Wiener's Eighth and Final Law: You can never be too careful about what you put into a digital flight-guidance system. - Earl Wiener, Professor of Engineering, University of Miami (1980)

It seems that we are locked into a spiral in which poor human performance begets automation, which worsens human performance, which begets increasing automation. The pattern is common to our time but is acute in aviation. Air France 447 was a case in point. - William Langewiesche, 'The Human Factor: Should Airplanes be Flying Themselves?', Vanity Fair, October 2014

Eventually mean/median system performance deteriorates as more and more pure slack and redundancy needs to be built in at all levels to make up for the irreversibly fragile nature of the system. The business cycle is an oscillation between efficient fragility and robust inefficiency. Over the course of successive cycles, both poles of this oscillation get worse which leads to median/mean system performance falling rapidly at the same time that the tails deteriorate due to the increased illegibility of the automated system to the human operator. - Ashwin Parameswaran (2012)

... from my fortune clone @ http://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup

That said, aviation accident rates have been falling asymptotically while this "troubling trend" has been going on. In the US we've had no fatalities on domestic commercial flights since like 2009, and only the two at SFO a couple of years ago on international flights to the US. This is on a couple of billion flights with hundreds of billions of passenger departures.

Airliner pilot discipline is orders of magnitude better than your average driver.

I'm a private pilot (general aviation, single engine cessna's). For the most part, our discipline is orders of magnitude higher than all but the best drivers. Airline pilots are orders of magnitude better than us. You are absolutely correct.

Not to mention the myriad of safety and control mechanisms in place on the aircraft (redundant systems etc) and away from it (air traffic control, IVR etc)

Airline pilot discipline was also probably pretty good fifty years ago yet the accident rate has dropped as the tech has improved.

A good pilot can sometimes recover from being given a bad aircraft. If the aircraft get better of course the accident rate will improve.

airline pilot selection plays also a role.

That's why at current we have 1.3 million people dying on the road in the US alone. It might make the matter of transitioning to self-driving worse, but it also makes manual driving worse.

The WSJ article includes NHTSA data indicating 'only' 35,000 traffic fatalities per yeah. Where are you getting this 1.3 million number from? That would be equivalent to a full 1% of US population dying on the road every 2.5 years

you're right. I googled for "number of car deaths in US" (or so I thought) and that number came up. 1.3M seems to be the number for world wide fatalities.

That number sounds like the worldwide number, not US. Many places have much, much worse road fatalities per capita.

Commercial air travel will serve just shy of 4 billion departures this year, with about 40 million flights.

You are correct in the ratio (1:100) but I think you mistook departures for flights and extrapolated 2 orders of magnitude too far.

> This is on a couple of billion flights

You sure about that number? Seems incredibly high to me.

"​Airlines are expected to operate 38.4 million flights in 2017, up 4.9%."

Maybe 3 billion passengers/year?

From http://www.iata.org/pressroom/pr/Pages/2016-12-08-01.aspx

This is a well-researched area, in addition to being pretty obvious to everyone. Personally, I stopped using cruise control years ago. If I have to pay attention, I'm better off driving.

This isn't just a matter for Tesla. The auto industry is rapidly heading for much better assistive driving systems. There's no way that the people heads-down in their cell phones are going to do this less once they realize they don't really need to pay attention.

Will accident rates get better overall anyway? Who knows? But systems that aren't intended for autonomous use are going to get used that way.

There was a cruise control ish system I heard about on a car (a Mercedes, iirc) in Germany when I was a kid: instead of a target speed, you set a maximum speed, such that pressing normally down on the gas allowed the car to accelerate up to that speed. It trims down the excess gas to avoid exceeding the maximum speed. If you released the gas, the car would coast; and if you pushed the pedal down close to the floor (i.e. "to the metal"), it would allow you to exceed the speed you'd set, for example to momentarily accelerate in order to pass.

I loved this system and have always wished for something like this on a car in the US. I've never liked the common cruise control in the US -- where you set a target and it applies the gas for you -- because I didn't like how removing my foot from the gas pedal moved my foot fractions of a second further from the brake in an emergency.

This is called a speed limiter and I LOVE it in my Mercedes. I set the limiter to match the road's speed limit and I can just drive without worrying that I'll get caught speeding. No need to constantly look down at the speedo.

Pointless in most reasonably modern cars which will chime alert you for any such problems (oil, fuel, etc). Much better paying attention to the road itself.

Clearly you don't live somewhere where speed limits are rigorously enforced. Setting a limiter frees you up from having to match the limit yourself and allows you to pay more attention to the road.

I think this was meant to be a response to this sibling post:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15095626

Probably did not wait long enough for the reply button to appear.

Except you should be checking your dashboard instruments every few seconds. Temperature, oil pressure, speed, fuel. I'm constantly doing this while driving. Road ahead. Mirrors. Instruments. Road ahead. over and over.

What are you driving that you need to check your temperature, oil pressure, and fuel every few seconds? If you don't, and you didn't have to check your speed, you could shorten your cycle to mirrors and road.

