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.
We can’t audit the code for humans, but we still let them drive.
If the output for computers driving is less than for humans and the computer designers are forced to be as financially liable for car crashes as humans, why shouldn’t we let computers drive?
I’m not fully in either camp in this debate, but fwiw, the humans we let drive generally suffer consequences if there is an accident due to their own negligence
Because there’s no valid excuse to prevent us from auditing their software and it could save lives. Why the hell should we allow then to use the road if they won’t even let us inspect the engine?
A car isn’t a human. It’s a machine, and it can and should be inspected. Anything less than that is pure recklessness.
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.
That wasn’t an opinion, it’s a statistic.
No (large public) company ever has altruistic motives. They aren’t inherently good or bad, just machines driven by profit.
You don’t need to put faith into companies beyond the faith that is put into humans. Make companies just as financially liable as humans are, and you’ll still see a decrease in accidents.
You mean those companies who will lobby and spend a fraction of their wealth to make those lawsuits disappear?
How is that different from the current system of large vehicular insurance companies spending a fraction of their wealth to make their lawsuits disappear?
It’s no different at all. We should have stronger laws for such scenarios.
So…
Your car is at fault. Their kid is dead.
Who pays for the funeral?
Does your insurance cover programming glitches?
I mean, why shouldn’t it? Is a programming glitch in a self driving all that different from a mechanical issue in a manually driven car?
AI driven cars are just as prone to mechanical issues as well. Is AI smart enough to deal with a flat tire? Will it pull over to the side of the road before phoning in for a mechanic, or will it just ignorantly hard stop right in the middle of the interstate?
What’s AI do when there’s a police officer directing traffic around an accident or through a faulty red light intersection? I’ve literally seen videos on that before, AI couldn’t give two shits about a cop’s orders as to which way to drive the vehicle.
You know what has much smaller fatality rates? Walking, bikes, trains and buses
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.
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.
I’ve worked on serious projects involving LiDAR. The LiDAR you need at these speeds and with this resolution cost almost as much as an Electric Car - it’s too expensive to reach wide adoption. But video processing with CNNs/RNNs has proven you can build the same level of data with cameras. You don’t even need binocular cameras now - if objects are moving you can generate binocular data by combining IMU data with time-series imagery.
As I understand it, Tesla’s delays aren’t related to image capture (which is where LiDAR could help). They’re related to trying to find universal actions to take against an almost infinite number of possible scenarios (mostly actions by human drivers).
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
I mean, there’s probably millions of drivers performing more driving and less than that of autonomous vehicles.
I personally can’t wait for autonomous vehicles to take over but the argument would be clearer with percentages and stuff.
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.
So are you talking about autonomous cars or…
If sarcasm could make the cars drive better I’d send you right out, but maybe you should leave the issue to people who at least understand the actual problem.
But are you the people who at least understand the actual problem?
Im literally telling you what they say in the articles about why they’re doing this and all you guys wanna do is joke and pretend theres no issues with an unproved technology because you saw some statistics about it. So compared to the other commenters in this chain Im Secretary Butigege.
Sir/Mam/Potato, you got my upvotes 👍
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
Can we instead have self driving buses?
I’m envisioning a system where you tell it your location and where you want to go, then it automatically sets up a route for the bus that coincides with where most people want to go and tells you to get off when it’s near your destination. This can work in conjunction with self driving taxis if no one else is going to your destination.
Maybe minibus but in no way it will works with full sized bus.
The ideal bus to commute is a bus line with frequent bus, you don’t have to check the time, just show up and in a few minutes there is a bus.You’re not gonna get self-driving buses without self-driving cars first, so this protest is directly fucking you out of what you want
Caving to corporations and spying on citizens isn’t how you get self driving buses.
Lmao
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0ddExZbKD8 but self driving?
The problem is no one will use them. Busses are full of homeless people and people that NEED to use them than they want to. I was a bus driver for many years. They don’t stop where everyone wants to go and it’s a necessity to most instead of an integrated way of life. The entire American culture would need to change.
This is not the case in places outside the US.
Absolutely! I drove bus in the city in question. So I thought I would add my anecdote.
Yeah. But US culture needs to change anyways.
For sure. However do you change something that is mostly government subsidized and everyone that manages the systems are happy with the operations?
everyone that manages the systems are happy with the operations?
Is that the case? I suppose most car drivers are not happy with sitting in traffic jams. Better public transport would help.
They are happy with their paychecks and lives. Yes.
Make them as unhappy as you.
The entire American culture needs to change.
I totally agree. I am not sure how that will happen.
I don’t know how it is in the US, but i can tell you that public transit is pretty good here in my city. A self-driving taxi would still be the ideal experience for sure, but taking a bus isn’t that much worse, and it’s definitely better than driving myself.
Busses are full of homeless people and people that NEED to use them than they want to.
I heard this is the case in the United States. In Europe, as far as I can tell, it’s more common that people from all backgrounds take public transit, including ‘higher’ class people. Of course exceptions and reasons exist.
That literally just proves that we do in fact need more busses. More vehicles would allow for a wider coverage with more frequent and well organized stops.
I like your idea, but implementing it is a bigger issue than you may realize. The transit systems in San Francisco are based on counties. Therefore it is a completely different governing body for each way out of the city proper.
But coverage does not change the usage. That is several millions if not billions to reroute a busline to go to a different area. If only 10 people get on every two hours then another bus in a more populated area is more financially sound. We can sit and say more buses are the answer, but people being willing to get on to the bus is a part of the equation. I don’t see how you are going to eliminate 2 extra hours out of everyone’s commute and make them buy into it.
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/
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.
The comparison needs to be normalized for distance driven. There’s far more human driven cars. But most humans don’t spend that long driving (I’m not sure how much of the day is spent driving by these AI cars, but they theoretically could drive all day long).
The quota also does say “involving”, which may include accidents where someone else hits an AI driven car. If so, that’s highly misleading.
To play devil’s advocate, how many AVs are on the road everyday? There are millions of cars on the road so naturally there are going to be a ton of accidents.
One of the car companies is quoted as having caused no serious injuries or deaths, so it seems like the 90 incidents number only includes those. Unfortunately the article doesn’t question those numbers or explain what is counted, which is very poor journalism. I don’t understand how they can write about the protesters’ motivations without asking how many moving violations those cars have caused, or at least mention that this number is unknown.
If the numbers indeed don’t count the times where they block traffic, stop for no reason or block emergency vehicles where they need to wait for the company to send someone out to the car, then AV’s could be far worse than human drivers, not only in the number of incidents but also in the total delays they cause. At least a human driver can be removed from the car so that someone more competent can take over and resolve the situation quickly. And a human generally doesn’t just stop in a lane and refuse to move out of the way for a very long time.
Another bonus: a human can just remove a cone from the hood and continue driving.
It look like a unicorn
This reads like something directly out of Deus Ex universe
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