this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
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Every time one of these things happens, there's always comments here about how humans do these things too. Two responses to that:
First, human drivers are actually really good at driving. Here's Cory Doctorow explaining this point:
There's like a few hundred robot taxis driving relatively few miles, and the problems are constant. I don't know of anyone who has plugged the numbers yet, but I suspect they look pretty bad by comparison.
Second, when self-driving cars fuck up, they become everyone else's problem. Emergency service personnel, paid for by the taxpayer, are suddenly stuck having to call corporate customer service or whatever. When a human fucks up, there's also a human on the scene to take responsibility for the situation and figure out how to remedy it (unless it's a terrible accident and they're disabled or something, but that's an edge case). When one of these robot taxis fucks up, it becomes the problem of whoever they're inconveniencing, be it construction workers, firefighters, police, whatever.
This second point is classic corporate behavior. Companies look for ways to convert their internal costs (in this case, the labor of taxi drivers) into externalities, pushing down their costs but leaving the rest of us to deal with their mess. For example, plastic packaging is much, much cheaper for companies than collecting and reusing glass bottles or whatever, but the trash now becomes everyone else's problem, and at this point, there is microplastic in literally every place on Earth.
I'm not sure your second point is as strong as you believe it to be. Do you have a specific example in mind? I think most vehicle problems that would require an emergency responder will have easy access to a tow service to deal with the car with or without a human being involved. It's not like just because a human is there that the problem is more easily solved. For minor-to-moderate accidents that just require a police report, things might get messy but that's an issue with the law, not necessarily something inherently wrong with the concept of self driving vehicles.
Also, your first point is on shaky ground, I think. I don't know why the metric is accidents with fatalities, but since that's what you used, what do you think having fewer humans involved does to the chance of killing a human?
I'm all for numbers being crunched, and to be clear (as you were, I think) the numbers are the real deciding metrics here, not thought experiments.
And I think it's 100% true that autonomous transportation doesn't have to be perfect, just better than humans. Not that you disagree with this, but it is probably what people are thinking when they say "humans do this too".
https://missionlocal.org/2023/08/cruise-waymo-autonomous-vehicle-robot-taxi-driverless-car-reports-san-francisco/
The fire department in SF has made it very clear that these cars are a PITA for them. They are actively driving through emergency situations, cannot follow verbal instructions, drive over fire hoses, etc.
Fatalities is just the number we have to compare. Self-driving car companies have been publishing a simulated fatality metric for a while now. I totally agree there are other ways to think about it. My point is that AV companies have a narrative that humans are actually bad at driving, and I think this comparison pokes a hole in that story.
I'm not sure, actually. The vast majority of driving is solo trips, so I'd expect not that much? There are some studies suggesting that people might actually use cars more if self-driving cars become a reality:
https://www.wired.com/story/driving-partially-automated-people-drive-more/
And that really gets to the heart of my problem with the self-driving cars push. When faced with complex problems, we should not assume there is a technological solution. Instead, we should ask ourselves to envision a better world, and then decide what technologies, if any, we need to get there. If self-driving cars are actually a good solution to the problem, then by all means, let's make them happen.
But I don't think that's what's happening here, and I don't think they are. American cities are a fucking disaster of planning. They are genuinely shameful, forcing their inhabitants to rely on cars, an excessively wasteful mode of transportation, all in a climate crisis. Instead of coming together to work on this problem, we're begging our technological overlords to solve them for us, with an added drawback of privatizing our public infrastructure.
Yeah, this is one of the biggest points, IMO. If a human did this, the fire department would immediately arrest or fine them. When a so-called "driverless" car does this, who the hell can they arrest?
This whole idea that we're going to completely transform large, already-established cities, covered in literally trillons of dollars of infrastructure over the course of over a century, into some sort of carless, pedestrian utopia is so hopeless unrealistic that inserting it into a discussion about real problems happening today is actively sabotaging the rest of the good points you have in your argument.
I assume we're both living in the US? I didn't say anything about an unrealistic pedestrian utopia. I said we should improve city planning and invest in public infrastructure instead or relying exclusively on tech companies to solve our total lack of willpower and imagination in building our physical spaces. The state of American infrastructure is absolutely pathetic.
We invest a shitload in public infrastructure. How the hell do you think we got all of these roads?
And we have quite a bit of willpower and imagination to build the craziest, most fucked up intersections that will still expand our cities.
Not just crazy. But glorious and transcendent too. Driving through the enormous multi freeway intersections near Dallas feels like a space age cathedral. Vaults to the heavens, arcs and sweeping forms surround you.
I imagine future archeologists digging it up and wondering about the religion that built it.
lol you know what I mean
Another major point people miss is that once you leave the city it's all edge cases. Roads don't have lane markings and non vehicle traffic is more common. Tech companies constantly miss these areas because you build for what you know. The US isn't all SoCal and Texas
Hell, once you go deep into the city, it's a bunch of edge cases. Old, large cities with weird, complicated intersections and 5-10 signs next to it to explain the rules on how it works. Expansion is messy, and not all roads are perfect grids with stoplights and 4-way traffic.
Yeah I live on a snowy dirt road on a mountain side lol.