With a hot air balloon you have lots of time to respond.

Though I'd check my ballast too, and probably read a book.

> I've never liked the common cruise control in the US -- where you set a target and it applies the gas for you -- because I didn't like how removing my foot from the gas pedal moved my foot fractions of a second further from the brake in an emergency.

It's not even just that, it's worse at managing the use of the gas overall than a human with regards to cars as of 2015, it seems like the system is worse at managing the gas than humans are. I'm not a huge fan of cruise control as defined above because I find it makes me really inattentive (my problem, of course), but the benefit of not using the cruise control is that it seems like you get much better mileage. My family used to have to drive regularly between Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois for a few years, and I would always get better mileage not using cruise control than my brothers (who used cruise control) would. The difference would often be as much as half a tank of gas or more on older cars (2000-2010) and on relatively newer cars (2015) it'd still be a difference of a fair number of gallons.

I think the systems just aren't good at predicting when to coast and when to accelerate, and for very hilly regions, this means a lot of wasted gas.

I wouldn't be surprised if you were allowing speed to fall on those hills, while the cruise control systems were downshifting to get the power to maintain speed.

This feature exists in my Jaguar XF. Similar to the cruise control, you can set a 'max speed' and the car will simply not accelerate past that speed. I don't think I've tried flooring it to see if it would let me exceed it in that case though.

It will, there is normally a, "kick down" point where it will accelerate at max, for emergency situations. This also normally disengages the max limit.

Another feature is speed warnings, which "beep" at you when you exceed them. Currently they only seem to be singular, but it should be possible to integrate them with satnav and speed sign recognition. I expect these would be safer, especially if it linked up with a, "black box" to report excessive violations with a parent, insurance company, police etc.

It’s almost always standard in new European cars. I use it when I am in a speed-camera infested area.

That's just a speed limiter. Have it on my 4yo Volvo. Can be overridden by depressing the pedal fully to the floor (not a kickdown, before someone jumps on that aspect - it's a manual car)

That system sounds pretty fantastic compared to the dumb cruise control I have in my car. Though it's not as predictable for the people that don't understand how it works.

That matches the behavior of the speed control I've seen in Renault cars.

For me cruise control is just giving my gas pedal foot a break on long drives. I still have to constantly adjust the speed with my hands and the brake itself. I'm also steering and watching what I'm doing.

I drive with cruise control extensively. I tweak the speed with the up/down buttons as needed to compensate for passing or being passed. Thumb is ever ready on the cancel button which smoothly initiates coasting.

This way my foot can readily cover the break pedal and I initiate breaking much quicker than off-gas>on-break

> I stopped using cruise control years ago. If I have to pay attention, I'm better off driving.

I view cruise control as a safety feature. I can keep my foot hovering over the brake pedal instead of on the accelerator, reducing reaction time in a crisis. Maintaining attention on the road has never been a problem for me, though I suppose the hovering-foot posture helps.

I recently drove an Accord with lane-following and speed adaptive cruise-control recently. It completely failed (but thankfully by refusing to try) in the one instance that I wanted to use it (stop-and-go traffic), but it was nerve wracking when it was on as it kept losing the lane. People naturally alter the throttle and speed when going around corners and up slight inclines. It feels alien when that doesn't happen.

I have a Subaru with lane-following and adaptive cruise. Lane follow fails miserably because it keeps losing the lane boundaries, even on clearly marked roads. But adaptive cruise control works extremely well, and particularly shines in stop-and-go traffic.

One catch there is that it'll stop automatically, but it won't ever go if it came to a full stop - you need to tap the gas to reactivate cruise. If the car in front of you starts moving, but you don't move, it'll make a noise (both audio, and visual on the dashboard) to remind you that you're supposed to do that. I suppose that's a kind of a safeguard to keep the human alert?

I also drive a new-ish Subaru, adaptive cruise seems to work well in some situations (low speed stop-and-go, like you mentioned) but at high speeds it is terrifying... A speed that is reasonable on straight highways is pretty jarring around curves. If my foot is on the gas I'll subconsciously make the needed adjustment, but with cruise on I don't usually react in time.

This could partly be a consequence of living in the Pacific Northwest... lots of winding mountain highways!

I'm in PNW as well. I find that it works great on major freeways - e.g. I commute over I-90, and it works great there. On I-405 as well. On the mountain routes, like say parts of SR-202, yeah, it's ill advised.

On most highways you can maintain speed through curves, but not in the mountains, and they do warn with plenty of signs. So CC is not a good fit for mountain driving.

That sounds at least somewhat workable. The Accord seemed to drop out of cruise control if the speed dropped below 15-20 Mph, so it was entirely useless in stop-and-go, and even slow-and-go.

I've got the new Hyundai Ioniq with adaptive cruise control and lane assist. Last weekend I drove 160 miles with both enabled for the first time. I just found it shifted my focus. I was much more aware of what was going on outside the car. Setting the max speed to 75 mph enabled it to follow the car in front very effectively and overcame the incline and corner speed issue. Only problem was having to intervene to prevent under-taking.

