Safe Streets Rebel’s protest comes after automatic vehicles were blamed for incidents including crashing into a bus and running over a dog. City officials in June said…
Thousands of accidents a year from human drivers. I sleep
90 accidents a year from autonomous vehicles. Lazer eyes
You make it sound like it’s a 50/50 split between human drivers and autonomous vehicles, which is definitely not the case.
There are way more human drivers than autonomous vehicles. So, when an autonomous vehicle runs your child or pet over or whatever, who do you blame? The company? The programmers? The DMV for even allowing them on the road in the first place?
What’s an autonomous vehicle do if it gets a flat? Park in the middle of the interstate like an idiot instead of pulling over and phone home for a mechanic?
You need to first ask yourself if it more important to put blame than to minimize risk.
“Autonomous vehicles could potentially reduce traffic fatalities by up to 90%.”
“Autonomous vehicle accidents have been recorded at a slightly lower rate compared with conventional cars, at 4.7 accidents per million miles driven.”
That opinion puts a lot of blind faith in the companies developing self driving and their infinitely altruistic motives.
That’s one way of strawmanning your way out of a discussion.
It’s not a strawman argument, it is a fact. Without the ability to audit the entire codebase of self-driving cars, there’s no way to know if the manufacturer had knowingly hidden something in the code that might have caused accidents and fatalities too numerous to recount, but too important to ignore, that were linked to a fault in self-driving technology.
I was actually trying to find an article I’d read about Tesla’s self-driving software reverting to manual control moments before impact, but I was literally flooded by fatality reports.
Strawman arguments can be factual. The entire point is that you’re responding to something that wasn’t the argument. You’re putting words in their mouth to defeat them instead of addressing their words at face value. It is the definition of a strawman argument.
It is most definitely a strawman to frame my comment as considering the companies “infinitely altruistic”, no matter what lies behind the strawman. It doesn’t refute my statistics but rather tries to make me look like I make an extremely silly argument I’m not making, which is the defintion of a strawman argument.
The data you cited comes straight from manufacturers, who’ve repeatedly been shown to lie and cherry-pick their data to intentionally mislead people about driverless car safety.
So no it’s not a straw man argument at all to claim that you’re putting inordinate faith in manufacturers, because that’s exactly what you did. It’s actually incredible to me how many of you are so irresponsible that you’re not even willing to do basic cross-checking against an industry that is known for blatantly lying about safety issues.
It may be the case that every line of code of all self driving vehicles is not available for a public audit. But neither is the instruction set of every human who was taught to drive properly on the road today.
I would hope that through protesting and new legislation, that we will see the industry become more safe over time. Which we simply will never be able to achieve with human drivers.
What do you mean, I’m sure the industry whose standard practices include having the self-driving function turn itself off nanoseconds before a crash to avoid liability is totally motivated to spend the time and money it would take to fix the problem. After all, we live in a time of such advanced AI that all the news sites and magazines tell me we’re on the verge of the Singularity, and they’ve never misled me before.
I feel like I’m taking crazy pills because no on seems to know or give a shit that Tesla was caught red handed doing this. They effectively murdered those drivers.
So…
Your car is at fault. Their kid is dead.
Who pays for the funeral?
Does your insurance cover programming glitches?
If your insurance determined that an autonomous vehicle will cause less damage over time than a human driver, they will do that, yes.
Autonomous logic doesn’t pay insurance, does it?
If so, who TF is paying the insurance behind the scenes, and who is responsible?
If so, who TF is paying the insurance behind the scenes
The owner of the vehicle is probably very openly paying.
Here’s a question- if you have to agree to terms of service for the vehicle to function, and I’m guessing you would, is it really your vehicle?
We’re talking about autonomous vehicles here, no driver, company owned.
So is Alphabet responsible?
Do your homework, these vehicles are owned by the parent company of Google
and Apple, Alphabet. These vehicles have no private owner. So again, who TF is responsible?
are there actual datasets to look at and info regarding how data was collected? all the sources on that page are just domain links but don’t appear to point to the data making the claims?
4.7 accidents per million miles doesn’t mean much if the cars are limited to specific roads or include test tracks that give them an advantage. the degree of variance in different environments would also need to be measured such as weather effects, road conditions and traffic patterns.
