Yes it should be (imho) at least an order of magnitude better than humans before we consider it OK to not pay attention.
Not a few percentage points better as you say.
However, to overcome media drama, it probably will need to be not just one, but more like three or four orders of magnitude safer than humans, because of the “oh look, a Tesla had an accident” effect.
Getting much better than the average human is achieved by a lot of humans. Deaths per mile are about 30x lower for bus/coach compared to cars, about 4x lower for vans and about 50x higher for motorcycles. There's a lot of variation. https://www.statista.com/statistics/300601/average-number-of...
If you assume vans have about the same crash protection as cars and some van drivers are idiots then I'd guess you could get 10x better than the average human just through driving skill/technique.
> Deaths per mile are about 30x lower for bus/coach compared to cars
Per passenger mile. So if busses have 30 people on on average, the accident rate could be the same, just typically only one passenger dies.
That also makes sense with the vehicle characteristics. It's much harder to die by being ejected from the vehicle or by intrusions into the passenger compartment in a bus. Also, heavier, longer bus = more gentle deceleration.
Your statement might still be true (and I suspect it broadly is), but it just isn't backed up by the cited data.
Not sure I follow. I would think the rating of how much better they are would be applied only to the non-culpable driver? But you are saying the metric should taint that driver with the fact that they didn't manage to avoid an accident caused by someone else? I sort of get it but not sure if it makes sense... can you say more?
Or maybe I'm overthinking it and you're just talking about how hard it is to get the statistics (number of accidents) down overall?
You're overthinking. Fault is a legal construct to help decide liability. What we really care about is if we're dead or not. Insurance is there to take care of the rest.
Since drivers under the influence are less likely to die in an accident because most drugs either relax the muscles or delay reflexes enough to keep the body relaxed during an accident, preventing a lot of potential injury, it's an important nuance to consider. If the people most likely to drive drunk are the least likely to adopt self driving cars, there is an absolute floor to how much safer they can be.
Yes it should be (imho) at least an order of magnitude better than humans before we consider it OK to not pay attention.
Not a few percentage points better as you say.
However, to overcome media drama, it probably will need to be not just one, but more like three or four orders of magnitude safer than humans, because of the “oh look, a Tesla had an accident” effect.