[grumple]

> Self driving cars are a nice luxury, especially in city driving, not something that radically improves our world. You get to read your phone instead of paying attention, and the trade-off is someone might get killed. It's like treating a rash with a drug that could give you a heart attack. That's a far cry from, "with this technology something that took days and $$$$ now takes hours and $" as was the case with all the older examples you listed.

This is the opposite of the premise and the conclusion is the total opposite of the goal of self driving cars. A core premise of self driving cars is that they will be far safer than human-driven vehicles. 1.35 million people are killed on roadways every year globally. Saving over a million lives a year means a lot. The technology isn't quite there yet, but it is likely that it will be and the promise is quite real. It's not like Tesla's are killing people at a significantly higher rate than regular drivers with Autopilot - which does not seem to be true [1].

1. https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport

[bumby]

There are plenty of resources that demonstrate why those statistics can be misleading. Chief among them, not all miles are created equal. It’s like claiming autopilot in airplanes is significantly safer than ape-controlled aircraft. It’s partly true because apes control the hard parts (takeoff and landing) and leave the more easy parts to software

[judge2020]

> It’s like claiming autopilot in airplanes is significantly safer than ape-controlled aircraft. It’s partly true because apes control the hard parts (takeoff and landing) and leave the more easy parts to software

That's because the term "autopilot" is badly named, both in cars and in aircraft. People just thing autopilot in aircraft means "plane flies itself" because they get on a jetliner and never see the pilot actually control it, leaving the impression that some combination of magic and electricity-infused rocks got them there instead of a human with assistive software.

[grumple]

Those statistics are pretty relevant when it comes to fatalities, which are more likely to occur at highway speeds. Total accidents, yes, self driving cars aren't generally operating in city traffic yet. Those same resources will note that the most common accident for Teslas is being rear-ended by another vehicle, which is also relevant.

Let's not lose sight of the fact that this technology is under active development, with a theoretical target being eliminating the vast majority of car-related deaths. Nobody is arguing that it's already superior, though it may already be close in certain circumstances.

[bumby]

That’s the thing though. Those statistics aren’t showing that level of rigor. They aren’t even saying “miles driven at highway speeds”, just “miles with autopilot engaged”.

They don’t control for things like vehicle age. They don’t control for safety features, or even for driver assisting software control. They aren’t comparing driving conditions. They aren’t comparing driving duration. There aren’t comparing driving speed. They aren’t even from the same datasets. Etc etc.

It’s not a rigorous study but used as if it’s evidence when it’s only slightly better than anecdotal

[judge2020]

It'll probably be best to stick to U.S. statistics because it'll show the statistical difference between manual driving in a modern car and automated driving in a modern car, versus 'globally' which includes cars in countries that aren't designed with the same safety we have and will lag at least a decade behind the US in receiving level 3+ ADAS when it becomes available.

[grumple]

Self driving cars will be sold globally though.

Either way, 40k US deaths per year plus many more injuries is still a lot, even if we only care about the US.