I’m all for autonomous driving, but its not like companies don’t fudge numbers all the time for their benefit.
You know what has much smaller fatality rates? Walking, bikes, trains and buses
Story time…
I once had a crazy accident driving only like 15-20 MPH or so down a side road, then about 20 feet in front of me some idiot backed out of his parking spot right in front of me.
Broad daylight, overcast skies, no other vehicles blocking his view even. Dude just backed up without looking like a freaking idiot.
I responded in a split second. I did not hit the brakes, as I knew I didn’t have enough time or distance to stop. If I had hit the brakes, his car would have had more time to back out further and I would have smacked straight on into the passenger side of his car.
Instead of hitting the brakes, I quickly jerked the steering wheel hard and fast to the left. See, I knew an impact was inevitable at that point, I made that move to clip his bumper instead of smacking into the passenger side and ruining both vehicles.
Would an AI do that? 🤔
Would? Maybe, don’t know, not sure. Could? Yes.
They tend to work on basic sensors and simplified logic. They don’t tend to consider forward momentum and a vehicle pulling out perpendicular in front of you.
I believe half the programmers of autonomous vehicles never even drove a vehicle in their life.
It’s weird that you think this isn’t the suggested driving practice in such an instance
You blame your kid for playing in the street.
DARPA figures out how to safely drive cars using LIDAR. Musk asked for a self driving car. Engineers come back the LIDAR solution. Musk fires them, says if humans can drive with two eyes, then so can computers. Cameras are cheaper than LIDAR. Second group tries it with cameras, can’t get it to work, asked why they can’t use LIDAR. Second group of engineers is fired. Third group comes up with something that ‘kind of works’. People die. Big companies avoid self driving altogether, even though we have a perfect solution with LIDAR, all because Musk wanted to save a buck and can’t get out of the way of his engineers.
the real funny here is how the USA has the most lax driving test standards in the developed world resulting in crazy amounts of road traffic accidents and really high mortality rates, but instead of dealing with shitty driving at the source there’s a billion dollar industry in autonomous driving.
Exploitation is the American way, bro. Create problems where there are none, offer a solution, profit.
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When a for profit company is deciding how much time/energy/funds they want to invest in pedestrian safety, you get LOUD and you stay that way forever.
Your comment is blind to the reality we live in and the broken, out of touch people deciding if human lives are a businesses priority, and at what percentages, as these types of vehicles scale.
When humans get in an accident, there were choices/mistakes made, but there are things we can understand in certain situations and find closure often. When elon’s failed experiment decapitates your grandmother by driving her under a semi and sheering off the top off the car, you’ll probably never settle with that image as long as you live - and you’ll see elon in the news each day being a tool and never seeing justice for that moment.
There’s a difference with distinction in this conversation.
That’s a really good point.
Imagine your dog gets run over, you rush them to the vet but ultimately they die and your thousands out of pocket. You call the corporate helpdesk to log a claim because there isn’t anyone else to contact, they offer you $300 in credit for immediate resolution or you can dispute. You become upset because your dog was more than a credit refund, the call centre drone says that you’ve become aggressive, that you can call back during business hours and hangs up.
What a hell scape.
“But who do I sue” is also why it took so long for Linux to catch on.
But who do I sue. I hate America so much sometimes.
Oh ok I didn’t realize a person’s life was worth less of they’re killed by the mistake of another person instead of the mistake of a computer. Since it’ll be easier for their loved ones to blame a person and just get over it then that’s better. Thanks for explaining that!
Did you read the article? The protests are in favour of affordable public transit, instead of using ‘surveillance pods’ as a way to build even MORE roads. The accidents are probably the least of their concerns, although still on the list
90 accidents a year is a LOT, if you stop to think that there are like only a few dozens of them out there, versus more than a hundred million human drivers.
Comparing these two requires the number of cars with human drivers and the amount of time humans spend driving per year versus the number of autonomous vehicles and the amount of time they spend driving per year. I am not saying that you are wrong, I am just saying that comparing these numbers directly is like comparing apples with oranges.
