And this is the classic theory vs pragmatism problem in a nutshell. You've done a good job of explaining why humans SHOULD be horrifically bad drivers in theory.
There is a slight problem. In practice, in actual measured statistics, we're utterly fantastic drivers despite all the reasoning.
We need a baseline. How about trains? Trains in the PTC and semi-PTC era don't (can't) speed and are monitored to crazy 1984 levels, usually there are two employees in the cab (not counting subway type things, I mean real Amtrak here). Trains don't have steering wheels, usually can't spin out, etc. Still the death rate is about 1/2 per billion passenger-miles. What can I say, brakes fail, drivers have heart attacks, rails crack. Its apparently impossible to put squishy humans in a sealed box and toss that box around at 90 MPH without killing about one per two billion miles. Note that's to the moon and back 4000 times, safer than even spacecraft.
The death rate for passenger cars is about 7 per billion passenger miles. A little higher for trucks/SUVs, a little lower for cars (cars are safer on the road, more stable).
That's only about 14 times worse than trains.
Anecdotally human drivers do dumb things, because there's 7 billion people and world wide networks every form of idiocy is known to all, yet simultaneously its very rare. Anecdotally a billion passenger miles isn't very far, so every year we stack bodies like cordwood, sadly. But even on the ultimate in safety, a train, we'd still have 10th the number of dead. By reasoning the ratio should be immensely larger than 14, like 1000 or 1000000. But its 14. That has to be answered...
Even crazier to consider is the death rate has dropped by a factor of 3 since the 1970s due to better engineering and regulation. We KNOW how to lower death rates using existing techniques. Yet we also know software written by humans is basically worthless. So given a choice of strategies to further lower death rates, given the track records I'd trust the MechEng and CivEng a lot more than the CS department.
A factor of 14 reduction in death rates is unfortunately far more likely to come from the MechEng/CivEng grads than the CS grads, and I say that as a CS grad.
I'm with you up until the software being inherently unsafe bit. I've seen a lot of code I wouldn't trust with anything, let alone my life, but in your own examples: trains are partly safe due to automation, warning systems, etc. and cars have gotten safer at least partly due to things like ABS and traction control which rely heavily on algorithms. However, those are relatively simple systems compared to a self driving car and a lot more "bugs" will likely show up as more AI drives more miles.
While I agree about good measurements and need for baselines, death rate isn't it. When cars collide, you get really high number of injuries and deaths. For example there are almost 20x more injuries to pedestrians than deaths. It's nor fair to exclude them from those stats, since that can be a permanent and life changing injury.
We probably don't get any more people decapitated with the steering column. But it doesn't mean they are completely fine after the same collision.
Thanks a lot for making me aware of transportation safety statistics, it's a fascinating topic. And I really was surprised to see that death rates for passenger cars are only about an order of magnitude worse than train's.
I just wanted to note, that planes have a several times lower death rate than trains: 0.07 per billion passenger miles according to the sources I've seen. Maybe this could be a hint that safety in trains could still be improved?
No, that's just because flights are longer distance than train trips on average. It doesn't really make sense to compare transatlantic flights with a commuter train...
Ground failure can knock out a train (say the collision system breaks or the politicians are bought off to not require modern PTC). Ground failure can't knock out a plane but it could theoretically knock out a car so I think its a good comparison.
Also when planes encounter bad weather or ... events of any sort (erupting volcanoes?) planes working with ATC can use three dimensions to avoid the hazard. In that way trains have it worse because they can't just tear off across farmland to avoid a tornado and they only have 1-D mobility (speed). I acknowledge its unfair for cars because of the denser road network they have 2-D mobility.
Also the security and 1984 style monitoring and monday morning quarterbacking is brought to a fine art in the aviation community, far beyond the train community.
On one hand the airplane industry is rapidly moving maintenance offshore unregulated uncontrolled facilities, which will likely impact accident rates in the future, although not so bad right now. On the other hand its hard to maintain a train or its tracks offshore, which leads to inherently higher quality, but rushed jobs due to the expense.
There is a slight problem. In practice, in actual measured statistics, we're utterly fantastic drivers despite all the reasoning.
We need a baseline. How about trains? Trains in the PTC and semi-PTC era don't (can't) speed and are monitored to crazy 1984 levels, usually there are two employees in the cab (not counting subway type things, I mean real Amtrak here). Trains don't have steering wheels, usually can't spin out, etc. Still the death rate is about 1/2 per billion passenger-miles. What can I say, brakes fail, drivers have heart attacks, rails crack. Its apparently impossible to put squishy humans in a sealed box and toss that box around at 90 MPH without killing about one per two billion miles. Note that's to the moon and back 4000 times, safer than even spacecraft.
The death rate for passenger cars is about 7 per billion passenger miles. A little higher for trucks/SUVs, a little lower for cars (cars are safer on the road, more stable).
That's only about 14 times worse than trains.
Anecdotally human drivers do dumb things, because there's 7 billion people and world wide networks every form of idiocy is known to all, yet simultaneously its very rare. Anecdotally a billion passenger miles isn't very far, so every year we stack bodies like cordwood, sadly. But even on the ultimate in safety, a train, we'd still have 10th the number of dead. By reasoning the ratio should be immensely larger than 14, like 1000 or 1000000. But its 14. That has to be answered...
Even crazier to consider is the death rate has dropped by a factor of 3 since the 1970s due to better engineering and regulation. We KNOW how to lower death rates using existing techniques. Yet we also know software written by humans is basically worthless. So given a choice of strategies to further lower death rates, given the track records I'd trust the MechEng and CivEng a lot more than the CS department.
A factor of 14 reduction in death rates is unfortunately far more likely to come from the MechEng/CivEng grads than the CS grads, and I say that as a CS grad.