Meanwhile, Teslas run into the backs of car carriers because they only recognise the car it's carrying and not the truck bed extending behind it. It might react faster, but it needs to identify the danger first and up until now, it's much worse at that in many situations.

Yes, you're right, once it's safer, it's safer. That makes your statements just as vacuous as theirs.

And someone rear ended me the other day because they didn't notice cars were stopping. Yes, self-driving cars make mistakes, but humans make all sorts of mistakes, too.

The question is, do self driving cars have more accidents per mile (or more damage per mile/injuries per mile/ deaths per mile) than human driven cars?

"activating auto steer increased crash rate by 50%"

Tesla safety stats are ok when compared to the average car on the road. But that's because they are expensive, high quality cars driven by middle aged people. It's the safest car demographic on the road. When comparing auto drive teslas to equivalent luxury cars they look terrible. Though i think if you ignore the autodrive they're perfectly good cars.

They are absolutely not "less safe", because they are all human driven cars.

Why not say the rest of your argument with the fact that cruise control made cars "less safe than human driven cars" because people fell asleep at the wheel and drifted off the road.

Self-driving cars don't take risks when they make mistakes while humans are exposed to physical or legal consequences that are well understood by everyone on the road.

I know self driving cars feel different to us now, but they aren't really different in kind, just degree. I am sure people felt these concerns when cars were introduced in general.

It should matter if they have less, but in the real world it doesn't matter, because it's "scary" to be rear-ended by an unthinking machine, and business as usual to be rear-ended by a clumsy human, so people will always hold machines to a much higher standard.

Human makes a mistake, they could have been tired, distracted, got something in their eye, or anything else.

Machine makes a mistake, it becomes a question of why and will it make that same mistake every time?

This is very much a solvable problem.

If your standard is that self driving must be perfect then i'd argue you're being unreasonable.

If your standard is that self driving cars must be better than that is something that can easily be tested.

"Teslas" do not "run into the backs of car carriers".

I don't know where you are repeating that from, because you've clearly never driven one, but the core concept of autopilot is that the human should step in whenever a situation is confusing and/or dangerous. If the car does not recognize a situation it will always alert the driver to take over.

The parent poster was referencing this, which I found immediately using Google:

https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/cars/1231834/tesla-mode...

That's just your opinion, while my comment is a statement of reality as it stands.

> Evidence would be a deployed self-driving fleet.

This is also just your opinion. Evidence could also be a self-driving vehicle that doesn't drive under the beds of trucks, run people over or is statistically safer than human drivers.

> Now if you want theoretical considerations instead of evidence, then consider the lower reaction times of machines.

Consider the high error rate of machine learning when it comes to novel situations that driving exposes drivers to. Human beings can understand situations they are in and adapt based on that understanding, whereas this generation of ML does not.

Computers have the theoretical potential for a lot of things. The internet had the theoretical potential for mass informational enlightenment, democracy and resource allocation in the face of dwindling scarcity of resources.

Instead, the computers and the internet have become tools of mass manipulation, weapons for totalitarian regimes, and despite an abundance of food, people still go hungry.

I understand that a lot of people are sold on hype, and believe promises that were made, however the results are just not there.

The relevant part is the last: "statistically safer than human drivers."

Every driving system that has existed or will exist will make errors due to extremely novel situations. Given the energies involved, such errors will lead to crashes, some of which will be horrible.

The standard for self driving systems is, at a high level, simple: statistically safer, by a fair margin, than human drivers.

Considering other utility unlocked by autonomous cars (e.g. less stress, life-hours freed up, helping the disabled) they could even be marginally less safe than human drivers and still provide a net benefit.

And not just that, but individually they have to be seen as safer. As in, I am not going to be happy with a computer driving me around that is merely safer than an average driver. Given that I'm middle aged, don't drink and drive, or drive while exhausted, etc, and I haven't ever caused an accident, I'm going to need a little more assurance.

I believe Elon Musk has talked about targeting '10x safer' than an average driver. My guess is that's a sufficient margin to cover the vast majority of better than average drivers.

No, perhaps I am to blame for incomplete quoting, but you're asking for evidence about the future, whether machine learning will be able to tackle this problem. So it's not just about current computers but also future computers. We can make predictions, but hard evidence would require a time machine or some first-principles proof that humans are the optimal arrangement of atoms for car control.

> however the results are just not there.

Well of course, but what information does that add to the discussion? That level 5 autonomy is an achievement that lies in the future is a premise of this thread and I think most people take this as fact. Bemoaning the absence of evidence for the results of a technology that's expected to only arrive in the future... doesn't make sense.

Reacting quickly except in emergencies is almost always worse and more likely to cause an accident in an environment consisting mostly of human drivers.