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New Study: Waymo is reducing serious crashes and making streets safer

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Re: New Study: Waymo is reducing serious crashes and making streets safer

#71

Post by indigodaddy »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #45
indigodaddy wrote: post #34

How do AI cars fare with those instinctual "decide which way to swerve in a split-second" scenarios that come up maybe once every 10-20 years over the course of a driver's history?? It's happened to me about 2-3 times and I've always made the "(assumedly) correct" split second swerve decision. Wondering if that is a "human/instinctual" skill and if AI cars do just as well or better, or perhaps not as good? I don't ha…

> those instinctual "decide which way to swerve in a split-second" scenarios that come up maybe once every 10-20 years The correct answer is almost always to hit the brakes. Not to swerve. And Waymo will hit the brakes earlier than you or me.

I disagree. High percentage of these scenarios are at speeds and scenarios where hitting the brake would not prevent a collision and a quick swerve is the only option to not collide. Obviously your quick swerve could cause another collision so I guess it's which decision on average causes the least harm/death? I agree though that most people's extinct would be to brake. Mine never has been though.

Re: New Study: Waymo is reducing serious crashes and making streets safer

#72

Post by asadm »

dheera wrote: post #68
philomath_mn wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Best part is that they probably have data to show that all that patience costs the typical passenger mere seconds to a minute on 99% of rides. This has always bothered me about aggressive or impatient human drivers: they are probably shaving like 30 seconds off of their daily commute while greatly increasing the odds of an incident.

[flagged]

good thing drones are getting smarter

Re: New Study: Waymo is reducing serious crashes and making streets safer

#73

Post by pavon »

ziddoap wrote: post #46
xnx wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a 3x effect for insurance agencies: 1) Google/Waymo doesn't buy insurance for their vehicles 2) Waymo vehicles are much less likely to cause accidents 3) Waymo vehicles actively avoid being hit and calm traffic overall

I'm not super familiar with this space, or laws where Waymo is active, what do you mean Google/Waymo don't buy insurance for their vehicles? Is having insurance not legally required? Do they just pay out when there's an accident where they injure someone?

In many states, including CA, individuals can post a bond instead of carrying insurance. Companies with fleets of vehicles can also self-insure. In both cases the car owner is liable to pay any damages that insurance would normally pay.

Re: New Study: Waymo is reducing serious crashes and making streets safer

#74

Post by rozap »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #54
rozap wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a study a few years back that showed male uber drivers earned more than female drivers. How could this be so, when the dispatch algorithm doesn't discriminate? Turns out men just drive a little faster in the aggregate so they made iirc around 3% more money.

Not sure if this is the study but this looks like a good study where they found it was 7% when the study was done. https://economics.uchicago.edu/news/study-finds-gender-pay-g...

Yep that was it, an even bigger gap than I remembered. Thanks for linking it.

Re: New Study: Waymo is reducing serious crashes and making streets safer

#75

Post by standardUser »

timewizard wrote: post #53
D-Coder wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 50% of fatalities involve alcohol or drugs and are often single vehicle accidents. This suggests that Waymo is cutting traffic fatalities by 50% (per million miles) right off the top.

If an only if every drunk person decides to take one instead of driving themselves home. Drunk people being known for having exceptionally poor judgement and self awareness. It suggests that they _could_ cut fatalities by that much. Then again, a whole new mode of accident, where the inebriated decide to step out of a moving vehicle and injure themselves that way. This is a dynamic system where human decisions are ne…

> Then again, a whole new mode of accident, where the inebriated decide to step out of a moving vehicle and injure themselves that way.

If I understand correctly, you believe that the advent of self-driving cars will cause passengers to voluntarily exit a moving vehicle? That sounds like absolute nonsense with no basis in reality.

Re: New Study: Waymo is reducing serious crashes and making streets safer

#76

Post by elefanten »

dheera wrote: post #68
philomath_mn wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Best part is that they probably have data to show that all that patience costs the typical passenger mere seconds to a minute on 99% of rides. This has always bothered me about aggressive or impatient human drivers: they are probably shaving like 30 seconds off of their daily commute while greatly increasing the odds of an incident.

[flagged]

Or just implement vastly more automated ticketing systems. They are standard in many countries. They could be implemented with limited-purview privacy preserving architectures where that aligns with expectations and values.

