Comment by Gravityloss | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Gravityloss | Hacker News Reader

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The systems probably already have some kind of an estimate of "surprise possibility in the next 3 s".

For example on a narrow road with a building right in the corner, going around the corner, anything might happen. You don't know what's around the corner. So the system will either go so slow that there's ample warning time or then require driver attention already before attempting to turn, because the driver needs to be ready to react to potential up-and-coming new information fast.

In contrast on a wide highway, it's a more easy-to-estimate environment, visibility is better etc. So as long as other cars are far away and the velocity differences are not huge etc, the driver can stay inattentive.

The challenge self driving cars face is that being "overall better" is probably not enough. Regressions in certain segments would hardly be acceptable for anyone. You can't tell people "FSD cars lowered overall deaths by 10% but we now kill 30% more toddlers because [technical reason]", or that "highway deaths are going up", or basically any segment that anyone could reasonably care about. Cars have to match and exceed human drivers in every category for them to be acceptable, and even 99% there may not be enough.

Another point is that there is a psychological difference between sitting behind the wheel in a vehicle knowing that around 10 in 100,000 people get themselves killed each year, and then sitting in a machine that kills 10 out of 100,000 people each year.

In the first situation, you feel in control, and at least think that you can do what is necessary to avoid that you end up in the statistics.

Personally I would be very skeptical about trusting my life to a machine that has a non-zero chance of getting me killed, even if the machine, on average, performs better than a human, because most of us think that we are better than the average driver.

Unless, you know, there’s a reflective truck passing by. Or faulty recognition of lines on the road steer you straight into a barrier.

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