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Injured person reportedly dies after Cruise cars block first responders (www.sfgate.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (84 children)

Statistically they're still less prone to accidents than human drivers.

I never quite undestood why so many people seem to be against autonomous vehicles. Especially on Lemmy. It's unreasonable to demand perfection before any of these is used on the public roads. In my view the bar to reach is human level driving and after that it seems quite obvious that from safety's point of view it's the better choice.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (9 children)

This is just such a bad take, and it's so disappointing to see it parroted all over the web. So many things are just completely inaccurate about these "statistics", and it's probably why it "seems" so many are against autonomous vehicles.

These are self-reported statistics coming from the very company(s) that have extremely vested interests in making themselves look good.
These statistics are for vehicles that are currently being used in an extremely small (and geo-fenced) location(s) picked for their ability to be the easiest to navigate while being able to say "hey we totally work in a big city with lots of people".

These cars don't even go onto highways or areas where accidents are more likely.
These cars drive so defensively they literally shut down so as to avoid causing any accidents (hey, who cares if we block traffic and cause jams because we get to juice our numbers).

They always use total human driven miles which are a complete oranges to apples comparison: Their miles aren't being driven

In bad weather
On dangerous, windy, old, unpaved, or otherwise poor road conditions
In rural areas where there are deer/etc that wander into the road and cause accidents

They also don't adjust or take any median numbers as I'm not interested in them driving better than the "average" driver when that includes DUIs, crashes caused by neglect or improper maintenance, reckless drivers, elderly drivers, or the fast and furious types crashing their vehicle on some hill climb driving course.
And that's all just off the top of my head.

So no, I would absolutely not say they are "less prone to accidents than human drivers". And that's just the statistics, to say nothing about the legality that will come up. Especially given just how adverse companies seem to be to admit fault for anything.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Well hey - atleast I provided some statistics to back me up. That's not the case with the people refuting those stats.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I honestly can't tell if that's a passive-aggressive swipe at me or not; but just in case it was: stats mean very little w/o context. I believe the quote was "Lies, damned lies, and statistics". I simply pointed out a few errors with the foundation of these "statistics". I didn't need to quote my own statistics because, as I was pointing out, this is a completely apples to oranges comparison. The AV companies want at the same time to preach about how many miles they go w/o accident while comparing themselves to an average they know doesn't match their own circumstances. Basically they are taking their best case scenario and comparing it against average/worst case scenario stats.

I'd give more weight to the stats if they where completely transparent, worked with a neutral 3rd party, and gave them access to all their video/data/etc to generate (at the very least) proper stats relative to their environment. Sure, I'll way easier believe waymo/cruises' numbers over those by tesla; but I still take it with a grain of salt. Because again, they have a HUGE incentive to tweak their numbers to put themselves in the very best light.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

No, I see your point, and I agree. These companies are almost guaranteed to cherry-pick those stats, so only a fool would take that as hard evidence. However, I don't think these stats flat-out lie either. If they show a self-driving car is three times less prone to accidents, I doubt the truth is that humans, in fact, are twice as good. I believe it's safe to assume that these stats at least point us in the right direction, and that seems to correlate with the little personal experience I have as well. If these systems really sucked as much as the most hardcore AV-skeptics make it seem, I doubt we'd be seeing any of these in use on public roads because the issues would be apparent.

However, the point I'm trying to highlight here is that I make a claim about AV-safety, and I then provide some stats to back me up. People then come telling me that's nonsense and list a bunch of personal reasons why they feel so but provide nothing concrete evidence except maybe links to articles about individual accidents. That's just not the kind of data that's going to change my mind.

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