A drivers test is only 20 minutes. I suspect the vast majority of people would fail if the drivers test was the worst 20 minutes of their driving history.Well, drivers tests are designed to test the drivers understanding of road rules and laws, something I would think applies to AVs as well...
But tell me this, what are we actually testing here with AVs?
Currently it's only "can the car drive without a collision." Nothing else.
I'm sure Waymo et al have internal stats...but that's a practice test and it's never actually "graded by the teacher."
**WARNING THE STATEMENT BELOW CONTAINS A HYPERBOLIC SITUATION TO EXEMPLIFY THE ISSUE**
With the current "test" a Waymo could literally drive the wrong way down the freeway, causing 500 collisions among motorists trying to get out of it's way and still never have a single mark on the test saying it did anything wrong.
Obviously we should include causing third party collisions when measuring safety. I would hope that Waymo is required to save data so that it can be investigated if it’s suspected of causing collisions.
What should be the AV standard be for law breaking?
It seems to me that actual collisions are a much better indicator of safety since the sample size is so much larger than you would have for an individual human driver.