[jlebar]

No one seems sufficiently outraged that human drivers kill 40,000 people a year in the US.

It's approximately one 9/11 a month. And that's just the deaths.

Worldwide, 1.2m people die from vehicle accidents every year; car/motorcycle crashes are the leading cause of death for people aged 5-29 worldwide.

https://www.transportation.gov/NRSS/SafetyProblem

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/road-traffi...

[jeroenhd]

Road casualties are tied to geographical areas and America is an infamously dangerous place to live in when it comes to traffic. By fixing education, road design, and other factors, those 40k killed can be reduced by seven times before you even need to bother with automation. There's a human driver problem, but it's much smaller than the American driver problem.

Also, that still doesn't excuse Waymo blocking roads. These are two different, independent problems. More people die in care crashes than they do in plane crashes but that doesn't mean we should be replacing all cars by planes either.

[gruez]

>By fixing education, road design, and other factors, those 40k killed can be reduced by seven times before you even need to bother with automation.

1. [citation needed]

2. Just because it's theoretically possible, doesn't mean it's an option that actually exists. I'm sure you can dream up of some plan for a futuristic utopia where everybody lives in a 15 minute city, no private cars are needed, and the whole transportation system is net zero, but that doesn't mean it's a realistic option that'll actually get implemented in the US, nor does it mean that we we should reject hybrid or EVs on the basis that they're worse than the utopian solution, even though they're better than the status quo of conventional ICE cars.

[jeroenhd]

> 1. [citation needed]

Traffic-related death rate statistics for Denmark (being 7x lower than the US), Sweden, Norway, Japan. The US does remarkably bad on this statistic, even compared to Canada.

> 2. Just because it's theoretically possible, doesn't mean it's an option that actually exists.

Denmark exists. I've been there. There were cars.

I think the west in general is lagging behind when it comes to EV adoption (and given the politico-corporate interests of many governments, I don't expect that to change). I don't think anybody wants to completely abolish cars in general and I think the drive to maintain ICE cars with all of their downsides just to support a fledgling industry is a ridiculous waste of taxpayer money.

[oceanplexian]

Denmark has a smaller population than Massachusetts, how is that a valid comparison to a massive country like the US?

Again using Massachusetts as an example, a place with a similar population to Denmark, if you instead look at fatalities per billion vkm, you would actually find MA to be about twice as safe (~1.74 vs 2.8).

The data is inherently misleading because drivers in countries in Europe don’t drive nearly as much, they travel at much lower speeds, plus cars are simply unattainable to the average person as a result of socioeconomic factors.

[mensetmanusman]

Exactly, I tell people every order of magnitude more we spend on infrastructure reduces the self driving complexity as much likewise.

The education bit can’t be fixed by the government though in the short term, as the outcomes correlate too strongly with stable home life conditions (which are in free fall over the past 50 years).

[mrguyorama]

And also because America has an extremely strong anti-education demographic that is very well represented in congress and presidents.

"Parental authority" should not be an educational goal.

[scoofy]

Seriously. People are outraged about the theoretical potential for human harm while there is a god damn constant death rate here that is 4x higher than every other western country.

I mean really. I’m a self driving skeptic exactly because our roads are inherently dangerous. I’ve been outraged at Cruise and Tesla for hiding their safety shortcomings and acting in bad faith.

Everything I’ve seen from Waymo has been exceptional… and I literally live in a damn neighborhood that lost power, and saw multiple stopped Waymos in the street.

They failed-safe, not perfect, definitely needs improvement, but safe. At the same time we have video of a Tesla blowing through a blacked out intersection, and I saw a damn Muni bus do the same thing, as well as a least a dozen cars do the same damn thing.

People need to be at least somewhat consistent in their arguments.

[paddleon]

Hey, I hear you. And I'm sad. Because I'd like to say that the right way is to:

build infrastructure that promotes safe driving, and

train drivers to show respect for other people on the road

However, those are both non-starters in the US. So your answer, which comes down to "at least self-driving is better than those damn people" might be the one that actually works.

