Slashdot Mirror
Most Drivers Would Hand Keys Over To Computer If It Meant Lower Insurance Rates
Lucas123 writes "Most drivers would consider buying an autonomous vehicle if it meant their insurance rates would be reduced by 80%, a new survey of 2,000 licensed drivers found. Oddly enough, the survey by the online consumer insurance site Car insurance.com also showed that 75% of respondents think they could drive a car better than a computer. Another 64% said computers were not capable of the same quality of decision-making as human drivers. And 75% would not trust a driverless car to take their children to school. The survey also asked what commuters would be doing if a computer handled the driving: More than one-in-four would text/talk with friends; 21% would read; 10% would sleep; 8% would watch movies; 7% would play games; and 7% would work. The rest of those surveyed said they'd just watch the scenery blow by."
If car auto-pilot is like auto-correct, we're all going to die in really funny ways. No matter what the results of this survey say.
Sent from my ENIAC
lol... please... if everyone on the road had a robot driving the car, we wouldnt have need for car insurance. also, it isnt the insurance that would get me to have a robotic car, but the fact that i can play video games while it drives me places.
Hell, I'd almost pay higher premiums for the computer to do the driving.
Free Martian Whores!
You mean people will choose to save money while increasing their overall safety if statistically proven? Holy shit.. Next thing you will tell me is people will take medicine to save their lives. Crazy times we are living in these days.
Another 64% said computers were not capable of the same quality of decision-making as human drivers.
That's right. Based on my observations of human drivers (not to mention traffic fatality statistics and the nightly "single vehicle accident" reports), the quality would consistently be better. Don't mod me funny, please. I'm not joking.
Think of what most people do every day in a car... They get into it, sit in a traffic jam for hours as their lives waste away. Having a computer-driven car would be the best of both worlds - the convenience of not having to drive yourself or pay attention to the road, coupled with the convenience of because able to go directly from point A to point B at your convenience. I too would opt for this convenience if it was a mature enough technology.
Quite frankly, I would not object to this, provided we have a choice of purchasing it. (There would be privacy issues I'd like to see addressed prior to buying, and if I don't like what I see, I'd prefer to not be forced into it.)
If I could hand over the driving to the computer when I'm doing a long-distance drive, ESPECIALLY when driving on a major highway that goes through a metropolitan area like Washington DC, I would be all over that. If for no other reason that a computer will not succumb to "Brake Light Accordion Games", where the idiot ahead of me rides with their left foot on the brake.
I hate drivers that do that. They cause all the drivers behind them to step on their brakes, which causes a ripple-effect all they way back, resulting in a 3-mile stretch of highway where traffic is moving at a snail's pace, but there are no obstructions of any kind.
That reason alone is more than sufficient reason to turn driving over to a computer. I could hop on to the I-95 auto-drive lane and say, "Self-drive off. Destination Boston, Massachusetts." And just go to sleep for the duration of most of the drive.
Heck, if it's a Tesla, I could set it up to automatically drive into a SwapStation to change out the battery without even waking me up!
[End Of Line]
This seems to me to be a completely rational point of view:
- I think I am a better driver than a computer.
- I think insurance companies are not going to reduce my premiums if I let a computer drive my car, because I'm a safer driver than a computer would be.
- You say they'll reduce my premiums by 80%? Well, maybe I was wrong, and I'll actually trust the computer to drive. After all, insurance companies aren't going to reduce my premiums by 80% unless the risk from claims is reduced by at least that much.
Because in no small number of jurisdictions, it's required by law, if you own a vehicle and it is actually being used on public roads.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
No. Google's statements about their self-driving cars are just PR announcements. 300k miles without an accident (or whatever it is). No indication of driving conditions rain, snow, etc. Do the human drivers turn off the autopilot when they know they're approaching a situation it doesn't handle well? A good idea for safety, but a bad one for testing the cars. The truth is, we just don't know how good they are.
The question will actually be more like "would you keep driving manually if it meant 80% higher insurance rates?"
True, but we know that human drivers slaughter vast numbers of humans every year.
You mean people will choose to save money while increasing their overall safety if statistically proven?
You seem to have missed the part in which most people were of the belief that they would be decreasing their overall safety in exchange for more money. That's what it means when 75% believe that they would be better drivers for their children than an autonomous car and yet 75% would still take the money.
At the most extreme disjoint of the two sets, that means that 50% of people believe that letting a car drive their children to school would put them at higher risk, and yet they'd do it anyway for money. At least 2/3 of all the people who said yes, and it's likely more because there have to be at least some people who think it would be safer and who wouldn't do it in spite of the money for other unknown reasons.
That's kind of horrifying, actually, regardless of what you think about auto-drive.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Actually, we trust computers all the time, and you do too. I don't check the result of the computer's computation of the square root of 75.354, I don't check the sum on my sales slip, I just check if it lists the right items. But I don't add it up myself, I trust the cashier machine to be ok. (And I still have a pretty good idea how much the contents of my shopping cart will cost anyway.)
I won't hesitate to hand over control of my car to the car's computer, as soon as it is feasible. I wouldn't even ask for a lower insurance. Getting rid of tedious work is reason enough.
Why would a human pay to insure a car that they're not driving? Either I'm driving, and am accountable for my actions, or the computer is driving, and is accountable for it's actions.
As the owner, you could be considered your autonomous vehicler's steward. You are accountable because you purchased the vehicle and choose to allow it to drive on public roadways. It's your property, so your responsibility.
