[wongarsu]

In the US, 11 deaths per billion miles driven (or about 47k per year) is currently seen as an OK cost.

More than twice as much per mile as places like Sweden and Switzerland, and still substantially more than places like Canada, Australia or Germany (all three in the 6-8 deaths per billion miles range). So it's not like there isn't room to improve. The effort to do so just isn't seen as worth the cost at the societal or government level

Turning that into a monetary cost would change the ethics slightly, but it wouldn't be a monumental shift

[scoofy]

The issue here is that a lot of the concerns about AV's are orthogonal to the standard metrics of concern.

I'm a strong transit alternatives advocate, but even I recognize that a firetruck or ambulance being blocked by an AV has the potential to cause an outsized amount of death and destruction, because deaths aren't always linear and a fire that is able to get out of control can do catastrophic damage compared to a single out of control vehicle.

I'm genuinely stunned that AV's do not have the ability to be "commandeered" by Police/Fire/EMS in a pinch, and I'm honestly surprised that regular citizens can't just hit a red button that signal "this is seriously an emergency." These are fairly simple steps to mitigate the tail risk of AV's but the platforms aren't going to prioritize that if there are no incentives.

[hombre_fatal]

We already accept that it’s fine for human drivers to block emergency services and we generally refuse to build, say, bus and bike lines that can be used by emergency services.

So the uproar over AV’s blocking emergency vehicles seems incredibly manufactured or inconsistent, much like the hoopla over AI and water.

e.g. You can take anyone complaining about this and you’ll find they didn’t care about emergency vehicles or water until just now regarding one thing. I’d like to see some consistency.

[scoofy]

The difference is blocking emergency vehicles in predictable, high traffic areas that can be intentionally avoided vs randomly blocking an entire road because you couldn’t handle a weird event.

People actually think hard about these problems. The entire point of my post is that it is trivial to mitigate.

I was in the middle of the SF blackout, and witnessed the Waymos stopped at lights and actually commended Waymo for handling the emergency so well. At the same time, I’ve seen many ambulances get blocked just seconds away from the hospital because of Waymos unable to navigate complex intersections like oak/fell and stanyan.

[Natsu]

> I'm genuinely stunned that AV's do not have the ability to be "commandeered" by Police/Fire/EMS in a pinch, and I'm honestly surprised that regular citizens can't just hit a red button that signal "this is seriously an emergency."

The passenger of a Waymo can, but not anyone outside it. There's a very prominent "call for help" button on the screen when you get inside.

[scoofy]

A “call for help” button is customer service. The ability to say “this is the police, drop everything and attend to this car” button would be helpful.

[Natsu]

I've never actually tried it, but I would expect customer service to be able to move the car out of the way or push it to someone who can remotely pilot it.

[scoofy]

Again, the main issue is that these things can cause problems with nobody is in the car. It shouldn't even be a debate. Emergency services should have a key that unlocks them and allows them to be commandeered. Everyone inside is being filmed all the time, so anyone going for a joyride is being watched, the car could be shut down remotely, and the person could trivially charged with a number of felonies, and then that access key could be removed.

If Waymo can't play well with emergency services, then they've got long term sustainability problems.

[gsnedders]

At least in SF, there’s both a phone number and a QR code on a sticker on the driver-side window, and per what’s linked from https://waymo.com/firstresponders/ it seems like that’s a dedicated phone line.

I wonder quite what the priority matrix looks like for support requests; I’d expect something like:

1. First responders 2. Human-initiated in-vehicle 3. Autonomous-initiated vehicle

But I of course don’t know.

Buttons are something that seem inherently obviously (both internal and external), but I’m also never sure quite how useful they’d be: a lot of the things that have gathered press have involved vehicles driving when it was unsafe to do so, and then any external button is of minimal use.

