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Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

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Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#21

Post by jazoom »

jstanley wrote: post #19
drcode wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, but it's not like it's OK to say "Well sure, so far we have a kill rate of 50x a human driver, but why don't we wait until Uber kills at least 20 people first so we can determine proper statistical significance"

Why not? Why in this case is it acceptable to make decisions on non-statistically significant data? You would exercise more rigour than that in a throwaway A/B test.

Same reason clinical trials stop early if someone dies. It might just be bad luck. Unfortunately we'll never know and that drug might never be tested again. It might have been an amazing drug.

In this case, based on how it played out, I personally wouldn't want Uber's self-driving cars near me.

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#22

Post by spiderPig »

owenversteeg wrote: post #9

Saying nothing about Google/Waymo, it appears they're allowed to continue? Their self-driving technology seems far more advanced, I think it would be unfair to punish all the players for the bad actions of a few. In particular, Uber seems to have been operating self-driving cars recklessly and in an attempt to "move fast and break things". When those things are people's lives, that's unacceptable. I'm all for interes…

Which makes me think of it would be prudent for the government or military to invest in this tech as well. Companies like Northrop Grumman while being bureaucratic nightmares, take safety pretty seriously.

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#23

Post by EpicEng »

onetimemanytime wrote: post #18
owenversteeg wrote: post #9

Saying nothing about Google/Waymo, it appears they're allowed to continue? Their self-driving technology seems far more advanced, I think it would be unfair to punish all the players for the bad actions of a few. In particular, Uber seems to have been operating self-driving cars recklessly and in an attempt to "move fast and break things". When those things are people's lives, that's unacceptable. I'm all for interes…

Or maybe Uber got unlucky and they had to be suspended. I wonder how many miles they had and every how many miles does an accident happens with human drivers.

It's been posted in related threads, bit many, many more human miles are driven per fatality. The problem is that the number of self driving car incidents is too low to reliably extrapolate out.

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#25

Post by coinjobber »

setra wrote: post #11
coinjobber wrote: post #3

Amen. Uber's fatal accident rate is now 50x that of sober human driver's. At their current rate of driving, they can't have a _lower_ rate until 2028! Inexcusable failure of their technology to prevent a human death in the most basic collision avoidance scenario.

A fatal accident at 50x the rate of a sober human driver with a study size where N = 1.

No. 3 million miles of observation. You can get a pretty exact and conservative estimate with a bayesian poisson process model. I don't have the time to run the numbers right now, but my guess is the posterior estimate that Uber's fatal accident rate is higher than a human's is >90%, even if taking the human accident rate as a starting prior.

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#26

Post by tedsanders »

setra wrote: post #11
coinjobber wrote: post #3

Amen. Uber's fatal accident rate is now 50x that of sober human driver's. At their current rate of driving, they can't have a _lower_ rate until 2028! Inexcusable failure of their technology to prevent a human death in the most basic collision avoidance scenario.

A fatal accident at 50x the rate of a sober human driver with a study size where N = 1.

It's a reasonable gut feeling to not generalize from n=1, but the numerical evidence - with either a Bayesian or frequentist approach - is actually quite strong and statistically significant. Math here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16655081

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#27

Post by stagbeetle »

adjkant wrote: post #7
stagbeetle wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is lying with statistics. To beat a dead statistician, everyone that's ever come in contact with air has died or will die.

If you're going to claim it's a lie, citing evidence and why it's flawed would probably be a good start...

Out of the 95 billion or so[0] people that have ever breathed air before the year 1900, all are dead dead.[1] Every year on average, 500 people die of carbon monoxide poisoning[2]. If that rate was steady for the amount of time humans have been alive, that's a total of 25,950,000 deaths ever from carbon monoxide poisoning.

"Carbon monoxide exposure kills 1 person every 18 hours (500/8766h).

Oxygen has killed 1944 people every 18 hours (108x18)[3].

Yes, I would absolutely replace a gas that kills 155,000 (108x60x24) people/day[3] in favor of a gas that kills 1 person/day."

This is lying with statistics. It's not the right way to use data.

[0]https://www.prb.org/howmanypeoplehaveeverlivedonearth/

[1]http://supercentenarian-research-foundation.org/TableE.aspx

[2]https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6303a6.htm

[3]https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#28

Post by tedsanders »

jstanley wrote: post #19
drcode wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, but it's not like it's OK to say "Well sure, so far we have a kill rate of 50x a human driver, but why don't we wait until Uber kills at least 20 people first so we can determine proper statistical significance"

Why not? Why in this case is it acceptable to make decisions on non-statistically significant data? You would exercise more rigour than that in a throwaway A/B test.

It is statistically significant, at a 0.03 level: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16655081

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#29

Post by cbron »

owenversteeg wrote: post #9

Saying nothing about Google/Waymo, it appears they're allowed to continue? Their self-driving technology seems far more advanced, I think it would be unfair to punish all the players for the bad actions of a few. In particular, Uber seems to have been operating self-driving cars recklessly and in an attempt to "move fast and break things". When those things are people's lives, that's unacceptable. I'm all for interes…

Yes Waymo is still active. I live in the testing zone and see an enormous amount of their vans. About 1 for every 5 minutes of driving.

Re: Arizona Government Suspends Uber's Self Driving Cars from Roads

#30

Post by jfoutz »

coinjobber wrote: post #25
setra wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fatal accident at 50x the rate of a sober human driver with a study size where N = 1.

No. 3 million miles of observation. You can get a pretty exact and conservative estimate with a bayesian poisson process model. I don't have the time to run the numbers right now, but my guess is the posterior estimate that Uber's fatal accident rate is higher than a human's is >90%, even if taking the human accident rate as a starting prior.

I thought Uber had to have a human take over every 13 miles.

It’s more like 10 miles of observation 300,000 times. Or rather an attentive human can be 50x better than average.

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