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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

#101

Post by johnfn »

elefanten wrote: post #76
dheera wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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 a…

It's so frustrating. These things are trivially solved. There's basically a 50/50 shot, every time the light cycles, that someone will illegally take a right on red on the street outside my house. All you need is a single cop sitting there and watching. Or just one camera! Argh.

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

#102

Post by dheera »

phoronixrly wrote: post #93
dheera wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 electr…

You won't hear the end of complaints about how cyclists are now making cars more expensive...

Health insurance companies should pay for it. Their costs would come down if they subsidize the full R&D cost of this system for all car manufacturers. It would work in their favor.

They're probably too stupid to think like that, though.

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

#103

Post by indigodaddy »

83 wrote: post #92
ecshafer wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I spend about 5 months every year driving in snow and ice - this is the first I'm hearing about dropping it into neutral. Can you elaborate on when that would be appropriate? Obviously you shouldn't be slamming on the brakes, but they do work fine in snow and ice. I don't see how rolling into things while not in gear is an improvement?

I think it's often about when you're on rural single lane roads and perfectly bad ice/snow/slush conditions where you need to keep your speed very low, and sometimes even very moderate braking can cause your vehicle to veer off the road and into a snow bank, not necessarily the need to avoid something in front of you

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

#104

Post by JumpCrisscross »

83 wrote: post #92
ecshafer wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I spend about 5 months every year driving in snow and ice - this is the first I'm hearing about dropping it into neutral. Can you elaborate on when that would be appropriate? Obviously you shouldn't be slamming on the brakes, but they do work fine in snow and ice. I don't see how rolling into things while not in gear is an improvement?

They mean go into neutral and lightly brake. In a 2WD car, the braking force applies more strongly to the non-powered wheels. Since those were traditionally the back wheels, this meant when going down a hill the front wheels would have more traction. Those are also your steering wheels, which means them locking up is bad. Again, this is the sort of advice that is germane in highly restricted environments which become folk knowledge and later mis applied by humans in ways that reduce safety.

(You also only get into this scenario when your stopping distance is shorter than your reaction time and perception length. Something automated drivers can manage better than humans.)

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

#105

Post by JumpCrisscross »

matttproud wrote: post #89
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither of the examples you cite strike me as particularly dangerous nor even illegal. The pedestrians were given the right of way. And entering bike lanes is fine for crossing or short distances where merited unless grade separated.

A vehicle that becomes blocked in a crosswalk is unsafe for pedestrians who want to use that crosswalk if it forces the pedestrians to walk around the blocking vehicle. There are crosswalks in SoMa that provide for 45 seconds or more of crossing time. A Waymo that enters one of these crosswalks after 15 seconds into the 45 seconds allocation blocks the crosswalk for the remainder of the 30 seconds. This presents an u…

I totally agree that grade-separated bike and pedestrian lanes would be better. What I’m arguing against is that this behaviour by Waymo is less safe than San Francisco’s human drivers given the rules as they are.

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

#106

Post by numpad0 »

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]

signaling humans for bad behaviors tend to backfire. it program us to recreate that situation in anger. we aren't smart enough to naturally learn lessons that way.

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

#107

Post by condiment »

So, what’s it gonna take for Waymo to start selling retrofit kits for existing cars?

If a $10,000 investment reduces the chances of a serious accident by 90%, the corresponding reduction in insurance rates might have a payoff within a few years. Especially if adoption starts to push rates up for customers who don’t automate. I can’t take a taxi everywhere, but I’d sure like it if my car drove me everywhere and did a better job than me at it too.

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

#108

Post by ordinaryradical »

Literally riding in a Waymo right now in Los Angeles.

IMO they already won. The amount of stupid things you see people do here while driving is astonishing, so many people are not paying attention and looking at their phones.

I used an Uber on the way here and the car was dirtier while the service was identical (silent ride, got me where I needed to go.)

I’ve also been stuck in a Waymo that couldn’t figure out its way around parked buses, so they have edge cases to improve. But man does it feel like I’m living in the future…

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

#109

Post by Veserv »

standardUser wrote: post #50
Veserv wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For which any such system must be assumed unsafe until proven safe and the burden of proof lies with the manufacturer to present sound, robust, transparent, third-party audited evidence. You do not get to counter-argue: “What matters is the rate of cases per mile driven” without actually presenting that number with supporting evidence. Otherwise the only sound conclusion is the default presumption of non-safety. In t…

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. By all accounts, Waymo operates more safely than a human driver. It's operated tens of millions of rides in several major cities over several years, hence all the useful data. There is absolutely nothing stopping the continued expansion of self-driving vehicles, Waymo or otherwise, and there are myriad factors moving it forward rapidly.

I think I was pretty clear.

> You do not get to counter-argue: “What matters is the rate of cases per mile driven” without actually presenting that number with supporting evidence. Otherwise the only sound conclusion is the default presumption of non-safety.

I then pointed out how Waymo does present such evidence. But, if you applied that argument to Cruise you would be wrong. That demonstrates how that argument (when not presenting the numbers) can be used to support both good and bad and is thus a bad argument.

The correct argument when somebody points to anecdotes of bad outcomes is to present statistically sound data of good outcomes, not argue they did not present statistically sound data of bad outcomes thus you get to assume it is good.

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

#110

Post by matttproud »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #105
matttproud wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A vehicle that becomes blocked in a crosswalk is unsafe for pedestrians who want to use that crosswalk if it forces the pedestrians to walk around the blocking vehicle. There are crosswalks in SoMa that provide for 45 seconds or more of crossing time. A Waymo that enters one of these crosswalks after 15 seconds into the 45 seconds allocation blocks the crosswalk for the remainder of the 30 seconds. This presents an u…

I totally agree that grade-separated bike and pedestrian lanes would be better. What I’m arguing against is that this behaviour by Waymo is less safe than San Francisco’s human drivers given the rules as they are.

Don't think for a minute I want human drivers anywhere near bicyclists or pedestrians or assume they are anywhere better for general-purpose driving. Human drivers are awful, but I'd posit the behavior of these automated vehicles isn't much better toward making a welcoming road environment as they are programmed. The laws — particularly for California and what is treated as standard in North America — don't help matters at all.
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