I also expect they have some level of concern about anything external having an abuse potential? (e.g., deliberately walk in front of an AV just to stop it in the road)

Something like “give first responders some mobile app which provides some level of direct control” feels like it should be doable (authentication there seems unlikely to be harder than the various “educational” authentication gates that Alphabet has in many products) — though of course that doesn’t scale with more AV operators, and thus maybe this just falls into the category of “this should be standardised” (by whatever SDO).

And some can clearly just leverage existing datasets — many jurisdictions have ways to publish things like “this road is closed from X to Y”, and you can imagine a slightly broader case of “close a radius of Z from point A” being something you might want, especially in the AV case (imagine a “police incident” closing an intersection, such as the one a Waymo drove through a few months ago — you probably want to close a bit beyond the interaction itself in all directions!).

And sure, to some extent things can be handled by AVs getting better at understanding their surroundings, but we’ll always have the question of whether they’re good enough, especially when they fail in non-human like ways.

[Natsu]

Interesting, I can't say I've seen that sticker, but I've never looked for one there, either, as you're not supposed to use the driver's seat and it's always buckled up.

[retired]

Don't forget to add rail incidents to that metric. I live in Spain, this year we had 4 derailments for a total of 48 deaths and 195 injured. The USA has had 0 passengers killed or injured from train accidents this year. Portugal had 15 death after a tram derailment. In Amsterdam, the tram is more dangerous than the car.

Also Germany is very high (for European standards) because of the Autobahn. They can save around 140 lives a year by having a limit on the Autobahn but the car lobby in Germany is very strong. Those 140 lives are seen as an OK cost just to go vroom on the Autobahn.

[Levitz]

>I live in Spain, this year we had 4 derailments for a total of 48 deaths and 195 injured.

Which, to be clear, is a considerable outlier. Highest since 2013 and about double the deaths and 4x the injured of a "normal" year.

Not to mention that trains are far safer than automobiles too.

>The USA has had 0 passengers killed or injured from train accidents this year.

Is this a fantastic, magical year or something? The normal number seems to be around 800 a year? https://www.kochandbrim.com/study-train-accident-deaths/

[retired]

Your number includes suicides, trespassing and more. Only 24 passenger deaths in a ten year period.

[HALtheWise]

> Not to mention that trains are far safer than automobiles too.

This claim is situationally true, but not universally so like many people seem to believe. For example, Brightline rail service in Florida has been operating since 2017 and averages (by my math) 29.8 deaths / 100M passenger-miles, while the road system in Florida averages 0.89 deaths / 100M passenger-miles. Those deaths are mostly not suicides, and imo we should treat pedestrian deaths from trains as substantially more morally weighty than passenger deaths, since it's a victim that didn't opt-in to the risk.

For what it's worth, the unusual spike in Spain train crashes this year seems to have pushed them barely over the fatality numbers of Spanish cars (0.91 deaths/100M pax-mi vs 0.73 for cars) but that's pretty clearly an outlier.

If you measure per vehicle-mile rather than per passenger-mile I'm pretty sure trains are always way more dangerous, although that's a less fair comparison.

[lancebeet]

Hm, it's only something like 10% of German traffic fatalities that occur on the autobahn. And according to wikipedia, Germany doesn't rank high in terms of traffic fatalities, even by European standards. France has a similar number of highway deaths. I'm personally not a fan of the autobahn and especially not the unrestricted speed. It seems obvious that it should cause lots of fatalities, but the evidence for it just doesn't seem to be there.

[gsnedders]

https://www.spiegel.de/auto/aktuell/tempolimit-koennte-jaehr... claims a 75% higher fatality rate on unrestricted autobahn v. autobahn with speed limits.

But in general: freeways/motorways (whatever you want to call them) almost never account for the majority of fatalities anywhere — there’s a lot that makes them safer than the average rural road even given comparable speeds, and there’s fewer vulnerable road users around.

[AlecSchueler]

> It seems obvious that it should cause lots of fatalities

That's not obvious at all to me, what would the reasoning be?