To the question of why a human would pay to insure if not driving? Because autonomous vehicles would reduce the number of variables associated with driving and probably reduce the number of accidents. Even if the software is flawed, it's behavior will be consistent with all the other autonomous vehicles on the road, so the risks are much more quantifiable and predictable. Having every vehicle owner pay a nominal amount to provide for the known flaws in the software that can result in accidents seems vastly superior to the massive crap shoot that is today's insurance landscape.
I never have been able to get my mind around the need for autonomous vehicles anywhere, with the exception of Disney World
You must not drive much, or follow the news.
I don't know how that differs from typical enterprise software, but plane crashes are rarely blamed on flight-control software bugs. (I know they do happen, but are pretty rare in comparison to the number of annual flight hours)
The failures of "flight control software" don't often result in "plane crashes" mainly because there is a licensed pilot who is highly trained in detection of those failures and how to deal with emergencies of all kinds while in flight sitting in the pilot's seat monitoring the operation. The recurrent training that commercial/ATP pilots must go through to keep their jobs focuses very little on normal flight operations and very much on dealing with multiple system failures simultaneously. Some are on the Kobyashi Maru level -- he's not intended to walk away from it, but learn how to better manage what he's doing. He's usually not "texting" or playing video games or reading a book or sleeping, and the failures that happen when he is doing one of those things do result in plane crashes.
Contrast that with the level of recurrent training a driver must go through to keep his license: fill out a form and send in a check. Compare the experience requirements for autonomous vehicle drivers and ATP: the former can go without driving for 8 years and legally hop into a car and drive somewhere. The ATP cannot legally carry passengers if he's gone more than 90 days without flying, and cannot legally fly at all if he goes more than two years. Actually, since commercial air carriers all operate under IFR, he can't fly for his job if he goes more than six months without flying.
Trying to use existing aircraft software flight systems as proof that autonomous vehicles will be safe when they finally reach the user is simply ridiculous. The level of user training in the former so vastly exceeds the level of user training for the latter that they are simply not the same category of problem. Add in the fact that a flight system failure at the flight levels rarely means death within 10 seconds, while veering into a bridge abutment or oncoming semi truck at 70MPH on the freeway does.
...what commuters would be doing if a computer handled the driving: More than one-in-four would text/talk with friends; 21% would read; 10% would sleep; 8% would watch movies; 7% would play games; and 7% would work. The rest of those surveyed said they'd just watch the scenery blow by."
So essentially the same as what most of them are doing now, based on casual observations.
True, but we know that human drivers slaughter vast numbers of humans every year.
Aw man, you've put me in the position of having to argue against an argument in favor of autonomous cars thanks to your bad use of math in an argument.
It doesn't matter if humans kill a lot of people on the road if Google's cars are worse. Without accurately knowing the risks of both methods of driving a car, we can't make a fair comparison. With a small sample set only publicly spoken for by a biased party, we can't yet make that assessment. That's the GP's argument. It doesn't matter what we know about humans if we don't know anything about the alternative.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
It's not just blindly following maps with GPS, you know.
*Nav system*: Ok, now turn left here to get onto the highway.
*Vehicle Guidance*: Um, when I look to the left, there's an obstuction in the way. It goes on for at least 4 or 5 car lengths. Could be a railing or a wall or something. I can't see an intersection anywhere?
*Nav system*: Shit. Keep going and I'll re-route. I'll beep and let the passenger know that something's up.
*Vehicle Guidance*: Fuck me, Nav system, you had ONE JOB. Now we have to deal with the passenger who's probably on Slashdot as we speak posting about his crappy self-driving car wanting to drive him off a bridge.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
The owner of the vehicle pays the insurance. It doesn't matter who's driving.
I told them I'd spend 100 minutes to save 100%. They didn't want to go along with that.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Just so I don't have to drive. I'm that lazy.
Phase 1: Private testing: IE what google is in now Compile data of every accident or near accident that the drivers saved themselves from by going manual.
Phase 2: Limited beta... IE google gives out 100 cars in the way they do with glass right now, slowly expand until about 5,000 cars are out for a year.
Phase 3: Public beta: This will technically be called release, but this timeframe is really going to be all about collecting massive amount of data, and waiting until autonomous cars are down to about 1% of humans
Phase 4: When we hit actual safety. Manual drive mode will be removed and outlawed. Software updates will become part of the safety inspections required on cars yearly. accident fatalities will drop into the hundreds.
Ontario has no-fault insurance as the standard car insurance now. That means that if you're injured in a car accident, if you get a note from a doctor saying you need something, you get it pretty much right away, and the insurance companies sort out the liability between themselves
Many states in the US are defined as "no fault", however it doesn't mean what you just described. In the US, "no fault" means that a law enforcement officer will assign fault in the accident, and then the rates of everyone involved will go up. In contrast, in states that are not currently "no fault", a law enforcement officer will assign fault in the accident, and then the rates of everyone involved will go up. See the difference?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
You failed basic economics? Of course, insurance companies aren't interested in lowering your bills, but they are interested in competing for your business. So, the companies that spend "five billion in adds [sic]" that they can save you 15% are the companies that don't have your business and want it, and they are getting it by telling you that you can get a better price from them. It's called a market economy, and it does lower your insurance rates, not because the companies "are interested in it", but because competition forces them to. See, the beauty of market economies is that they force companies to do things that they don't want to do, and they do this much more effectively than any regulation or other scheme could.