171–180 of 371 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Coming from a bio background, I’ve always been confused why auto fatality stats are normalized per miles driven. Epidemiological metrics like incidence or prevalence seem like they would work fine? Town A would be “safer” than town B if people’s commutes are 20% shorter, even if accidents occur w same frequency
What are some other better ways to normalize?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is the wild part. No! You don't drive again! She's not going to drive again. > For her to have recognised her own limitations before they took lives. This is something that humans suck at. > Failing at that, her family–or literally anyone who cared about her, and didn't want to see her spend her last years in jail–having taken initiative. You shouldn't punish her for other people failing to take action.
> She's not going to drive again She gets her license back. That's wild. > This is something that humans suck at Not usually with fatal consequences. These were preventable deaths. Not only that, the driver was being incredibly reckless, apparently driving 70 mph in a residential area. > You shouldn't punish her for other people failing to take action You're punishing her for being criminally reckless. You're creatin…
I don't defend that woman at all and as someone who walked by that intersection on the day of the incident, 70 mph seems physically impossible there for a reasonable driver.
But it was not a totally residential area, it was a major transit hub of that part of town, where light rail and bus lines meet, a verrry short block away from lots of retail and restaurants.. That actually is an argument to go slower than in a purely residential area, because it's actually a congested area.
Are they trying to drive safety or revenue? The second order effect people forget about is tickets are a source of revenue for cities and police depts. Surely driverless car companies will absorb a few tickets and fix the issue quickly. So I do wonder what happens in the future when roads and cars are all automated and city funding from this channel dries up.
What I worry more about is a future where private car ownership seems impractical when there is a large fleet of autonomous Ubers out there to handle the day-to-days, which start out cheap. Once society reaches a point of dependence, will there be enough competition to keep the price down, or will we see consumers of the services get squeezed as companies ratchet up prices to increase margins.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't forget to add rail incidents to that metric. I live in Spain, this year we had 4 derailments for a total of 48 deaths and 195 injured. The USA has had 0 passengers killed or injured from train accidents this year. Portugal had 15 death after a tram derailment. In Amsterdam, the tram is more dangerous than the car. Also Germany is very high (for European standards) because of the Autobahn. They can save around 1…
There is a reason for that “per billion miles range”.
How do the police pull over a driverless vehicle? Who hands over the license and registration? How do you get it to sign the ticket?
Bike Lanes have turned out to be an interesting edge case. Waymos are currently dropping off and picking up passengers in a bike lane which is not legal (because it is dangerous) however many ride share drivers also do this. As somebody who is commonly a biker / pedestrian I am excited that AVs will likely make many things safer for that class of user. That being said, I do worry about how we encode these "social und…
I would imagine they would be able to revert back to more strict rule following once autonomous vehicles reach some level of critical mass and human drivers are needing to adapt to the AV traffic, rather than AVs needing to adapt to human traffic.
I am, in general, hoping AV will reduce road deaths in the future. The last hurdle is regulatory. We can’t let AV manufacturers use “there’s no driver” as a way to escape responsibility, externalizing the harms AC cause onto society. The question is how to achieve fairness. If a human driver commits vehicular manslaughter, they get the book. What about AV? $10 million? Executives go to jail? What if $10 million fine…
How’d you arrive at this conclusion? Why would fleet providers accept regrettable losses? Wouldn’t the last hurdle be technical?
> The question is how to achieve fairness
What does that have to do with automotive safety?
I am, in general, hoping AV will reduce road deaths in the future. The last hurdle is regulatory. We can’t let AV manufacturers use “there’s no driver” as a way to escape responsibility, externalizing the harms AC cause onto society. The question is how to achieve fairness. If a human driver commits vehicular manslaughter, they get the book. What about AV? $10 million? Executives go to jail? What if $10 million fine…
Another simple and effective measure would be changing fines from absolute values to a percentage of income. Right now, parking in a bike lane usually doesn’t kill anyone so drivers are only thinking there’s a small chance of a small fine, but if it was a chance of, say, 0.1% of annual income Waymo technology would magically be capable of not doing that. Add a right of private action and enforcement would be high enough to really speed things along, too, and that’d improve safety and travel times for all road users.
1. https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/01/18/why-car-i...
Are they trying to drive safety or revenue? The second order effect people forget about is tickets are a source of revenue for cities and police depts. Surely driverless car companies will absorb a few tickets and fix the issue quickly. So I do wonder what happens in the future when roads and cars are all automated and city funding from this channel dries up.
Probably higher city/state taxes. A police officer making over $200k a year with a pension isn’t making most of their salary from traffic tickets.
Not saying it's right. Just saying that's how local politics work.