[lancebeet]

Maybe I expressed myself poorly. Generally, higher speed is associated with higher fatality rates, all else being equal. So, one would assume a highway without speed limits would cause lots of fatalities. Most people would probably be surprised to learn that this is not the case.

[watwut]

If there is anything remotely potentially dangerous, unlimited speed ends and the road gets well defined and enforced speed limit. If the traffic on that segment of the road gets high, they put in speed limit sign too.

Moreover, there is a question of liability for the insurance purpose. If you go above 130, you are assumed to be caused of the accident. So, most Germans go roughly 130 in those segments anyway.

[andrepd]

What. in god's name are you saying?

> Don't forget to add rail incidents to that metric. I live in Spain, this year we had 4 derailments for a total of 48 deaths and 195 injured.

Yeah and how many in the 15 years prior? 112. Of which 80 were in a single (TGV) crash.

How many people die each year in Spanish roads? Thousands.

> The USA has had 0 passengers killed or injured from train accidents this year.

Can't have rail accidents if you don't have rail *taps side of head*

> Portugal had 15 death after a tram derailment.

Oh my god, after a 140-year old tourist attraction malfunctioned! Hardly representative of any transit system whatsoever.

> In Amsterdam, the tram is more dangerous than the car.

This is just not true, by any metric.

And also, why are cars comparatively less dangerous in Amsterdam than in most other places? Because it is not designed for cars first, there are low speed limits enforced by traffic calming (like speed humps and narrow cobbled streets) everywhere.

[retired]

> Can't have rail accidents if you don't have rail taps side of head

The USA has the world's largest network with 220000 kilometers of rail

> This is just not true, by any metric.

In Amsterdam the tram is 57x more deathly than the car.

https://www.parool.nl/nieuws/al-twee-doden-dit-jaar-hoe-onve...

Trams in Amsterdam should be replaced with busses. Busses stop much faster and don't weigh as much. Trams are literal death machines. It's really scary to ride bicycle in Amsterdam and hear the ding-ding-ding when you are about to be run over by a tram and you quickly have to move over.

Also you seem to be a bit confused, Amsterdam does not use narrow cobbled streets for traffic calming. Maybe you are thinking of France or Belgium.

[gljiva]

No. The traffic rules for trams or tram stop positions should be adjusted and people in Amsterdam should be educated to behave around trams, i.e. in traffic in general if they want fewer deaths.

There are literally marks on every step of their path "tram is going through here, coming from there", so those that die anyway should be the ones at fault. It's horrible that they die, but banning trams is not a valid response to it. After the people have started behaving like that around trams, there isn't really a reason to assume they won't start being (even more) reckless around the less predictable and bulkier busses. You fixed braking time, but cyclists get clipped more often going out of their track as they do already. I mean, look at the description of an accident: allegedly she wore a hoodie with headphones and some stops after the intersections incentivize higher tram speeds.

Start fixing that before banning the safest and the most efficient form of transport (57x more than cars, with the amount of cars they have, number of close interactions with cyclists/pedestrians, and the imposed traffic rules for cars, isn't really a valid multiplier), scrapping all the tram lines and adjusting road tracks widths just to have buses brake harder on asphalt isn't really a fix of the problem, just a reaction to a symptom.

[retired]

You sound like someone trying to justify guns. "People should be educated to behave round them". No. Trams in Amsterdam are very dangerous and replacing them with long busses makes everything better.

Tram is not the safest form of transport, that would be the bus. As stated trams are way more deadly than cars.

And no, trams are not marked. Not in Amsterdam. Trams share the exact same path as pedestrians and cyclists, they don't have their own lanes for most parts of the route.

What about people who are visually impaired? Have hearing troubles? Should those people just stay home?

[gljiva]

Well, I hope you don't have a say in that matter, not because you disagree, but because you ignored all of the reasoning behind my points, just to repeat the same.