I agree completely. My original post was just a stupid meme. I don’t really think putting cones on the hoods of the cars is helping and that it’s kind of dumb to do that and act smug about it. I’d rather people were sueing or something. I’m sure there is precedent for stopping manufacturers from making their vehicles more dangerous just to save a small percentage of money. I guess we do live in a capitalist utopia though so maybe I’m wrong but it seems like court might be more effective than trying to make these cars even more dangerous by adding a cone to the hood.
They stop for no reason, cause gridlocks that require a human to comd out to it and pilot it, they’ve run over fire hoses being used and don’t always get out of the way for emergency service vehicles. Nice statistic though.
I live in the area and the streets are just clogged with these fucking autonomous cars. Traffic is slower, people end up having to swerve, it’s just a constant persistent headache. If I had it my way, they’d all be off the streets and into the crusher
Almost like public transit is better than self driving taxis
Public transit is better, but self-driving taxis are absolutely coming to every city in this country, which is great if you live in a city like mine that has little to no public transport infrastructure.
Also, automated taxis can service more rural areas, which is the key driver of lack of public transport in many “commuter cities.”
Luddites gonna Luddite, but this tech is coming, and it’s coming to logistics and taxis first.
Yes, but SanFran ain’t one of those. Taxis have the same problem cars do, which is size.
I can tell you aren’t from SF. Because no one from here calls it SanFran. But I digress. Uber is huge here because it is where it started. And buses come with other baggage. Many homeless people and plenty of pervs doing shady things deter people from using the system regularly. Having seen the system it is substantial, but getting out of the city is the issue. San Francisco proper is very small 7x7 miles (49 square miles, Easter egg from being 1849 and the 49ers). But going anywhere outside of the city is where things take forever and why most affluent people do not use those systems. 2 hours back and forth is not economic on time.
No, I’m not. Homeless on our public transit isn’t an issue because our police actually responds to driver calls.
I am well aware of both the benefits of public transport and this image specifically. This is irrelevant to our discussion
It’s not if I’m arguing that self driving taxis are stupid
Self driving taxis aren’t stupid. They better fit the existing infrastructure within America.
Taxis as a whole generally serve a different market function than public transportation in the US.
Im all for gutting zoning, and building dense, walkable cities, full of public transportation free at POS - but that’s not the world we live in.
Self-driving taxis are such a massive net boon for people that it’s not even a comparison to the alternative
On that I will agree, but I still stand that self driving taxis are stupid. BUT, they are necessary due to how NA cities are built, and getting rid of them would require many other changes as well
Not for the profits of these private companies.
but they say automatic car is the future! (with more lanes) and due to a computer driving its faster! s/
I was in SF 4 years ago and it was insane how many self-driving cars were on the streets for tests. Especially on Lombard Street they just drove in circles. I can’t imagine how annoying this is for someone who lives there
City officials in June said there have been ninety incidents involving Alphabet’s Waymo and General Motors’ Cruise vehicles since January.
Compared to how many traffic incidents involving human-operated vehicles? Because if that number is greater than 90, the AVs are the safer choice.
Automated cars don’t have to be perfect; they just have to be better than people.
Bay Area native here. They’re also prone to dead stopping in the middle of the street and other moving violations, blocking emergency services and public transit in addition to normal traffic. Ideally, we’d like these vehicles to be held accountable for these violations like normal drivers: fines, suspensions, impounds. But we’ll settle for a human driver on standby who can immediately override the software when a moving violation occurs.
Compared to how many traffic incidents involving human-operated vehicles? Because if that number is greater than 90, the AVs are the safer choice.
Well that is simply flawed logic. How many autonomous cars are there compared to human-operated? Far far more.
How many autonomous cars are there compared to human-operated? Far far more.
I think you meant less.
Ideally, you’d be correct and we should be looking at per capita incidents- like how many incidents per 100 miles on the road or something. But the article just cited a flat number of incidents without contextualizing, which as you’ve pointed out can be misleading. Without knowing the ratio of AVs to human-driven vehicles, the best rebuttal that could be offered is “Yeah, but how do those 90 incidents compare to how people drive?”
Yeah sorry - I meant less.
And yep agree on all the rest. I was just triggered by the simple comparison.
This reads like something directly out of Deus Ex universe
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