Interesting video but he played a bit loose with the facts. He talked in great length about that car where a woman was killed by a self driving car, but left it a crucial detail: there was a safety driver on board who didn't do her job. Doesn't exactly help with credibility.
That's a real world example of what happens when you have self-driving (even in beta mode with some safety features turned off to prevent that from happening). Obviously the driver this manually override and stop the car before hitting the person. It doesn't even need any searching: the story itself makes that clear if it mentions the car hit someone.
I don't think missing out this fact is all that relevant to the overall point he was trying to make here. These companies are claiming this technology will be safe and it clearly isn't. A safety driver's reaction time is also likely less than a regular driver's as they may not be as connected with the vehicle through the steering wheel and pedals while in self driving mode. The tech in the car may have also influenced the safety driver's judgement about the situation.
Well, formerly operating companies. The Uber and Cruise examples stopped both of them dead. Uber left the business entirely and Cruise had its license to operate revoked.
That's just omitting info. There's also straight up wrong stuff, like residents not wanting it. As crazy as it sounds, at least with SF, the residents' reps wrote the regulation law and haven't had a measure to reject self-driving cars (at least K passed). The majority want to see these cars. Also, Facebook dumped their move fast motto a decade ago because of how bad it was (self-harm problems).
It's unfortunate too. I like Jason's rants, but it's too distracting when he gets a quick google level of facts wrong.
A lot of this is a game of probabilities, which I don't really think we have.
For instance if a normal human driver, without any automation, can prevent 80% of dangerous situations, but the automation can only prevent 50%, and in those situations the human savety driver can prevent only another 50%, because of inattention, this results in just 75% of dangerous situations prevented and the automation is worse.
Maybe someone knows the real probabilities, I don't.
Waymo's are going 100,000 trips a week right now, no drivers, no deaths. If Tesla didn't cheap out on all their shit, not nearly as much fear mongering would be going around. I keep seeing people thinking people drive better, they don't. It's like road rage, everyone thinks they are the good driver and everyone else is at fault. Yet people are constantly crossing lines, not stopping soon enough, looking away at their phones, eating, drinking, checking on their kids, talking with someone in the back seat, having phone conversations, texting.
Remember the complaints about cars automatically braking? It supposively reduced rear endings by 50% and injuries by 56%. That's because we are distracted, all of the time. If you have any emotion, you are distracted. Elated that your date went well? More likely to kill someone, mad about the argument with your family member, more likely to kill someone.
We just want to be in control, so people are afraid of it.
Another great video by NJB. I found the speculations made in the video about the future of self driving cars to be pessimistic but can totally see the future ending up exactly as he describes it.
I agree that it is somewhat pessimistic, but the key part is the amount of money in it. History has shown that capitalism (especially in the US) has long lasting impacts that we cannot comprehend yet. I think clear regulations and safety standards are crucial to make AVs useful for people.
Yup. The worst part is how the problems AVs claim to solve are already solved using existing technology that have other benefits like fewer emissions and physical activity.