Your analogy about guns is irrelevant because all the negative aspects of advocating for guns are missing here, while education is always helpful. I am advocating for the safest and the most efficient option for everyone. And I said why is it so. You only mentioned braking time/distance without any evidence about buses being less lethal in the long run when substituting trams:

The same braking time can be achieved by decreasing the trams' speed (30 km/h to 20 km/h) around pedestrians and cyclists, which is more efficient than removing the tram network, making space for buses, buying and maintaining twice as many buses for the same throughput, and replacing the asphalt quite often. Keeping the trams will decrease the likelihood of pedestrians and bicyclists being clipped by bulky long buses (double the number of encounters compared to trams), while still making it easier for everyone to know where the tram may come from whenever they see the tracks (and it can't swerve, so a person knows exactly how to move in a close encounter), so that they can steer clear of its path and only cross it after they make sure there is no tram passing. Introducing the buses either reintroduces toxic exhaust gases, or buses' weight advantage gets massively decreased by carrying the batteries, while increasing the tires' and asphalt damage and shedding. Also, it doesn't mean that the trend of increasing recklessness won't continue around "safer" vehicles: I bet people were more wary of trams before, just like they are in other cities with trams.

Recklessness and abandonment of personal responsibility for own safety shouldn't be a reason for everyone else to bend over backwards. There is enough of a safety net for the wannabe Darwin award winners as-is, with trams in place. Decreasing speed, moving the stations ahead of intersections, and raising awareness that the trams are still dangerous is a reasonable change of policy. Even a pilot-project driving buses on a dangerous tram lane could be reasonable, to gather data. Blindly overhauling the whole network without a strong indicator that it's even a move in the right direction, just to maybe find a way to prolong the lives of those who themselves don't really care about their lives.

Btw, visually impaired and those of bad hearing generally know very well to use their other senses to stay safe in this as well as even worse conditions. And are better off with rails marking the trams' path (or even other markings, if introduced), than relying on the buses' braking distance.

And please avoid pretending to be dumb and saying that the trams are more deadly than the cars, without taking into account how separated the cars' roads are from pedestrians' and cyclists paths as well as their passenger throughput in Amsterdam and their speed limits. If Amsterdam had the same throughput of passengers in buses instead of trams, with buses equally mixing with pedestrians and cyclists, I bet the situation wouldn't be much different, with you equally fixated only on absolute numbers multiplier, asking for trams.

Btw, why don't you ask for cars to replace the trams? Buses, despite not being as mixed with pedestrians as trams are, racking in kilometers after midnight and between cities like cars do, still cause 15x more deaths per km than cars do.

[aidenn0]

> Can't have rail accidents if you don't have rail taps side of head

Sure the US has low rail-usage per-capita, but it's still enough for 50% more passenger-kilometers per year than Spain.

[ruszki]

There is a reason for that “per billion miles range”.

[biophysboy]

Coming from a bio background, I’ve always been confused why auto fatality stats are normalized per miles driven. Epidemiological metrics like incidence or prevalence seem like they would work fine? Town A would be “safer” than town B if people’s commutes are 20% shorter, even if accidents occur w same frequency

[andrepd]

Because it yields a simple corollary that to make travelling safer you can reduce the number of miles driven. Mostly by giving people viable alternatives to driving, be it long-distance rail or bike lanes to move around quicker and safer in the city.

[Aloisius]

Pretty sure I've seen exposure-adjusted incidence rates used in clinical trials.

Miles is simply a proxy for exposure.

Given risk here does vary by exposure time and trip length varies so much, it seems reasonable to use - at least in combination with crude rates.

[biophysboy]

Fair point - a combo might be the best approach.. I understand the idea of accidents correlating w/ miles driven, but it seems to be optimizing for driving safety rather than human life? Does that make sense?

[_vertigo]

What are some other better ways to normalize?

[gsnedders]

Other common approaches:

1. Per capita

2. Per registered vehicle

3. Per trip

All of these have upsides and downsides (as does “per vehicle km”), and all will paint different pictures with different distortions.

