this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2023
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Those damn things are not ready to be used on public roads. Allowing them is one of the more prominent examples of corruption that we’ve seen recently.
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.
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.
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.
Accidents are less likely on highways. Most accidents occur in urban settings. Most deadly accidents occur outside of cities, off-highway.
Sure mile for mile they are less likely. But when they happen they are generally more serious as higher speeds are involved, and if Tesla has shown anything it's a much more complicated process for autonomous vehicles to navigate and deal with edge cases (like vehicles on the side of the road, emergency or otherwise). Much harder (and dangerous) to just slam on the brakes and put on your hazards on a highway than a side street if the car gets confused.
I could see accidents being more likely for autonomous cars on highways though
Why? Driving on highways is the easiest kind of driving?
For humans, but not necessarily for camera-based autonomous cars? They also can't just stop on a highway to prevent accidents.
Avoiding dangerous scenarios is the definition of driving safely.
This technology is still an area under active development and nobody (not even Elon!) is claiming this stuff is ready to replace a human in every possible scenario. Are you actually suggesting they should be testing the cars in scenarios that they know wouldn't be safe with the current technology? Why the fuck would they do that?
OK... if you won't accept the company's reported data - who's data will you accept? Do you have a more reliable source that contradicts what the companies themselves have published?
No that's a non issue. When a human driver runs over a pedestrian/etc and causes a serious injury, if it's a civilised country and a sensible driver, then an insurance company will pay the bill. This happens about a million times a week worldwide and insurance is a well established system that people are, for the most part, happy with.
Autonomous vehicles are also covered by insurance. In fact it's another area where they're better than humans - because humans frequently fail to pay their insurance bill or even deliberately drive after they have been ordered by a judge not to drive (which obviously voids their insurance policy).
There have been debates over who will pay the insurance premium, but that seems pretty silly to me. Obviously the human who ordered the car to drive them somewhere will have to pay for all costs involved in the drive. And part of that will be insurance.
Well hey - atleast I provided some statistics to back me up. That's not the case with the people refuting those stats.
Fine by me, as long as the companies making the cars take all responsibility for accidents. Which, you know, the human drivers do.
But the car companies want to sell you their shitty autonomous driving software and make you be responsible.
If they don't trust it enough, why should I?
I saw a video years ago discussing this topic.
How good is “good enough” for self-driving cars?
The bar is much higher than it is for human drivers because we downplay our own shortcomings and think that we have less risk than the average driver.
Humans can be good drivers, sure. But we have serious attention deficits. This means it doesn’t take a big distraction before we blow a red light or fail to observe a pedestrian.
Hell, lot of humans fail to observe and yield to emergency vehicles as well.
But none of that is newsworthy, but an autonomous vehicle failing to yield is.
My personal opinion is that the Cruise vehicles are as ready for operational use as Teslas FSD, ie. should not be allowed.
Obviously corporations will push to be allowed so they can start making money, but this is probably also the biggest threat to a self-driving future.
Regulated so strongly that humans end up being the ones in the driver seat for another few decades - with the cost in human lives which that involves.
I'm not gonna join in the discussion, but if you cite numbers, please don't link to the advertising website of the company itself. They have a strong interest in cherry picking the data to make positive claims.
These companies are the only ones with access to those stats. Nobody else has it. The alternative here is to not cite stats at all. If you think the stats are wrong you can go find alternative source and post it here.
If they do not give researchers access to the data, then I can guarantee you they are cherry picking their results. A research paper in a reputable journal would be easy publicity and create a lot of trust in the public.
They can't come quick enough for me. I can go to work after a night out without fear I might still be over the limit. I won't have to drive my wife everywhere. Old people will not be prisoners in their own homes. No more nobheads driving about with exhausts that sound like a shoot out with the cops. No more aresholes speeding about and cutting you up. No more hit and runs. Traffic accident numbers falling through the floor. In fact it could even get to a point where the only accidents are the fault of pedestrians/cyclists not looking where they are going.
All of these are solved by better public transport/safe bike routes and more walkable city designs. All of which is we can do now, not rely on some new shiny tech so that we can keep car companies profits up.
The possibilities really are endless.
When the light turns green the entire row of cars can start moving at the same time like on motor sports. Perhaps you don't even need traffic lights because they can all just drive to the intersection at the same time and just keep barely missing eachother but never crash due to the superior reaction times and processing speeds of computer. You could also let your car go taxi other people around when you don't need it.
What if we tied that entire row of cars together as one unit so we could save cost on putting high end computers in each car? Give them their own dedicated lane because we will never have 100% fully autonomous cars on the road unless we make human drivers illegal.
I'll call my invention a train.
I think you might need lights for pedestrians at crossings.
I did wonder if ambulances would need sirens but again, pedestrians!
Just ban pedestrians. Problem solved,
The day I can get in a car and not be simultaneously afraid of my own shortcomings and the fact that there are strangers driving massive projectiles around me is a day I will truly celebrate. The fact is that automobiles are weapons, and I don't want to be the one wielding it when a single mistake can cost an entire family their lives, although I would like to be there to slam on the brakes and prevent it if needed.
For me it's because they're controlled by a few evil companies. I'm not against them in concept. Human drivers are the fucking worst.
Are you talking about AVs or about humandrivers, which drive drunk, been overtired, after a bad night, emotionally, texting during driving etc?
those things are also illegal, mind you
some are, some are not, but they happen.
my point was, there are some cases where human drivers act better (yet), but there are a lot of other cases where they act worse (for many different reasons). And if a single indirectly lethal case means that "Those damn things are not ready to be used on public roads.", then human drivers are not ready either - they are responsible for much more lethal cases (per whatever unit you count).