[YeGoblynQueenne]

>> There's more to safety statistics than just the mortality rate. We should be able to look at frequency and severity of non-fatal accidents too. Those happen a lot more often.

When the industry or the press discuss the safety of self-driving cars, they almost always do it in terms of fatality rates. Not general accident rates.

[Animats]

"they almost always do it in terms of fatality rates"

That's an element of right-wing policy created to fight safety regulation. The position is that since the severity of non-fatal workplace injuries is hard to measure, only fatal accidents should be recorded.[1][2] Then there's too little data to make policy.

[1] https://edworkforce.house.gov/uploadedfiles/testimony_michae... [2] https://www.oshalawblog.com/2017/04/articles/its-official-os...

[dmoy]

Huh I thought there was that huge fixation on just "disengagements" or whatever a year back.

[gpm]

"Disengagements" are a measure of how close we are to a self driving car. I.e. one that doesn't need a human sitting in the drivers seat to handle these disengagements, not a measure of safety.

[Animats]

Right. Only Waymo has disengagement numbers that are even vaguely decent.

The CA DMV data has enough info that you can distinguish between "driver had to take over to avoid crash" vs. "vehicle was unable to proceed due to problem ahead and needed help". The first number needs to get very low before self-driving can work. The second, Waymo proposes to handle by having a very limited remote control capability, so remote support can get a vehicle past a strange problem.