But people speeding, driving aggressively, driving anti-socially (by trying to speed past lines and cut in at the front), running lights and stops... this could be squashed forever, saving lives and ultimately making life more pleasant for everyone.

Re: New Study: Waymo is reducing serious crashes and making streets safer

#77

Post by dheera »

sollewitt wrote: post #70
johnfn wrote: post #37

As someone who is often on SF city streets without a car - I bike and run a lot - I absolutely love Waymo. I am continuously seeing human drivers cut me off, perform illegal maneuvers (i.e. run red lights when I'm going through a crosswalk), and break various other traffic laws. All these things genuinely put people in danger. Just the other day, a guy started running a "no right turn on red" lane in SF, and when I p…

Fellow SF cyclist: Even setting aside the malicious SF stuff, Waymo's have enormous advantages over humans relying on mirrors and accounting for blindspots. I never have to be concerned a Waymo hasn't seen me. I can't wait until the technology is just standard on cars, and they won't let drivers side-swipe or door cyclists.

Dooring is so incredibly preventable with simple computer vision and some kind of actuator that adds an audible alarm and mechanical 3x resistance to the door opening when a cyclist is detected. The door should still be openable in emergency but should be hard to open until the cyclist passes.

(For cars that have both a normally-used electronic door open button and a manual emergency release (e.g. Teslas), the electronic button can use the car's existing cameras to detect cyclists first before actuating the door to open. This would be a trivial software change in the specific case of Teslas. The only thing I dislike about the Tesla setup though is that most non-owners are unaware of where the mechanical emergency release is; it is not obvious and not labelled.)

Re: New Study: Waymo is reducing serious crashes and making streets safer

#78

Post by notatoad »

Terr_ wrote: post #25
buckle8017 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an incentive problem. Uber/Lyft drivers are strongly incentivized to drive as quickly and aggressively as possible. The individual drivers are trading risk for cash. A company like Google isn't going to make that trade because it's actually the wrong trade across millions of hours.

Good point: Part of Waymo's safety stats comes from settings that are probably tuned right now in favor of safety stats even if it means a longer or less-profitable ride. It doesn't care if you're going to lose your job if you're five minutes late. So a fairer comparison would be contrasting Waymo rides to trips conducted by the Ultra Safe Even If It's Slower Chauffeur Company.

>a fairer comparison would be contrasting Waymo rides to trips conducted by the Ultra Safe Even If It's Slower Chauffeur Company.

no, comparing them to real alternatives is the fair comparison. that they've got their settings tuned in favour of safety stats is the whole point, not something that you should be trying to factor out of the comparisons.

Re: New Study: Waymo is reducing serious crashes and making streets safer

#79

Post by AlotOfReading »

Terr_ wrote: post #25
buckle8017 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an incentive problem. Uber/Lyft drivers are strongly incentivized to drive as quickly and aggressively as possible. The individual drivers are trading risk for cash. A company like Google isn't going to make that trade because it's actually the wrong trade across millions of hours.

Good point: Part of Waymo's safety stats comes from settings that are probably tuned right now in favor of safety stats even if it means a longer or less-profitable ride. It doesn't care if you're going to lose your job if you're five minutes late. So a fairer comparison would be contrasting Waymo rides to trips conducted by the Ultra Safe Even If It's Slower Chauffeur Company.

Ultra Safe Even if it's Slower Chauffeur company doesn't exist and doesn't have data that can be compared. This is a comparison against the thing Waymo is actually replacing.

Re: New Study: Waymo is reducing serious crashes and making streets safer

#80

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ecshafer wrote: post #66
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> those instinctual "decide which way to swerve in a split-second" scenarios that come up maybe once every 10-20 years The correct answer is almost always to hit the brakes. Not to swerve. And Waymo will hit the brakes earlier than you or me.

I would be interested to see waymo adapt to the snow and ice, where “hit the breaks” Is the wrong answer, and the correct is to drop the car into neutral. I believe waymo will figure this out in time, nut SF and Phoenix are idealized driving conditions.

> snow and ice, where “hit the breaks” Is the wrong answer, and the correct is to drop the car into neutral

This is only true with 2WD and no automatic stability control, and if you’re going down a slope. For every other case, ABs will out perform in snow and gentle braking will evenly distribute traction force with stability control doing microsecond evaluations.

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