What so many autonomous car advocates seem to miss is that it is nearly impossible to meaningfully compare relative safety with current self driving cars, because we don't have level 5 autonomy yet.
In order to compare them with current technology, you'd have to be able to answer the question: how safe would human drivers actually be if they didn't have to perform their most difficult tasks? Because that is what current autonomy does.
I'm willing to believe that current tech is capable of being safer than human drivers, simply because they do so many things way better than humans do, like stopping for pedestrians and safely navigating around cyclists. But to compare them in general, that is left to be proven. You can't just compare incidents per mile driven, because autonomous vehicles can conveniently opt out of driving whenever the task gets too hard.
It definitely tends to be the already safer driving, like highways, that they do well on. I have a Model 3, and trust it pretty well on highways. However it does not do turns at all, and other 'city driving' type tasks well. It can now do stop signs and traffic lights, which seems to be good so far too.
However, not living in an area with many sidewalks, I do not trust it for one second to navigate around pedestrians or bicycles. I don't think it will actually try to go around a bike but, I have never given it the opportunity to either. I take full control back and give them a very wide berth myself.
> You can't just compare incidents per mile driven, because autonomous vehicles can conveniently opt out of driving whenever the task gets too hard.
But isn't that kind of the point? We use autonomous driving for the tasks where autonomy is objectively better, and we have the human do what the human is still better at. Best of both worlds.
But that's not the goal of autonomous driving or the goal of most autonomous driving advocates. The goal is that you never need to know how to drive. It's essentially a taxi. Most people I know who are waiting for the autonomous driving future are waiting for one where they never have to drive.
I imagine now: "Sorry, can't drive through this thick falling snow. Must pull over and you must operate now, human. We are 100 miles from civilization in any direction and no cellular service is available, best of luck!" I cannot imagine that most future drivers who are minimally driving in their daily life will be able to suddenly handle
conditions that the "autonomous" vehicle cannot.
In order to compare them with current technology, you'd have to be able to answer the question: how safe would human drivers actually be if they didn't have to perform their most difficult tasks? Because that is what current autonomy does.
I'm willing to believe that current tech is capable of being safer than human drivers, simply because they do so many things way better than humans do, like stopping for pedestrians and safely navigating around cyclists. But to compare them in general, that is left to be proven. You can't just compare incidents per mile driven, because autonomous vehicles can conveniently opt out of driving whenever the task gets too hard.