[SystemSafety] AI in self-driving cars? What are they thinking?

[Peter Bernard Ladkin]

On 2022-02-07 12:12 , Bradshaw Benjamin Dr. SLH DIRDI wrote:
> Do you think it is correct to link current road fatality rates with national tolerance for road
> fatalities.  

Yes. It is clear that road fatality rates as currently experienced in the US would not be and never 
have been acceptable in the UK, for example.

I picked the three countries in which I have about a couple decades living experience, so I am 
familiar with the social constructions around road safety in each.

They are also each unusual in that GB was the first country with overall speed limits (70mph, from 
1965); the US the country with the lowest overall speed limit (55 mph from 1973); and Germany the 
only country in Europe, I think, with no overall speed limit on some roads ("rural" autobahnen).

The most interesting case is the US. The 55mph limit was encouraged/imposed (Fed said to the States 
"do it or no money from us any more") in 1973 because of the oil crisis. However, accidents, and 
especially fatal accidents, reduced so drastically that it took decades to raise them - no 
government wanted to preside over an increase in "highway fatalities" (as they call them there). 
Meanwhile, cars were getting more resilient in accidents (thank you Ralph Nader), so that when the 
limit was extended to 65mph on "rural" freeways/turnpikes, the uptick was low compared to what had 
been usual before. But, as I noted, that is from a base level that would be unacceptable in the UK.

> what about road safety investment per person ..... ?

That is a quantity which is objectively very hard to measure. More motorways. More bypasses. More 
roundabouts. All tend to enhance safety but the main motivation is usually traffic relief. Do they 
count as "safety investment"? Maybe, in proportion. Then, what proportion and why?

In contrast, safety for vulnerable road users is mostly still just a thought in the heads of 
community-minded politicians. Interestingly enough, Germans are bigger on that than Brits or Amis - 
at least, North Germans. There is now in Germany a regulation that you have to give cyclists 1.5m of 
room when passing. Many drivers still don't, but many do. That is rather more than what is typical 
in the UK or US (in the US, you still find drivers who like to force cyclists off the road, because 
they don't think cyclists "belong" there, and you still find police who ticket cyclists for 
"obstructing traffic" by riding at an appropriate distance from the side of the road).

The clearest demonstration I had of that was the first weekend of lockdown, March 15 2020. There 
were almost no cars on our relatively well-travelled rural-ish main road, because, I take it, people 
felt they had nowhere to go. But there were large numbers of families with small kids out on 
bicycles on the road.

Going to the farm store 4km away on a Sunday, I would usually encounter one or two recreational 
racers in training. That day, 15 March, I encountered 20 to 30 families. For the first time in 
anyone's lives, they all felt it safe enough to go out riding with the kids. And they were right, it 
was. Those first couple of months were riding bliss. That is a conception of road safety I wish more 
people shared.

PBL

Prof. i.R. Dr. Peter Bernard Ladkin, Bielefeld, Germany
Tel+msg +49 (0)521 880 7319  www.rvs-bi.de




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