[beat]

When a human kills someone with a car because they're drunk, or texting, I don't have much empathy for them.

I read a statistic long ago - don't know how true it is, but it feels truthy - that half of all traffic fatalities happen between 9pm and 3am on friday and saturday nights. The fact that autonomous systems will never be intoxicated, distracted, or emotional makes me feel much safer.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

A brick tied to the gas pedal will also never be intoxicated. It takes more than inability for intoxication to make a system that can drive a car safely.

[staunch]

That stat seems to be very untruthy. Fatal crashes seem to be distributed much more evenly than I would've guessed.

https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/overview/crashes-b...

[beat]

Maybe not 50%, but there's certainly a strong bias in that data toward friday/saturday nights. Since the data resets at midnight rather than on bar hours, look at the difference in midnight-4am data on saturday and sunday mornings, vs the rest of the week.

[throwaway0a5e]

Those are also the only nights when people are out at all. People who have to be at work on weekday mornings aren't driving home from visiting their parents late on a Tuesday night, they're doing it late on a Saturday night. Yeah, it probably is alcohol but there's a lot of confounding factors.

[throwaway201103]

Indeed. A drunk driver alone on the road isn't really a danger to anyone but himself.

[ealexhudson]

It only makes me feel safer if those systems are substantially safer than humans.

If the systems are broadly as safe as humans _including_ a significant set who are drunk / high / distracted, that feels subjectively much less safe even though the statistical number of accidents is the same.

[beat]

Oh, I concur. I want it measured against skilled, sober, attentive drivers, not "bad" drivers.

[ageofwant]

Everybody drives better than the average, until they get distracted or tired. A AV driver that passes the standardised driving test 1M times in a row is good for me.

[hypertele-Xii]

Well, now we've transferred the responsibility: Now the programmers of the car's AI must never be intoxicated, distracted, or emotional while creating it. Also, the business people managing the programmers must not be greedy, callous, or incompetent, which is a tough sell.

[ageofwant]

So we need AI driver certification then. Just like we have with people. If the AI can past the, perhaps 5x human capability test, its licensed to drive, just like the 16 year old teenager driving his new truck on the highway behind you with his four buddies scolling coors.