this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2023
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[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (89 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] 78 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (11 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.

  1. These are self-reported statistics coming from the very company(s) that have extremely vested interests in making themselves look good.
  2. 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).
  1. 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
  1. 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.
  2. 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] 18 points 1 year ago (6 children)

These cars don't even go onto highways or areas where accidents are more likely.

Accidents are less likely on highways. Most accidents occur in urban settings. Most deadly accidents occur outside of cities, off-highway.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I could see accidents being more likely for autonomous cars on highways though

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Why? Driving on highways is the easiest kind of driving?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

For humans, but not necessarily for camera-based autonomous cars? They also can't just stop on a highway to prevent accidents.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Well, I do use a car that is able to drive (almost) autonomous on a highway, so I know that the tech to drive on highways exist since several years.

All the difficult stuff – slow traffic, parking cars, crossings, pedestrians... – does not exist on highways.

The only problem that still remains is the problem you mention: what to do in case of trouble?

Of course you have to stop on a highway to prevent an accident or in case of an emergency. That's exactly what humans do. But then humans get out of the car, set up warning signs, get help &c. Cars cannot do this. The result is reported in this article.

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