Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives • Hacker News Board

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#881

Post by tonymet » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 4:12 PM UTC

My_Name wrote: post #842

tonymet wrote: post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which people? The bottom 20th percentile? 50th? Where do you draw the line? Wherever you draw it, there is a group of 10-100 million drivers who will be less safe (to themselves and others) in an automated vehicle. There’s reason to believe that automated vehicles exceed bad drivers, and may improve , but it’s no guarantee that they will exceed very good or excellent drivers.

It is the same as speed limits. Very good or excellent drivers can drive much faster than the speed limit and be just as safe as the average driver at the speed limit, or a very poor driver going much slower than the speed limit. These things are set so that, on average, everyone is safer. If allowing self driving cars raises the safety of everyone on average, it makes sense. Personally, I would be in favour of every…

Speed limits have the ability to make everyone safer. An excellent driver, who is safe at 80, will be safer at 65.

mandating automated driving makes excellent drivers less safe. An excellent driver, who has better skills than poor drivers, and automated driving systems, will be less safe when riding in the automated car.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#882

Post by alightsoul » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 4:39 PM UTC

alightsoul wrote: post #850

kamarg wrote: post #757

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because most people feel uncomfortable being in the tiny vehicle that sits below the bumber of all the trucks and suvs that surround them. It's one of those things that doesn't work until a large percentage of other people are doing it. Very few want to put themselves in more danger for principled reasons.

And cars started getting bigger because, it was a way to legally classify them as trucks thus saving money for the manufacturer. And then everyone had to follow just to feel safe

And of course this mostly only happened and is far more noticeable in the us than elsewhere when measured in car size and people were convinced to buy the larger cars aka turned SUVs and pick up trucks by marketing. This started to happen in the 2000s

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#883

Post by kmacleod » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 5:35 PM UTC

oblio wrote: post #617

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The mass of unneeded cars will be at the periphery. The equivalent of taxi stands will have needed cars within reasonable distance.

Back in the PRT days we simply planned to store 1-2 vehicles in-station waiting for walk-ups, and if a drop-off comes in they just push out the waiting vehicles and they circle back. The efficiency remains crazy supportive of that model vs empty buses or trains.