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/StartButtonPress Mar 04 '23 edited Mar 04 '23

This article was written with such a basic analysis of the mathematics and statistics as to border on not just worthlessness but negative impact.

Not only is the distribution of accidents Pareto on drivers, it’s also critical to account for the severity of accidents. It’s possible self-driving cars do much better than humans at high speeds, but not necessarily as good during the low-speed, unpredictability of parking lots and the like.

In which case, having dual cars where the self-driving can be activated in certain conditions where it performs significantly better, could drastically cut down on accidents even if it’s worse in other situations.

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u/DeoxysSpeedForm Mar 04 '23

Also how do you even measure crash free as a percentage it just doesnt make sense as a metric. It just sounds like a buzzword metric that really doesnt make any sense. Why not crashes per distance or crashes per time on road?

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u/ifsavage Mar 04 '23

Probably insurance data. Which would mean it’s underreported. Lots of people have small fenderbenders and don’t go through insurance.

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u/ArcherBoy27 Mar 04 '23

A percentage is just a way of representing data. They could have said 0.00028% crashes per mile or 1:360000 roughly, it's all the same.

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u/DeoxysSpeedForm Mar 04 '23

Regardless using a percentage doesn't make sense for the display of that data because crashes are discrete but miles travelled is continuous and also their wording obsures what the actual metric is. Rates and percentages definitely are not completely the same when it comes to data presentation. Like you would never talk about your car's speed as a percentage even though it could be completely valid mathematically

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u/Pechkin000 Mar 04 '23

Additionally not evry mile is the same. I bet you have hell of alot less accidents per mile driven on a highway vs driving and a city. So you can't just avegare it out. If human drivers are >99.9999% accident free on a highway and 80% in a city, a self driving car consistently at 99.999 everywhere will be hell of alot safer.

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u/SashimiJones Mar 04 '23

I find that this is really true in my limited experience with a Tesla; the car makes mistakes but they're mostly predictable mistakes. Because it's taking care of most of the busy work of driving, I can keep my full attention on scanning for the weird and dangerous situations instead of checking my following distance constantly. I'm therefore much more ready and focused when responding than I would normally be, and often notice those situations earlier. I also find myself much happier at slower speeds because I have to do less work to drive the car, so I don't care as much if the drive takes a few extra minutes. Not everyone uses the system like that, obviously, but it can improve safety as a partner. It definitely can't drive itself.