Item — HN Reader

> Ultimately, people will vote with their wallet.

Nope, you need a regulatory approval, insurance etc. Self driving cars need to be 10x the average driver. So the trillion dollar question is when Lidar will meet all requirements and when camera-only.

1) Both in 2028

2) lidar in 2030 and cameras in 2035

3) Gov will require lidar for full self driving

1 comments

> Self driving cars need to be 10x the average driver.

Why? So long as they're insured and their owners can be held criminally liable for injuries just as a human driver would be, why does the bar have to be higher?

Because driving risk is far from evenly distributed. If a self-driving car drives like an average human driver, for responsible drivers, this would mean incurring more risk by getting into one.

A huge portion of the risk of human drivers is due to confounding human factors like negligence, distraction, medical issues, fatigue, etc. Responsible drivers can take most of these factors into their own hands -- not driving while sleepy, not driving drunk, not using their cell phone. These people don't want a vehicle

A better comparison would be comparing the capability of a self-driving car to the skill of a human driver driving under ideal circumstances of health/responsibility/etc.

We don't measure aggregate risk by discarding a part of the population, even if it's the poorer-performing part.

Even today, you cannot fully avoid this risk: when you get into a vehicle driven by a stranger, you don't know a priori whether the driver is excellent or average. Ideally customer feedback weeds out poor drivers and reduces accident rates, but I'm not privy to data that would prove or disprove whether that actually happens - especially because new drivers join the pool every day.

We absolutely can and do mitigate these risks when getting into vehicles driven by strangers: professional drivers typically have higher standards for driving history, and people can physically observe whether a friend/etc is drunk/distracted/etc.

But besides that, the people who are in the socioeconomic demographic to buy an expensive self driving car overlap with the demographic that have lower driving risk. For them, the self-driving car is more dangerous than driving themselves.

That suggests the comparative bar should be "professional driver," which is perhaps somewhat higher than "average driver" (1.5x? 2x?) but not 10x higher.

That sounds reasonable for a practical general regulatory standard.

For a personal standard, it is reasonable that an individual purchaser may use their own risk profile as that standard... as many of the risks involved are not random but can be controlled through choice or are inherently personal. For example, about half of all traffic deaths are due to drowsy or drunk driving.

Accident risk for any given driver is highly distributed. For someone making a marginal choice to purchase a car, the choice they are faced with is choosing between the safety profile of a self-driving car and their own personal risk profile.

1) Marketing and PR - people fear self driving cars

2) Politics - loss of jobs and urge to ban them - there needs to be a counterargument

3) Government does mandate a lot of safety features. Just insure it wont fly as this is number one risk for everybody.