Question!

[u/cherryyxsoda]

Does anyone have a good argument I could say back to the people who say things like “one day these cars are going to be so perfect and humans won’t be allowed to drive anymore”? I feel like these people are so deep into the hype they don’t even acknowledge any of the flaws with these stupid cars.

[u/Honest_Ad_2157]

They have been saying this for 80 years. For a start, ask them where self-parking cars are. Simpler problem domain, very low speeds, was going to be in every car by now if you read the marketing 20 years ago. Where are they?

Then escalate to the present and look at the entire history of missed predeictions by one vendor, Tesla.

Then Waymo: almost 22 years of work and they are nowhere near making money, burning through millions a day with clankers that are not demonstrated safe or effective. They're not nicknamed "Wayslow" for nothing. They kill pets in cities at a rate 3x higher than humans.

Read Paris Marx's Road to Nowhere for detailed arguments..

[u/cherryyxsoda → u/Honest_Ad_2157]

Thank you this is helpful, I sometimes can’t articulate exactly what I want to say when it comes to people who are for these. Is there anything you would add to the part of them saying “we should ban human drivers”?

[u/Honest_Ad_2157 → u/cherryyxsoda]

Cars ruin cities, I agree. Paris is getting it right.

Human drivers, even at their worst, are 99.9999% reliable. Human drivers—including drunk, impaired, and criminally underskilled ones—go almost 500,000 vehicle-miles between accidents and 100,000,000 vehicle-miles between fatalities.

No clanker comes close. Waymo touts their hundreds of millions of miles, but their comfigurations and software are so
different the odometer should be reset with each update.

Even without that, Waymos are barely 90% reliable. Every time they phone home for help? That's a software failure. Unreliable.

When you replace a 5 9's reliable system with a barely 1 9 system you get 2025 Dec 20 in SF during the blackout or July 4. Gridlock &
chaos.

We have 40,000 fatalities/year in the USA because we drive so damn much. If we drove less, we'd be safer.

David Zipper has pointed out the paradox of induced demand. Assume, for argument, these clankers are X% safer than humans and waaaaay more convenient. Every time we make driving more accessible, people drive more. Now if vehicle-miles go up by more than 1/X% because it's more convenient, more people die in car crashes even though each mile is safer.

Drive less, live more.

[u/El_Intoxicado → u/Honest_Ad_2157]

Although I don't agree in your opinion about "Drive less, live more", I totally agree with you in the other things that you said and it's refreshing. I am pretty tired reading over over and over again that "Humans are so unsafe, we must don't drive" to justify these abominations like FSD from Tesla (Legally is not self driving) or other robotaxis companies like Waymo. Noticing that you know from this topic more than me, What do we need to get rid off from this scourge? I mean, some people are fighting to introducing this trash in form of laws (national and international ones), restrictions and propaganda, but is there any hope?

[u/cherryyxsoda → u/El_Intoxicado]

Can I ask what laws you’re referencing? Are you just talking about the list of areas allowing these companies to test these clankers, or something else?

[u/El_Intoxicado → u/cherryyxsoda]

Well, both in United States and other parts of the world. They are making laws to introducing and legalizing these machines between humans for testing and economical reasons f.e UK, France an Germany have their ones.

The most concerning are the international ones, I am talking about the UNECE under 1998 accord where European Union, China and USA are parts of it. In this June, UNECE made a global technical regulation about autonomous driving systems, establishing strict standards in these systems but is a bad news for me, because they are recognizing it and is devastating. Now these parts must transtate this gtr to its own legislation, China for example it already translated it into two laws that are pretty tough.

I hope this automation fever would come to an end, but there are still too much things to be reckon with and is pretty exhausting to be updated.

[u/cherryyxsoda → u/El_Intoxicado]

I hoped so too. It’s just ridiculous. I think it’s one of the stupidest inventions ever created to solve a problem that doesn’t even exist, when they could focus on improving public transportation for the people that want it, and leave the roads to people who want to drive. That way it works out for everyone; the people that don’t want to drive can use public transportation, and the people who like to drive get better driving conditions, because the people who don’t like it will be off the road.

[u/Honest_Ad_2157 → u/El_Intoxicado]

Here's the advice of a Transdev employee:

"If there’s some anti-Waymo movement, the best thing to do is to get everybody to poop in one at the same time. That would be the best."

from “There’s a lot of cleaning up poop”: The Human Labor Behind Waymo’s “Autonomous” Vehicles

[u/cherryyxsoda → u/Honest_Ad_2157]

Thank you for all the insight and stats. I always find it funny when people, especially on TikTok, say “humans will be banned from driving in X years” when they don’t have any idea how shitty these clankers are, but yet they defend them so much.

[u/Honest_Ad_2157 → u/cherryyxsoda]

Here's an excellent quote from Fred Perkins, the Chief Engineer at Center for Auto Safety:

Note that average overall human performance is the wrong benchmark for AVs. They claim inherent safety because “They don’t drink, they don’t violate motor vehicle laws, they never get distracted,…” so they should be compared with a comparable human-driven base. When you exclude speeding and alcohol from official overall US traffic death stats as the AV industry insists, you are left with one death every human-driven 300 million miles. If you further restrict the statistical base to new cars, like AVs, with advanced automated safety features, you are closer to one death per 500+ million miles driven. AVs are not even close to that human driven vehicle fatality benchmark. So their operations should be allowed only with extreme caution if at all, panglossian PR notwithstanding.

[u/Honest_Ad_2157 → u/Honest_Ad_2157]

(Of course, AV's routinely violate traffic laws, so right there's a lie.)

[u/cherryyxsoda → u/Honest_Ad_2157]

This is so true, one of these people’s main arguments is always “well they don’t get drunk, distracted, etc so they’re already better than a human.” And like you said these cars violate traffic laws.

[u/Honest_Ad_2157 → u/cherryyxsoda]

Every time a Waymo phones home a drunk angel gets its wings.