Human Error and the Impossibility of Automation

When it comes to the ever growing treasure trove of humanity’s greatest inventions, no invention comes close to the automobile. Transportation serves as one of the pinnacles of mankind’s achievements, as the limitation of distance no longer holds back ingenuity. Creativity and options abound as people no longer need to dedicate the majority of their time in transit. Long gone are the days of “hiking 10 miles to school and back, uphill, BOTH ways” as even the LONGEST commutes account for only 10% of the average day. Less time traversing means MORE time spent living, and further innovations ensued. Sadly, with great power comes great responsibility, and as the years pass, it becomes more and more apparent that people cannot have good things. Our cars may go fast, but the faster the car, the more devastating the crashes. For decades we’ve attempted to mitigate the downsides of automobile collisions, and to no avail. Every day, more and more people die in car accidents, and more and more loved ones are lost to the failures of our system of transit. Let’s discuss the various solutions humanity has attempted to prevent the many tragedies that have unfolded on our roadways.

The first and seemingly bullet proof plan to combat car crashes was to require training before being allowed to drive. Proper drivers ed courses informed drivers of all the rules and nuances of traversing our roads, plus relevant drivers assessment would factor out incompetence during transportation. If a crash occurs due to a driver’s inability to drive, then less drivers would be subject to crashes spawned from inexperienced or incompetent drivers, right? While this plan sounds full proof, it has two fatal flaws. The first flaw is timing.

A driver who passed their test may not be able to pass their test on another day. Sometimes driver’s make mistakes in a fit of road rage, sometimes drivers fall asleep at the wheel from exhaustion, and worst of all, sometimes drivers operate a vehicle under the influence of alcohol. All three of these examples can be reduced down to the description of “incompetence”. Knowing how to keep your composure, taking care of yourself, and understanding when you’re unable to operate a vehicle are all very important facets of being a driver. Under a perfect system, people who regularly manifest these issues in their driving would NOT be allowed to have a license, but this idea simply bears light on the second issue of driver’s assessments. A test that determines a drivers competency, can only be as accurate as the competency of its proctors.

Everyone makes mistakes, and everyone has bad days, and that INCLUDES drivers test staff. All tests, and all assessments, have a margin of error, no matter the competency of the person proctoring said test. What happens when a test proctor is tired during the test, what happens when they personally know the examinee? There are all manner of reasons that a drivers test may be inaccurate, leading to the bestowing of a driver’s license to someone who will go on to cause horrific tragedy due to their incompetent driving. But all of this negativity begs a question, how do we deal with the natural inaccuracies of our current drivers license system? How can we account for human error as a whole? Depending on who you ask, there really is only one solution. Self driving cars.

On the outset, self-driving cars seem like a perfect and viable solution. If human error is what’s keeping us from having safe roads, then we simply must remove the human element. Self driving cars have a higher success rate than human driven cars, and with advances in AI and self-driving car technology being made every single day, it appears to be the simplest and most viable solution. Tech bros and musk-fans will swear by self driving cars until the heat death of the universe, but it’s important to recognize the two fatal flaws in the ideology of self driving vehicles. Affordability, and longevity.

As it stands right now, self-driving cars are decades away from being a viable permanent solution to car accidents. The least expensive option available is a Tesla, with the cheapest Tesla options available running you at LEAST 30,000 dollars; an unreachable threshold for the overwhelming majority of americans. In response to this unattainable bar, self driving car companies have begun enacting strategies to lower the costs of their smart vehicles. Lowered costs mean better access, but lowered costs ALSO mean lowered accuracy. In 2023 ALONE there have been 10s of documented cases of tesla brand self driving cars crashing due to faulty and discounted hardware. Tesla’s desire to reach a larger audience of buyers caused them to use less sensors in their cars, leading to a higher margin of error. Even if we ever reach a point where proper self-driving cars are available and functional, we’d still have the issue of longevity.

Machines break, parts fail, and repairs are inevitable. A self-driving car is only as accurate as its sensors, and its sensors only get repaired if their owner allows it. This reintroduces a sizable amount of human error, as it’s common knowledge that even if your car has 500 warning lights on, people will STILL drive it. Time waits for no one, so why would I take my tesla into the shop if I don’t have time to? I’m busy, and the warning light should be fine this time, right?

The requirement of repair makes it so that ANY attempt to solve the crisis that is vehicle based fatalities will fail. Any solution will have outliers, and all fixes will have negligent users. While this takeaway is EXTREMELY depressing, it does allow us to reinterpret the issue. The PROBLEM with car accidents is that they always happen in edge cases. Your average driver will spend their entire life never having a life altering crash. The most devastating and destructive accidents ALWAYS happen due to extreme circumstances. The incompetent drivers are the minority of drivers, but the sheer quantity of drivers ensures destructive crashes.

When studying vast systems, seemingly impossible odds become commonplace. As an example, getting struck by lightning. Getting zapped by the angry sky is a seemingly improbable occurrence, but 300 people get struck by lightning every year in America alone. The sheer quantity of people living in America ensures that a minority of people will experience improbable odds. This same mentality applies to drivers. There are simply TOO many drivers on the road. With this many drivers driving 10s, or even hundreds of miles a day, guarantees at least ONE gruesome tragedy every year. A machine with this many moving parts, the machine that is our public transit system, is bound to eventually fail.

So what is a possible solution? How do we resolve a problem that exists simply due to the complexity and size of our country? The answer is very simple. If there are too many cars, build more trains and buses. The operator to passenger ratio of trains and buses are OVERWHELMINGLY smaller than cars. The margin of error when operating a vehicle is OVERWHELMINGLY smaller when driving on a rail instead of a road. When it comes to solutions, self-driving cars, increased scrutiny of drivers ed tests, and improved drivers ed education ABSOLUTELY decrease the odds of vehicle based collisions, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that small improvements mean nothing when the issue stems from incompetence on such a MASSIVE scale. Eventually, we, as Americans, need to accept that there are just too many of us on the road, and that we need to build sustainable, accessible railways to transport the majority of us.

I know TOO many people who would do away with car culture if they had the chance. Commutes are long and draining, automobiles are EXPENSIVE and gas is ever growing in price. EVERY single one of my friends and loved ones who I’ve asked “If you could use trains or buses for your entire commute, would you” said yes. Living in walkable communities, connected together with public transit, is the ultimate solution to the unforgivable number of vehicle based fatalities. Full automation of self-driving cars is simply impossible, and attempting to make our current system function any more is simply an avoidance of the true issue. You can’t account for human incompetence, you can only reduce the number of humans responsible.

As of right now, millions of people are getting behind the wheel. That is MILLIONS of people being held responsible for the safety of all other drivers on the road.

It only takes one to change a life forever.

Let’s take this opportunity to accept our insufficiencies, and work towards a safer future for all of us. It’ll be hard, and it’ll take a while to change our current car-centric way of life, but I feel as though that hardship is worth it. Even if it saves just one life.