I second the effectiveness and pleasantness of Hyundai's implementation. My 2015 Sonata has those features (its standard now, but was introduced that year for the Limited trim). It, combined with auto-hold to apply the brakes when the car stops, made road trips and slow going commutes so much more pleasant. It sucks for stop and go traffic, since it disengages when the car completely stops. But I can't fault a cruise control system for sucking at a scenario that doesn't actually involve cruising.

The 2018 model year (I believe) has full stop-and-go support. The previous two model years would cut out somewhere around 25 mph (this is what I have). It really is only for freeway driving outside of heavy traffic. I've used a 2018 CRV that has stop-and-go support and it's quite nice.

The lane tracking isn't that great, but I don't mind it that much. I don't use it much for normal driving, but I found it it's pretty fantastic in heavy crosswinds. The car does a pretty good job of keeping the lanes (assuming you can see them well enough) so you basically drive like normal instead of having to constantly fight wind gusts.

Under normal conditions it doesn't do enough to be terribly useful and less you're not paying enough attention… at which point you shouldn't be using it anyway.

Surely 'speed-adaptive cruise control' is an oxymoron?

Yeah, I stopped using cruise control years ago too - I moved to Los Angeles.

> Personally, I stopped using cruise control years ago.

Cruise control seems fairly harmless - you still have to keep lanes, and keeping your foot on the gas isn't particularly demanding either. I largely use cruise control because I am able to save on gas that way, by avoiding unnecessary acceleration/deceleration. Combination with lane following and holding of distance is more problematic imo.

It's mostly that I tend to drive on roads with at least a moderate amount of traffic. It tempts me to not optimally mix with other vehicles. I just got out of the habit of using it.

The traffic aware cruise control in the Tesla is very good in traffic. Especially stop-and go traffic. My passengers always tell me to switch it on because it gives a smoother ride than me. It's also much more relaxing.

Personally I use cruise control almost constantly, for the exact same reason. When you're watching the speedo, you're not watching the road.

> There's no way that the people heads-down in their cell phones are going to do this less once they realize they don't really need to pay attention.

The counter-argument is that they do this without Autopilot anyway. Given that they're already not paying attention, adding in Autopilot seems like a net gain.

Hence my comment that maybe accident rates improve anyway. Although it's hard to predict the delta between distracted driving/no automation and oblivious driving/imperfect automation. It's at least plausible that you have fewer but worse accidents when someone's watching a YouTube video and the car suddenly panics.

I’ve long wondered if people who extensively use advanced assist systems will see deterioration in manual driving aptitude, and if that deterioration will be restricted to the operating domain for the assist systems or be more general.

That's a well-documented concern in aviation. Hard to imagine it will be less prevalent in a population that doesn't even need to get re-certified now and then. General skills deterioration is probably not the issue that having to take over very quickly is, but it is one.

I wonder how much more the average driver's skill can degrade. We never re-train so isn't there a natural degradation already? Will automation make that worse or will it not be significant?

For the typical (certainly US) driver, the initial training is just to get to a minimally viable set of skills so they can pass their driving test. The vast majority of people aren't taking performance driving courses to get their drivers licenses. I'd pretty much guarantee that almost every driver is more skilled 10 years after they get their license.

I cannot comment on driving experience/skill since I don't have a driver's license but I frequently observe drivers without a working understanding of the traffic rules and signs, even though they once learned that in the theory classes.

I'm not sure that experience implies skill but you make a good point.

I've found that CC allow me to be more focused on the road, rather than looking at my speed every so often. My CC controls are on the wheel, so I can adjust it just by moving my finger, and I always keep a foot on the (accelerator) pedel ready to react as if I was maintaining speed with my foot. I know plenty of people that "rest" their foot while using CC, and that is just asking for an accident since the reaction time is longer.

If we're going to borrow from aviation, why don't automakers develop some rudimentary automation (not autonomy) that would help avoid the most common kinds of crashes? For example something that might be automated in a modern aircraft is change flight level. The pilot can command a change to a given flight level and the automation takes care of it. Why don't we have a "change lanes" command for cars? Changing lanes is a leading cause of car collisions, and even people who do it successfully forget to use their signals, check their blind spots, etc. It seems like this level of automation (not autonomy!) would be easier to achieve.

"Lane change assist" is already increasingly common in high-end cars.

https://www.autobytel.com/car-buying-guides/features/10-cars...

Achieved. Tesla autopilot can change lanes. It also has collision avoidance on all the time.

Tons of cars nowadays come with emergency automatic braking.

Tesla offers this in their current Autopilot solution. Turn on the turn indicator and the car changes lanes if it is safe to do so.

This is the same "aviation industry" which, domestically, has had a perfect safety record since around 2009? Not near perfect, not 99%, but literally zero fatalities?

Also, as a pilot, I can tell you that the Tesla Autopilot functions very much like what we have in planes. It steers the vehicle and significantly decreases workload while increasing overall safety but needs to be constantly monitored and can easily be misconfigured or operate in unexpected ways.