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by perl4ever 2324 days ago
There's a disconnect here.

People who talk about the danger of humans driving cars always seem to talk about the raw numbers, because humans drive cars a lot and the raw numbers are rather large.

But when we talk about automated driving, it's in percentages, because it's not being done on the same scale.

So to compare apples to apples, you'd have to convert the number of fatalities to an accuracy percentage. Have you considered trying? There is certainly more than one way to do it, but it would greatly contribute to the discussion if you made some attempt.
1 comments
tomnipotent 2324 days ago
> you'd have to convert the number of fatalities to an accuracy percentage

Telsa's early results for their very limited "self-driving" technology has shown a huge reduction in accidents for any given period of time the vehicles are on the road.

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perl4ever 2324 days ago
That seems like it incorporates a lot of assumptions. I think it's best to slow down and realize that comparisons don't mean much if you're comparing the wrong things. The first step is to determine the first thing that you are comparing and exactly what it is. Then you can move on to the other half and determine whether it is appropriate.

Humans are much safer than people on average, when driving in conditions suitable for Autopilot.

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tomnipotent 2324 days ago
> Humans are much safer than people on average

This makes zero sense and isn't how "average" works. For the same 1000 hours on the road, a Tesla car with Autopilot will have fewer accidents than a car driven for 1000 hours by humans. This changes as driving conditions get worse, and humans outperform Autopilot.

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perl4ever 2324 days ago
Deleting half a sentence and saying it doesn't make sense?

The way "average" works is that you average over something - a population or set. It is very important to be clear about what that something is and whether it's appropriate.

Why do you believe that Autopilot outperforms humans in comparable conditions? If this is based on Tesla marketing, I'm extremely prejudiced against them, and assume out of hand that they simply aren't making the right comparison and don't care. However, if you think that is incorrect, you could elaborate on why you have the opinion you do.

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tomnipotent 2324 days ago
The average of something cannot be more than the average of... itself. Thus, "Humans are much safer than people on average" is nonsensical.

> Why do you believe that Autopilot outperforms humans in comparable conditions?

Because they have the data that proves it?

> I'm extremely prejudiced against them

And I've chosen to take them at face value with a grain of salt, and to believe that for the data they've collected from the hundreds of thousands of Tesla's with millions of hours of data using Autopilot, it's fair to say they have a large enough sample to draw conclusions about the safety of their cars vs. any incident rates from pretty much any other distribution.

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perl4ever 2324 days ago
"Thus, "Humans are much safer than people on average" is nonsensical."

Does it make more sense as "Humans, when driving in conditions suitable for Autopilot, are much safer than people on average"?

"I've chosen to take them at face value with a grain of salt, and to believe that for the data they've collected from the hundreds of thousands of Tesla's with millions of hours of data using Autopilot, it's fair to say they have a large enough sample to draw conclusions about the safety of their cars vs. any incident rates from pretty much any other distribution"

You seem to be saying that if you have a lot of data it doesn't matter what you compare it to. That seems wrong to me. Also, I don't have this data, and you are not bothering to help me find it.

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FAKEDETECTOR 2324 days ago
"Our secret telemetry dataset gives us reason to believe that the cars produced by us are not safe."

Would a statement like this be a surprise for you?

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