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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

#111

Post by FridayoLeary »

dheera wrote: post #77
sollewitt wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 electr…

That would lead to ridiculously overengineered car doors. It's already incredible how such a simple thing like a door can be so unreliable on newer cars, with handles that sink into the doorframe when not in use, or a locking system that only works with battery power. I'm not sure that adding more complexity would be a net benefit for society.

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

#112

Post by floxy »

ziddoap wrote: post #65
jmm5 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large companies with fleets of vehicles often self-insure.

Interesting! When I was much younger, I worked for a couple companies that had (what I would consider) large fleets of vehicles, and they all were insured through an insurance company. I guess I just assumed that's how it was. I wasn't aware self-insuring was a possibility. Thanks.

Self-driving is probably still new enough that insurance companies wouldn't have good actuarial data to properly price the risks, so they'd just have to charge exorbitant rates.

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

#113

Post by creaturemachine »

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 remember being taught the neutral trick for emergency braking back in the 90's, and it had nothing to do with traction in poor conditions. It was simply to remove any engine power that might extend your braking distance. It's definitely bad advice in any modern car.

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

#114

Post by pnw »

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…

But they won't be implemented with a privacy preserving architecture. They'll be outsourced to a third party with unknown privacy and security, and eventually be treated as a revenue generator, leading cities to implement rule changes that enhance revenue at the cost of privacy and safety.

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

#115

Post by bluGill »

kiba wrote: post #94
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.

I experienced this phenomena on my electric scooter. I could always scoot faster than someone walking but ultimately it makes little difference because I just spent more time for the crossing signal to turn green. So they end up catching up to me. Now, when there's long stretch or when you have to go up hill, that's where the electric scooter begins to shine and makes the largest difference.

You are missing all the times where you are enough faster that you catch a green while the other person gets there on red and so they never catch up. It is easy to see/remember the times they catch up.

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

#116

Post by Lammy »

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.

> I never have to be concerned a Waymo hasn't seen me.

Funnily enough that's exactly why I don't like them. Every time one rolls by me I know that tens of photos of me and even my 3D LIDAR scan get piled in to some fucking Google dataset where it will live forever :/

Their site is even proud of it: https://waymo.com/waymo-driver/ section titled “Keeping an eye on everything, all at once”

“The Waymo Driver's perception system takes complex data gathered from its advanced suite of car sensors, and deciphers what's around it using AI - from pedestrians to cyclists, vehicles to construction, and more. The Waymo Driver also responds to signs and signals, like traffic light colors and temporary stop signs.”

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

#117

Post by AIPedant »

xnx wrote: post #33
AIPedant wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that Waymos can't replace cars (or even Ubers!) since they depend on human oversight and problem-solving. Even at a 20:1 ratio it is not feasible for autonomous vehicles to employ 10m people to account for every American on the road.

This is a very confusing position. Every Uber has full-time 1:1 "oversight". Waymo has a support team that only directs actions ( not remote driving) when the vehicle requests. I would be very surprised if the number of Waymo rides that need any intervention at all is greater than 1 in 20.

My point is you're not going to get much more than half[1] of those Uber drivers into a Waymo control center, even if they're facing unemployment. The workers have to come from somewhere. And it has to be somewhat regular hours, surge oversight doesn't make sense.

[1] Edit - I meant 5% not half, I was on the train and very frustrated with these comments. (not yours, though it seems bad faith to say "not remote driving" when I said "problem solving." The problem has always been the 1-5% of driving which truly requires sophisticated intelligence, that's why the oversight is there.)

Every Lyft driver I've spoken to drives because a) they like driving b) they like choosing their own hours and c) they don't want a boss. Telling them to go into an office for an 8 hour shift with a manager is not gonna work, they will find something more appealing. It's a different kind of employee. (I would enjoy that line of work but I would hate to drive for Uber, way too stressful.)

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

#118

Post by bluGill »

biophysboy wrote: post #95
VOIPThrowaway wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My prediction is that car usage will go thought the roof when AI cars work. People can have a stress-free commute to a nice house in the countryside and work in the cities. Because the car is electric, it will be inexpensive to run.

well, I guess my hope is that renting a car whenever needed is cheaper than the cost of purchasing, maintaining, insuring, and storing a personal robocar. It would be quite hard to make the US more car-dependent than it already is! But I am speculating - you may very well be right

It will only be cheaper if you don't drive much anyway, and you are the type who would never be seen in a car more than 3 years old.

If you drive a lot (like the person in the countryside) the car that is there when you want to is worth owning vs a shared car that you might have to wait for. Plus by owning the car you can just leave your golf clubs in the trunk.

If you can stand being in a used car you will discover that shared cars are all more expensive just because at the first sign of cosmetic wear they get rid of it while seats that have been sat in a few times are still good enough for many more years. (unless you almost never drive anyway)

Because of the above I don't see much growth in the shared car market. There will be some because there are people who don't have parking, people who don't drive much, and people who demand a new car that they don't otherwise care about. However the vast majority of people will still own their own car.

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

#119

Post by dang »

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]

Please don't do this here.

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

#120

Post by achatham »

timewizard wrote: post #44
crazygringo wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US drives about 3.2 trillion miles per year. Waymo has 56.7 million miles over several years. Their percentage data is essentially useless. No, that's not how statistics works. The percentage data's accuracy depends mainly on the number of incidents recorded (and somewhat on the rate of incidents). But the percentage of the whole is completely irrelevant. If you are basing something on 10 incidents but it's 50%…

> If you are basing something on 10 incidents but it's 50% of the total, it's still terrible accuracy. The ratio of 3.2 trillion to 56.7 million, which is already incredibly generous to Waymo's position, is 5 orders of magnitude in difference. So any calculations from Waymos data are going to be insanely inaccurate and not something you can extrapolate from. The main, and most obvious case, evidenced by this, is Waym…

The paper under discussion only considers human accidents in similar environments to where Waymo operates. So it's only making a claim about like-for-like driving.

You could still say you care about snow driving and want to see that comparison, but it doesn't mean the claims in this paper are wrong.

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