident looks like it could be one on those typical cases of SDC causing accidents by behaving unexpectedly (like braking for a pedestrian where human drivers would have denied right of way) I havent read the doc and I am not arguing either way, just saying that you can cause an accident in other ways than by ploughing into someone.

100%. This is exactly the type of nuance that the comparison fails on. Plus we have limited info here. Yes ofc we must yield to pedestrians. And we also make nuanced decisions. "There's a motorcycle moving too fast behind me. There's a pedestrian in front of me." If the pedestrian would be killed or struck by the vehicle, then yes you need to stop and/or steer away. But if it's about merely inconveniencing the pedest…

Perhaps but if the motorcycle crashes into the back of a car because it slows down normally then it's the motorcyclists fault really.

We have highway rules for a reason, to make things safe and orderly.

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