[ebbv]

If you were to replace every human driven car on the road with only autonomous cars, I will agree with you that the accident rate would likely be much lower over all.

But there's two problems here:

1) We won't be replacing all the cars overnight. The problem comes with the interaction between terrible human drivers doing wildly unpredictable, insane things and the inflexible, unadaptable automated cars.

And

2) I'm not comfortable with dying or being injured due to a software error regardless of whether its likelihood is higher or lower. The roads are far more dangerous than the air, and this is why I'm uncomfortable with the whole concept of automated cars on the road and I'm not uncomfortable with autopilot in planes.

[comrade_ogilvy]

My experience as a human driver is that most accidents can be avoided by either (A) slowing down in ambiguous situations, or (B) aborting that lane change (usually because two cars are attempting to go into the same space).

Those behaviors are easily improved upon by software. Dealing with lane changes is something software is likely to be vastly better at, because they can point sensors in all directions -- I only have one set of eyes.

Furthermore, a lot of horrific accidents are because of bizarre unexpected things that the human does not react to in a timely fashion precisely they are so far out of the normal scope of traffic flow.

For example, what if a car coming the other direction drifts in front of you on a rainy night? This is an unfortunately common and very lethal kind of accident in rural areas. It will take you 1 to 3 seconds to interpret the scenarios and react appropriately. (You only get 3-4 seconds before your are killed.) A computer can instantly recognize that car 100 yards away is maneuvering in a potentially lethal manner and begin slowing down right now. That buys more time for everyone.

[JoeAltmaier]

Strangely, this might kill autonomous cars entirely. Any failure to properly respond to something bizarre can be the subject of a lawsuit that could kill the autopilot manufacturer.

Engineering solutions are a tiny part of getting this stuff to market.

[Amadou]

the interaction between terrible human drivers doing wildly unpredictable, insane things and the inflexible, unadaptable automated cars.

There are only so many things bad human drivers can do, the physics is pretty limiting. It isn't like they can teleport in front of another car. Even the craziest things like opposing traffic jumping the median into oncoming traffic isn't all that crazy, it isn't conceptually different from a deer jumping in front of a car.

I'm not comfortable with dying or being injured due to a software error regardless of whether its likelihood is higher or lower.

Hard to argue with that.

[ebbv]

> There are only so many things bad human drivers can do, the physics is pretty limiting. It isn't like they can teleport in front of another car. Even the craziest things like opposing traffic jumping the median into oncoming traffic isn't all that crazy, it isn't conceptually different from a deer jumping in front of a car.

I was thinking about your assertion that it's easy to solve, and why exactly I disagree with it so strongly on a base level. What am I basing this belief on?

And I figured it out. Driving games.

The AI in driving games like Gran Turismo has had more work than Google or any other company has done on theirs. And not only that, the AI in driving games has perfect information of the physics involved and the environment around them.

And those AIs are still fucking terrible when interacting with human players. Pack of AI driving around? Just fine. Add a human driver to the mix and it turns into a disaster.

This is why I am very concerned about automated driving in the real world alongside human drivers.

[Amadou]

First, I don't think it is easy. I just think it is feasible because it is a reasonably bounded problem.

As for driving games, those have a different set of requirements and incentives. Driving poorly isn't necessarily a bad thing from the position of game play.

[dylangs1030]

The AI in games like Gran Turismo is a terrible example. That AI is not designed to avoid accidents. Accidents are an acceptable part of the game play, and you're racing at high speeds above the norm.

It would be at least as difficult, or less so (but not more so) to program AI to interact with human drivers with the primary goal being safety, not speed and exhilaration.

[corin_]

> I'm not comfortable with dying or being injured due to a software error regardless of whether its likelihood is higher or lower.

Why on earth is dying due to a software error worse than dying due to a human error if you can chose one or the other, and the chance of a software error is lower?

[heurist]

Individual odds of being in an accident may be lower than the average. Software for all of the cars would be approximately the same, so the chances of being in an accident could increase for extremely cautious drivers. I doubt they would, personally, but it would be an argument against adoption until the cars are demonstrably safer than possible with human drivers.

[corin_]

If the chance of an accident increases then sure, be against that. And I've no idea what the chances are. But to say you'd rather have a higher chance of dying from human error than lower chance of dying from software error... doesn't make any sense.

[nightski]

The truth is our lives are in the hands of more software programs than we may care to admit.