[citrin_ru]

I've spend some time driving in both the US and the UK and while infrastructure in the US could be improved I don't think that's the main issue.

What's different is driver training and attitude. Passing a driving test in the US is too easy to encourage new drivers to learn to drive. And an average American driver shows less respect to pedestrians, cyclists and other drivers, aggressive driving is relatively common. Bad drivers can be encountered in the UK of course but on average British drive better.

Huge SUV and pickup trucks are also part of the problem - they are more dangerous for everyone except people in such vehicle.

[fragmede]

San Francisco has done a ton of that recently. They've added protected bike lanes and even experimented with a center bike lane on Valencia Street which must have cost a shit ton of money. I give them credit for trying (and a lot of my tax dollars). There are a lot of no right on red situations and a lot of flights that are specific to bicycles and not cars. The city is trying and it has the will and the money to do it. We just have to hope that it doesn't all disappear into corruption and political nonsense.

[pastel8739]

Yes, this is really it for me. Self-driving isn’t the best solution, but the real solution requires lots of politics and lots of time to build. Tech is the one thing we are pretty good at in this country, and feels like the one thing that makes it possible to have change quickly and without endless politicking.

[ACCount37]

Your "right way" is to try to fix human nature. A complete nonstarter.

If we could do anything like "train drivers to show respect for other people on the road" at scale, then we'd live in a different world by now.

[forshaper]

I currently live in a place where, when walking on the street, I routinely almost get hit by vehicles while crossing crosswalks with the cross light on.

However, I used to live in a place where every local driver did an 'after you' that included pedestrians, regardless of road rules, and generally drove the speed limit (and usually less).

Both of these places in the United States!

The latter is not impossible, just rare.

[morpheuskafka]

As you said, people often continue to drive at full speed through unlit intersections let alone roads. Doesn't that then imply that a Waymo stopping on such a road is not "failing safe"? It's just asking for someone to hit it -- even if they'd be at fault, it's still not safe.

[scoofy]

That’s nonsense logic. Is it not “safe” for pedestrians to use a crosswalk since a car might not stop? If that’s your definition of “safety” then all hope of a coordinated system is lost.

[rdiddly]

I want nothing to do with Waymo or any of the others, but they're all being forced on me. I think self-driving cars are one of the biggest and stupidest misallocations of resources and talent we've seen yet. And they're being developed using public resources that we all own (yet I never had a chance to vote on it) for the benefit of a private company that only those with enough disposable income can buy into. I don't happen to own any of their stock, so I'm not seeing any benefit. Why would I care how well they're doing? And they helped themselves to my roads as a testing ground; why would I afford them the slightest slack when they mess up? Meanwhile the people who can least afford to buy in, are actually living on the streets where these are being tested and are shouldering a disproportionate share of the risks. So it only takes mere inconvenience, or their mere existence, to bother and annoy me, not human harm. It's a machine designed to steal from the commons. And actually in tort law, theft IS harm. But physical harm to humans has also happened and will happen. Cars driven by humans: same, except also having a lengthy history that includes documented physical harm to humans. They too are machines for stealing from the public to advantage the owners. The things being stolen are clean air, climate, land/space, and safety/life. So my argument is fully consistent. There are exceptions in it for trucks, trains and buses, and even for some cars, in cases where the benefit offsets the harm, and the public has meaningfully approved it.

[scoofy]

If your argument is to ban cars, fair enough. Waymo doesn’t need to be mentioned.

[TylerE]

Why lie? If you have a valid point, make it. Don't pull made up stats out of your ass.

The US isn't close to being the highest per traffic fatality rate in the western hemisphere.

I count 14 countries higher.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

[DharmaPolice]

When people say "western" they often don't mean "western hemisphere" but the "first world". So Peru wouldn't be "western" by this definition but Australia might be.

