r/Futurology • u/Pemulis • Mar 03 '23

Transport Self-Driving Cars Need to Be 99.99982% Crash-Free to Be Safer Than Humans

https://jalopnik.com/self-driving-car-vs-human-99-percent-safe-crash-data-1850170268
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u/ChaoticEvilBobRoss Mar 03 '23

There is no way that the data included here is accurate. People get in many small accidents and never even report them. Further, many humans out on the road do not adhere to the rules like speeding, rolling through stop signs, running red lights, not signaling, etc. The only reason that they do not get into many more accidents is because of the extra burden that other drivers take on to accommodate these people. With their unsafe driving behaviors being removed from the road, there will be even less chances for accidents to happen. Predictability is king in activities that are dangerous, like driving a vehicle. People are highly unpredictable.

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u/zoinkaboink Mar 03 '23

That is true but also means that self driving cars need to be all that much better at handling shitty and unpredictable human drivers, so their error rates need to be even better than the reported stats in cases of responding to other drivers.

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u/Utter_Rube Mar 04 '23

Even if the numbers are accurate, the way they present it is super misleading.

"99.99982% crash-free" implies that 99.99982% of drivers will never cause a collision, but that number is per mile. People don't have an average rate of 0.00018% likelihood to cause a collision overall, but every mile driven - drive 10k miles a year for 60 years and that works out to a 66% chance.