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by necovek 1965 days ago
You say how we subconsciously handle things like obstacles during walking, but here I am at my 38 years of age, tripping on uneven sidewalk where there's a sudden unnoticeable drop in the level of a couple cm (an inch): the same feeling when you go down the stairs in dark, and forget that there is one extra step.

I agree we get subconsciously trained (here, my brain is expecting a perfectly flat sidewalk), but when I say focused driving, I am mostly thinking of *not-doing-anything-else*: to an extemt that I also keep my phone calls short (or reject them) even with the bluetooth handsfree system built into my car with steering wheel commands.

The thing is that a truck's trunk opening in front of you and things starting to fall out on a highway at 130kmph (~80mph) is very hard to train for, but all four of us car drivers that were right behind when it happened did manage to avoid it without much drama or risk to themselves or each other. What self driving tech today would you trust to achieve the same today? Sometimes you don't care about averages, because they are skewed by drunks or stupid people showing off on public roads.

And stats being by miles covered is generally useless: if it was accidents per number-of-performed-manouvres, it'd be useful. Getting on an empty highway and doing 100 miles is pretty simple compared to doing 2 miles in a congested city centre.