[biophysboy]

Honestly, just per 1M person per year. If this normal incidence went up while the exposure incidence rate went down over 20 years, I'd wanna know.

[cozzyd]

Per trip?

[themafia]

> 11 deaths per billion miles driven

You should calculate how many are "single vehicle accidents" and how many are "multiple vehicle accidents." In the US the majority are single vehicle.

> seen as an OK cost.

You cannot build a system that stops every stupid person from doing something stupid without introducing absolute tyranny.

[JumpCrisscross]

> it's not like there isn't room to improve

Losing one's license means destitution for many Americans. That places practical limits on enforcement compared with less car-oriented countries.

[OptionOfT]

I'm from Belgium, and even with public transportation, there are a large group of people dependent on their driver's license.

But if you ask someone if they'd drive without insurance, or without driver's license they look at you like you've asked them to do the impossible.

Whereas in the US no-one bats an eye when that happens. Half the time the cops just issue a ticket, and don't even tow the car.

And now people who obey the law need to take out extra insurance for under/uninsured motorists.

[JumpCrisscross]

> if you ask someone if they'd drive without insurance, or without driver's license they look at you like you've asked them to do the impossible

To wit: Europe's 1.8% (and Belgium's 0.7%) uninsured-driver rates are a fraction of America's 15% [1][2].

[1] https://www.mibi.ie/ireland-may-have-highest-level-of-uninsu...

[2] https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-uninsure...

[retired]

In countries like The Netherlands it is impossible to drive around uninsured. So that is probably why the number is so low.

[JumpCrisscross]

> it is impossible to drive around uninsured

How?

[retired]

Because fines are automatic. If you register a vehicle to your name and don't insure it within 28 days you get a €500 fine. The government can fine you up to three times a year for a total of €1500. And that is if you actually pay the fines. If you do not pay the fines and let the fees stack up, you are looking at around €4500 per year.

And if you are caught driving uninsured that is a €700 fine on top of all that. With many police cars now having ANPR systems it just isn't possible to drive around uninsured without receiving fines that cost way more than just getting insurance.

[aziaziazi]

> there are a large group of people dependent on their driver's license

Are there "no licence cars" in Belgium and the US ? Basically a moped motor and a seat inside a box. 45kmh and no highway, but a bit more confortable and fast than a ebike for rural environment.

[tmtvl]

Those do exist in Belgium, but (joke starts here) that's because Belgium is enormous, far too large to get proper public transport going (joke ends). I am seeing more and more cargo e-bikes (e-cargo bikes?), which I find a positive change, though it does differ from place to place (Antwerp's fairly okay for bikes, same for Leuven, Brussels was pretty bad last time I was there).

[Avicebron]

Not really, the cross section of people who lose their license/insurance and those that could use something like an ebike reliably for their commute is practically zilch. The US is really big and a lot of people have rural 30+ minute commutes where it snows ~6 months out of the year.

[aziaziazi]

Oh I was’t clear: I’m not talking about an ebike but a very small and underpowered car like this one https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35210572

There’re somewhat popular here for those that doesn’t have a licence and offer some of the advantage but are less dangerous to others.

[andrepd]

> The US is really big and a lot of people have rural 30+ minute commutes

The size of the country in which a commute is contained is immaterial to the length of that commute. What you mean is not "the US is big" but "things are really far apart in the US". Which they are, but precisely because of car-centric (car-only, actually) design.

[retired]

Things being far apart in the US predates cars. Rail made that possible.

[vector_spaces]

You are right that this happens frequently in the United States compared to Europe, but you are overstating the degree to which this culturally and legally acceptable. People who are doing this are not typically broadcasting it to others, and I can assure you that when they do, for the most part people will tend to "bat an eye" at the very least.

