Most people think they're a better driver than average [1], and I bet if you asked 100 people with a history of drunk driving, 90 would say it was a one-time thing, deny it, or argue that it wasn't really that dangerous because they were just going around the block.
The autonomous car doesn't get drunk. It doesn't get tired. It doesn't get road rage. It isn't in a hurry, and it doesn't need to text its girlfriend while going 80 mph. Whatever its flaws will be, they will be consistent.
But sensors get dirty and the ML model that's being used gets updated to a suboptimal but later model. Or reverted to a worse model because the newer one has a bug.
I took a Cruise home late last night and it failed to take a right turn that it took successfully when it picked me up. It mistook the space for the bicycle lane to be for the car, because there was no car parked in the other side of the intersection late at night.
Riding in them it's definitely like living in the future, but it's clear that the technology still needs time to mature. I'll keep riding them and provide bug reports while they're in beta, but I'm not uninstalling Uber/Lyft any time soon, especially because their service area is limited to the city, nothing in the East Bay or down the Peninsula yet.
The cars are small and cramped, but clean. No one is allowed in the front seats so it really only seats two people. Three if they're all small and friendly.
I definitely trust it more than a drunk driver at 2 AM if that's the question though.
The meat of it is this: city driving is harder because of all the chaos, but it's actually easier to be safe, because no one's really moving all that fast. If you floor it, you're not going to get going all that fast before the next light. On the freeway, a bad model could lead to doing over 100 mph and then making a hard turn, causing the vehicle to flip over and crash.
Good insights but one thing I would point out is that your experience with Cruise may not translate directly to all self-driving cars in the world. Or to the next version of Cruise three months from now.
totally. my ultimate point is that in today's ML-driven computing world, algorithms are fuzzy, so while I do trust, say, Cruise, over a drunk driver, computers are no longer this reliable if-then algorithmically driven automatons. maybe the Internet dies and my iot cat feeder fails to feed my cat, maybe my book get charged so I can't read it. the future is amazing but it's also stupid.
> Most people think they're a better driver than average
If he doesn't do any high risk driving the relevant risk comparison is much different than general population.
Driving skill is not relevant to his point (you could assume he's an average driver who doesn't engage in high risk driving). If he's under 50 and healthy that's probably a considerable risk decrease (reflexes/vision and less chance of medical condition while driving).
So even if self driving cars were safer than human drivers in total, it could be significantly more dangerous for him.
> Whatever its flaws will be, they will be consistent.
Just wanted to add that most people might actually be better than the mean driver depending on the shape of the distribution (e.g. if a small group accounts for the majority of accidents). Only 50% can be better than the median though.
Your last sentence reminded me of "That terminator is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead."
Likewise, I figured the author was using that particular sentence cadence as a subtle reference to the Terminator (as a more advanced artificially intelligent autonomous creation).
It's obvious. Most drunk people can get home without someone having to grab the wheel and help them. A few do require that, and they often get stopped by police.
Since almost any ai system currently needs SOME help on a 100 mile drive, yet most slightly drunk people would complete that drive just fine, you could argue close to that.
>Whatever its flaws will be, they will be consistent.
It is a strawman argument to say, "humans are unsafe drivers, so it is better to replace them with robot cars that are not as unsafe". Most intelligent, aware and skilled human drivers are consistent too. I've driven well over a million miles over the last 25 years, including cross-country trips but mostly in the heavy traffic in and around NYC and Long Island. Zero accidents and zero moving violations. If we want to make driving safer the very easy answer is to remove people who are unwilling or unable to drive well and safely. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, our disfunctional government refuses to revoke the licenses from people who have proven they are unwilling and/or unable to drive safely and jail people who drive without a license. The 95 year old who lives down the block, cannot see over the steering wheel and regularly wrecks her car continues to drive. The 20 year old a block over who speeds around without a license plate on his car continues to drive. The 35 year old with 55 moving violations and a license that is suspended speeds through the red light on the corner every day. It isn't impossible to make our roads safer - or even difficult - we just lack the political will.
> our disfunctional government refuses to revoke the licenses from people who have proven they are unwilling and/or unable to drive safely and jail people who drive without a license.
No one wants this. At least, no one who thought about what that would mean for more than a few minutes. We built our cities in a way that makes driving a necessity. There's no need to fill already overcrowded prisons with people just because they want to work, or eat, or get medical care but can't do any of those things without a car.
After we redesign our cities to be walkable, and after we've invested in adequate public transportation systems, then maybe you'll find support for stricter enforcement.
I think there's a good case to be made that alcoholics who can't get sober and won't stay off the road, even though they have viable alternatives to driving, are a large enough danger to society that we'd need too keep them away from the rest of us. Ideally that'd be in a treatment center and not a jail cell though. The trick is making sure there are viable alternatives to driving.
>I've driven well over a million miles over the last 25 years
You sure about that?
> Zero accidents and zero moving violations.
Good for you! You must be saving tons of money with your undoubtedly low insurance rates. Props.
> for a variety of reasons, our disfunctional government ...
Police have finite resources. You'll need to pay more taxes to increase that. Oh hang on...
> proven they are unwilling and/or unable to drive safely and jail people who drive without a license.
>The 95 year old who lives down the block, cannot see over the steering wheel and regularly wrecks her car continues to drive.
She passed her licence, did not total her car, and her insurance will go up due to her accidents Granny might not be a great driver, but just because she's 95 does not mean that she deserves to get shivved while bench pressing, surely?
>The 20 year old a block over who speeds around without a license plate on his car continues to drive.
You want him jailed, eh? Seems a bit much for a minor traffic violation.
The 35 year old with 55 moving violations and a license that is suspended speeds through the red light on the corner every day.
How do you know the license is suspended? How did you find out about the moving violations? How would your brownshirts identify these things?
>It isn't impossible to make our roads safer - or even difficult - we just lack the political will.
100% agree. I'm not paying for room and board for these people. I certainly don't want to default to disenfranchisement, since they've paid years of taxes into road construction.
What I would do, is focus on driving. We don't need to implement the damn Stasi just to fill your dungeons with your undesirables.
The autonomous car doesn't get drunk. It doesn't get tired. It doesn't get road rage. It isn't in a hurry, and it doesn't need to text its girlfriend while going 80 mph. Whatever its flaws will be, they will be consistent.
1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3835346/