[throwaway2037]

Yeah, HN just loves the term "The West" / "Western", which weirdly includes Australia and New Zealand, but excludes Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. (What about South Africa? Unsure.) To me, it is better to say something like "G7-like" (or OECD) nations, because that includes all highly developed nations.

[trollbridge]

It’s referring to a specific culture of people.

[potato3732842]

No, what they really mean is "a subset of typically rich typically western europe that I can cherry pick to prove my point" though anywhere formerly colonized by a European power and any developed nation in Asia is fair game depending on context.

Notice eastern europe is nearly always left out of social issue discussions.

Some Mediterranean bordering nations are always left out of government efficacy discussions.

It's not about comparing like-ish for like-ish. It's about finding a plausibly deniable way to frame the issue so that the US gets kneecapped by the inclusion of West Virginia or 'bama New Mexico or Chicago or whatever else it is that is an outlier and tanks its numbers while the thing on the other side of the comparison exempts that analogue entirely and this makes whatever policy position the person doing the framing is advocating for look good.

You see this slight of hand up and down and left and right across every possible topic of discussion in communities composed of american demographics that generally look towards Europe for solutions for things.

[verteu]

No, they're generally referring to the set of countries depicted in these maps [1], for the reasons described in the article [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world#/media/File:West...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world

[xnorswap]

I thought the UK ranked well, I didn't realise it ranked that well.

Maybe there's something to be said for left-hand driving, I see Japan ranks very highly too. ;)

The real reason is I guess we take road safety seriously, we have strict drink-driving laws, and our driving test is genuinely difficult to pass.

I seem to remember road safety also featuring prominently throughout the primary national curriculum.

And of course, our infamous safety adverts that you never quite forget, such as: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKHY69AFstE

[throwaway2037]

    > Maybe there's something to be said for left-hand driving

Is this written in jest, or is there something more serious behind it? Off the top of my head, I cannot think of an obvious reason why "road handedness" (left vs right) would matter for road safety. Could it something about more people are right-handed so there is some 2nd order safety effect that I am overlooking?

[tzs]

Their comment was in jest, but I've wondered before if left vs right hand driving could affect safety. As you note right-handed people are more common. The countries with the highest percentages of left-handed people are around 12-13%.

In countries that drive on the right then drivers use their dominant hand for any controls that are on the inward side and their other hand for the control that are on the outward side of the driver.

Generally that means that the non-dominant hand handles exterior lighting, turn signals, windows, and locks. The dominant hand handles windshield wipers, transmission, and anything on the center console such as the climate and entertainment systems, and often also the navigation system.

In left drive counties that is mostly reversed for right-handed people, with the possible exception of the exterior lighting, turn signals, and windshield wipers. Those exceptions are the controls that are usually on stalks attached to the steering column. From what I've read sometimes manufactures use the same stalk positions in left and right drive models instead of reversing them like they do the rest of the controls.

Could dominant vs non-dominant hand for operating things on the center console make a difference? If everyone obeyed safety recommendations I'd expect it to not make enough difference to be noticeable, but not everyone obeys safety recommendations 100% of the time.

If someone for example tried to type in a destination using the on-screen keyboard on the navigation system console while driving I'd expect that they would take longer to do so if they were using their non-dominant hand, so they would be distracted longer.

[cesarb]

> Could dominant vs non-dominant hand for operating things on the center console make a difference?

Large airplanes usually have a pilot on either side of the center console, and they AFAIK take turns operating the airplane, so if it made a difference, I'd expected it to be studied by the aerospace industry. Given that I've never seen it mentioned on any of the airplane incident reports I've read, it probably isn't a big factor, and I see no reason why it would be different for cars.

[xnorswap]

Yes, it was in jest.

  ;)

[fragmede]

Not https://youtu.be/uhzruJ0BzoI ?

[TylerE]

The US is just a big place. We drive a lot. Average annual mileage is about 13k vs 7k in the UK.

[adrianN]

The USA don’t do very well on the deaths per km metric either.

[TulliusCicero]

> The US isn't close to being the highest per traffic fatality rate in the western hemisphere.