Note that motor vehicle insurance in most of Europe is more tightly regulated and generally more affordable than in the United States. Also, I suspect the car-dependent individuals in urban areas with robust public transportation in Belgium are generally vastly higher income than the typical uninsured compulsory driver in the United States. Happy to be corrected though

[JumpCrisscross]

> you are overstating the degree to which this culturally and legally acceptable

In Florida it's a $150 fine [1]. If you do it again within 3 years, they charge you $250. If you do it again within that three-year period, they'll just charge you $500 each time. It's not even a crime [2].

[1] https://www.valuepenguin.com/auto-insurance/florida/penaltie...

[2] https://www.kevinkuliklaw.com/is-it-a-crime-to-drive-without...

[vector_spaces]

What point are you trying to make?

If you can be fined for a behavior, and lose privileges like the ability to operate a motor vehicle, then it is not legally acceptable.

[JuniperMesos]

> But if you ask someone if they'd drive without insurance, or without driver's license they look at you like you've asked them to do the impossible.

> Whereas in the US no-one bats an eye when that happens. Half the time the cops just issue a ticket, and don't even tow the car.

A lot of the people driving without insurance or licenses in the US are illegal immigrants, which means enforcement of driving illegally is caught up in the same cultural-war fight over immigration law enforcement that has dominated American news since Trump got re-elected. "And now people who obey the law need to take out extra insurance for under/uninsured motorists" is specifically an anti-illegal-immigrant talking point.

[jeromegv]

It’s almost like there’s consequences to making it as hard as possible for people to be legalized.

[JuniperMesos]

It's equally a consequence of not immediately arresting and deporting illegal immigrants the moment the government learns about their presence on US soil.

[alamortsubite]

The easy way to accomplish that would be to go after the businesses that employ them. At this point, however, I think it's safe to assume it's not the real objective, and the economy would crash into a ditch if policy was anything but theater.

[embedding-shape]

> Losing one's license means destitution for many Americans.

That'd be the same for a Swede who lives in the middle of nowhere too. Although I'm sure both groups, if they'd loose their license, would continue driving anyways.

[pixel_popping]

Clearly, a bit weird to assume that no license would automatically mean that the driver stops driving, that's not true at all.

[danaris]

...But what percentage of Swedes is that? vs the vast majority of working-class Americans.

Remember, outside of its few biggest and wealthiest cities, the US just does not have decent, reliable public transport, and most places don't have any.

[retired]

And how many Americans live in places without any public transport?

As a European I spend some time in LA and Las Vegas and while not optimal I could get everywhere without a car. I could even do a day-trip to Bakersfield by bus.

[jeromegv]

Your anecdata to this one time you took a trip to California doesn’t help.

You can just look at % of urban residents that use transit, which is lower in US than any western country. Clearly transit isn’t built or available in a sufficient way to majority of people

[HDThoreaun]

Tons of options other than removing the ability to drive. More stringent enforcement, higher fines.

[Aurornis]

> So it's not like there isn't room to improve. The effort to do so just isn't seen as worth the cost at the societal or government level

That effort being what, exactly?

Road fatalities per mile driven don’t translate cleanly from country to country because the type of roads and even types of deaths (single vehicle, multi vehicle) are different.

We could set the speed limit at 25mph everywhere and force all vehicles to not exceed that limit and that would make the number go down, but the cost would be extreme for everyone.

So what, exactly, are the solutions you are proposing?

[testing22321]

> That effort being what, exactly?

Off the top of my head you could do any of these or a combination.

- much stricter training and testing to get a license

- vehicles where the safety of others is considered

- ban stupid dangerous cars (my wife doesn’t stand as tall as an F350, let alone a kid

- harsher penalties for drunk driving (see Germany)

- harsher penalties for all kinds of dangerous driving

None of these are hard to implement, the US just lacks the will.

[hluska]

Doesn’t that 11 per billion statistic include commercial drivers as well? And doesn’t the United States have by far the largest percentage of commercial miles driven of any developed nation?

There’s a far cheaper solution available. Log books.