This is more an argument for better land-use policy (allowing more density), more public transportation (proven technology) and more remote work. All of these much better solve giving humans more time than self-driving cars.
Self-driving cars don't promise to save time. It's still driving. Their promise -- their only real promise -- is to save lives. And I think saving tens of thousands of American lives every year is a worthwhile goal. Worldwide, more than 1 million people die in car crashes every year. Humans have proven that they can't drive cars well, but we have put up with it because it is convenient.
I know some people will say that they could work on their way to work, but I can't do work in a car. Staring at a laptop in a car gives me motion sickness, along with a lot of other people. And, of course, this would only apply to people who do computer work in the first place.
As someone who has been in serious car crashes and lost friends to them, I for one am all for self-driving cars. It's going to be a revolution, but we shouldn't be testing them on public roads if they are this bad.
>I know some people will say that they could work on their way to work, but I can't do work in a car.
But some can, and they would benefit from a self-driving car that can drive _at least as safe_ as themselves. Granted, it'd be great if they could improve on safety, but I think GP's point is that this is not their only possible use.
But why we should allow such a car that is not safe, it could be 10 times faster but 10 times less safe, for years we are trying to make transport safer, this included making cars more expensive so why should we go back in our investment in safer cars because company X wants to be the first on the market.
> Self-driving cars don't promise to save time. It's still driving.
Not having to drive the car from and to the parking lot saves a lot of time.
Also many people can get work or other things done while being driven to their destination, for example doing phone calls.
That would increase accident rates. Parent was positing a scenario where self-driving cars don't cause fewer accidents than humans. This could mean a more or less equal amount.
I mean, Germany does this on the autobahn. I can't really find any mortality data for the autobahn though. Also, German driving laws are fairly more strict than in the US.
Germany: About 1 fatality per 10,000 cars per year, 4.1 fatalities per billion km driven per year, 38 fatalities per million people per year (2017). Relatively few accidents on the Autobahn, but the proportion of fatal accidents is higher. All in all, the Autobahn is fairly safe, in particular in relation to distance traveled.
USA: About 106 fatalities per million people per year (2013).
I suspect the difference is due to more public transport, less distance driven per person, and possibly more stringent driver education in Germany.
>How about saving human time that would otherwise be spent on driving?
There may be solutions for your wasted time driving that not costs more human lives, like public transport.
An AI is will never have the intuition of a human brain, so you can try compensating with better sensors and faster reaction time, but if you have worse sensors and reaction time then a human then you do not have a self driving car yet, such toy projects were made by students years ago.
We can already do that. It's called public transport. The idea of self-driving cars is they can go places public transport doesn't go but the incident happened on a major highway. When I sit on a train I can work without even thinking about where I'm going. It really doesn't look like we're anywhere near that.
Wow, what the hell happened here? Parent suggested that the only benefit of self-driving cars would be if it prevented accidents. This is just wrong, and I don't think you all are helping the discussion by denying this and downvoting me for pointing out that other benefits exist too, even if self-driving cars will be just as unreliable as human drivers.
You original statement is that they are "no better". If the automated solution is just as good as humans with regard to safety, then there is no trade-off being made.
Given how many things we do that make us unsafe drivers (being distracted by music/passengers/anger/other, driving while tired or otherwise inattentive, ...) I don't see it being long before we can claim automated cars are as safe as those driven by humans, especially in some conditions. I can't say we are there yet, but things are getting pretty good.
I don't understand why people call it unsafe because there are more than zero accidents. By the same measure humans should not be allowed to drive either. Even when people have slightly more reasonable expectations they compare the automation to the best drivers, not any average or bad driver.
Perhaps there are conditions where the automated systems are still going to be worse than the average human, perhaps night conditions like this are included in that. The solution there is to make the automation refuse to continue (refuse to start if not yet en-route, ask the user to take over if so, find a safe place to park if the user can't or doesn't take over when requested) in conditions where that might be an issue. This still allows automation in the majority of driving conditions.
I think we should try finding solutions for the bad drivers that text, drive drunk or speed on the roads, is not impossible to fix that and it will not cost lives.
Do we have any proof that with our current hardware and software we can make a self driving car that is better then the average driver (also this score should be adjusted for the location where the car is used, I do not want the claim to be that this car drives better then average drivers from X where X is a location with tons of bad drivers)
I think we are too optimists that we can train this cars on the roads and by the magic of neural networks and computer vision we get better then average driver. The human brain has evolved to detect moving objects very well, add on top of that intuition where you can anticipate some situation and the capability to adapt to new things.
So we would need some numbers to measure this AIs, but I do not see anyone trying to do this measurements, creating tests courses, checking the sensors quality for this cars, checking the reaction times of this cars,
politicians just approved them to test before making any minimal checks.
> I think we should try finding solutions for the bad drivers that text, drive drunk or speed on the roads, is not impossible to fix that and it will not cost lives.
In the time it took you to write that, some drunk person statistically has already killed an innocent person while driving. "It will not cost lives" is incorrect because even the time it takes to discuss this has cost us lives in the drunk driving debate.
It is impossible to fix, in my opinion. People will drive drunk no matter what. They love to do it and there is absolutely nothing that we can do to make them stop, except from eventually eliminating all human drivers licenses.
The punishments/consequences for drunk driving are already very high and they do not stop people from driving drunk and killing someone.
Do you know what "Is impossible means?
It is possible to eliminate most of the drunk drivers, but here are some ideas:
1 put an AI with sensors and cameras pointed at the driver,
do not allow the car to start if driver is drunk, if he starts texting or sleeping turn of the car, you can add a bypass for emergency,
If you put self driving cars on the road you still have many years until everyone is forced to use this cars so you still have drunk drivers.
So are not companies working on a similar idea like I suggested, because there are not money to be made, cars would be expensive, drivers would not like it, but similar with the airbags, helmets if it will be mandatory to have such a system in the car the safety will increase.
Btw there is a very improbable solution but not an impossible one that would eliminate all drunk drivers, don't allow alcohol production, qed is not impossible
If self driving cars are equally good at driving as humans then there is no trade off. It's the same level of safety with more convenience. That doesn't mean we shouldn't strive for greater safety, but I think the original poster might have been a bit over zealous with his words.
Self-driving cars don't promise to save time. It's still driving. Their promise -- their only real promise -- is to save lives. And I think saving tens of thousands of American lives every year is a worthwhile goal. Worldwide, more than 1 million people die in car crashes every year. Humans have proven that they can't drive cars well, but we have put up with it because it is convenient.
I know some people will say that they could work on their way to work, but I can't do work in a car. Staring at a laptop in a car gives me motion sickness, along with a lot of other people. And, of course, this would only apply to people who do computer work in the first place.
As someone who has been in serious car crashes and lost friends to them, I for one am all for self-driving cars. It's going to be a revolution, but we shouldn't be testing them on public roads if they are this bad.