Is this a serious comment? Is that actually what you think they meant by "Western"? When people talk about Russia vs "the West", do you also think they mean Russia vs the Western hemisphere?

[scoofy]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world

[nkrisc]

The difference is those human-driven cars all have a driver who can be held accountable.

If I kill someone with my car, I’m probably going to jail. If a Waymo or otherwise kills someone, who’s going to jail?

[xnx]

> If I kill someone with my car, I’m probably going to jail

This is rarely true in the US. A driver's license is a license to kill with near impunity.

https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/man-gets-10-days-in-jai...

[ACCount37]

Should Waymo hire an "accountable" human who would go to jail if a Waymo car kills someone?

"Accountability" is fucking worthless, and I am tired of pretending otherwise.

[benlivengood]

Presumably, like Cruise, if the safety rate is appalling then they get their permits revoked which is 99% the same as jail for a company that only does self driving cars.

[scoofy]

> If I kill someone with my car, I’m probably going to jail.

So this is very much not at all true.

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-perfect-crime/

My entire point is that we don’t care about human lives on our roads. So yelling about the safety concerns about Waymos makes no sense.

[rdiddly]

So this makes it desirable for someone's robots to block roads during an emergency?

[fragmede]

Progress does not require perfection; it requires net improvement.

[idle_zealot]

To adapt this to a tech-head mindset:

Imagine that when smartphones were first coming out they could only function with recent battery-tech breakthroughs. Mass-adoptions was pretty quick, but there was scattered reporting that a host of usage patterns could cause the battery to heat up and explode, injuring or killing the user and everyone in a 5-10ft radius.

Now, the smartphone is a pretty darn useful device and rapidly changes how lots of businesses, physical and digital, operate. Some are pushing for bans on public usage of this new battery technology until significant safety improvements can be made. Others argue that it's too late, we're too dependent on smartphones and banning their public use would cause more harm than good. Random explosions continue for decades. The batteries become safer, but also smartphone adoption reaches saturation. 40,000 people die in random smartphone explosions every year in the US.

The spontaneous explosions become so common and normalized that just about everyone knows someone who got caught up in one, a dead friend of a friend, at least. The prevailing attitude is that more education about what settings on a phone shouldn't be turned on together is the only solution. If only people would remember, consistently, every time, to turn on airplane mode before putting the phone in a pocket. Every death is the fault of someone not paying sufficient attention and noticing that the way they were sitting was pressing the camera button through their pants. Every phone user knows that that sort of recklessness can cause the phone to explode!

You as an engineer know how people interact with the software you deploy, right? You know that regardless of education, a significant portion of your users are going to misunderstand how to do something, get themselves in a weird state, tap without thinking. What if every instance in your logs of a user doing something strange or thoughtless was correlated with the potential for injury? You'd pull your software from the market, right? Not auto-makers. They fundamentally cannot reckon with the fact that mass adoption of their product means mass death. Institutionally incapable.

The only responsible thing to do is to limit automobile use to those with extensive training and greatly reduce volume. The US needs blue collar jobs anyway, so why not start up some wide-scale mass-transit projects? It's all a matter of political will, of believing that positive change is possible, and that's sorely lacking.

[Skunkleton]

> The spontaneous explosions become so common and normalized that just about everyone knows someone who got caught up in one, a dead friend of a friend, at least

That’s an extraordinary claim.

[pastel8739]

This is a metaphor; do you think it’s an extraordinary claim to make for traffic accidents or even traffic deaths? To me it isn’t, at all.

[tempsaasexample]

Because more than half the people that die just did it to themselves via speed, alcohol or tiredness, cell phones, and often car maintenance too.

We all know we can die when we drive poorly or ignore shocks and tires. But we don't like the idea of dying because of someone else.

[hackable_sand]

I believe that is caused by having lots of cars driving around.

[mikeyouse]

American roads are uniquely dangerous for passengers in cars and for pedestrians compared to other developed countries..