I saw a Waymo stop at a crosswalk last night in the dark where there was a person standing there waiting to cross that I don't think I would have seen. The person was not standing out in the road, they were standing there patiently waiting to make sure the car actually stopped since it was dark. I was really impressed! I don't think I'm a reckless or impatient driver, but I think the Waymo's are probably better at driving than I am. I know I prefer the Waymos to the human drivers I typically see on the road.
New Study: Waymo is reducing serious crashes and making streets safer
121–130 of 413 posts
Re: New Study: Waymo is reducing serious crashes and making streets safer
#122Earlier 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.
I think the problem is a general one about drivers, not just ride-sharers. I live in a fairly busy area and I am beset by aggressive drivers any time I need to cross a busy road. So many drivers simply ignore pedestrians by default. Not that many of them have Uber or Lyft signs in the window, if anything commercial drivers tend to be a bit more careful in my experience because the downside risk is being unable to wor…
About half of commercial drivers is my conclusion. (though I'm not collecting statistically valid data) Just judging by the number of commercial vehicles who drive into the crosswalk I use often.
Re: New Study: Waymo is reducing serious crashes and making streets safer
#123Waymo says Waymo is safe. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-05-16/woman-ge...
You could also link to all of the people killed by self-driving Teslas. In my opinion, Teslas (especially) are bringing a bad name to the entire field.
Re: New Study: Waymo is reducing serious crashes and making streets safer
#124Earlier 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.
> 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 perceptio…
Traffic isn't the right place to be if you demand not to be seen. If you do not want your data to be stored that's a different matter, but I'm still gonna look at you while driving to not crash, I have to.
Re: New Study: Waymo is reducing serious crashes and making streets safer
#125So, 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…
They need to work everywhere. How do they do in snow/ice (humans do really bad here - but where I live it happens often enough that we often cannot stay home or we would spend weeks in the house)
Don't get my wrong, I'm hoping it is soon. However they have a lot of work left.
Re: New Study: Waymo is reducing serious crashes and making streets safer
#126Literally 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 wa…
> I used an Uber on the way here and the car was dirtier
To be fair, the fact that Waymos are fancy clean Jaguars is kind of ancillary to the main technology. The tech is currently expensive, so they are targeting the luxury market, which you can also get on Uber if you select a black car or whatever. The people willing to pay for that are less likely to make messes, and the drivers put more effort into frequent cleanings.
Once the tech becomes cheap, expect the car quality and cleanliness to go down. Robocars do have some intrinsic advantages in that it's easier to set up a standard daily cleaning process, but they will still accumulate more garbage and stains when they are used by a broader cross section of the population and only cleaned during charging to reduce costs. (Of course, cheaper and more widely accessible tech is good for everyone; if you want a immaculate leather seats cleaned three times a day, you'll generally be able to pay for it.)
Re: New Study: Waymo is reducing serious crashes and making streets safer
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Health insurance generally has a fixed profit margin (state legislation). They have little incentive to reduce cost because then the entire pie shrinks. A nice example of where well meaning legislation can completely backfire.
Of course, passing costs to all insurance companies is really the same as passing it to all people paying insurance premiums, at which point you can just use tax money to get the same effect. At which point, it's probably easier to regulate it and have the cost passed to everyone buying a car.
Re: New Study: Waymo is reducing serious crashes and making streets safer
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tens of thousands of Americas are killed every year in car crashes. The existence of a case or some cases where a self-driving car caused injury has zero value. What matters is the rate of cases per mile driven.
> Tens of thousands of Americas are killed every year in car crashes. CDC “Underlying Cause of Death” dataset sez https://wonder.cdc.gov/ucd-icd10-expanded.html https://i.imgur.com/4PB0xyC.jpeg - “Person injured in unspecified motor-vehicle accident, traffic” is the 50th leading cause of death at 0.4% of deaths. - “Person injured in collision between other specified motor vehicles (traffic)” is the 108th leading caus…
Was your intent to disprove or back up the claims of parent?
0.4% and 0.2% sound low, but make up for ~110,000 deaths. Spread across a 5 year period does indeed equal “tens of thousands” every year.
Re: New Study: Waymo is reducing serious crashes and making streets safer
#129Earlier 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?
When you let off the throttle your wheels start driving the engine and slowing you down. In snow/ice that engine breaking alone can be more braking force than is safe and so you go into a skid. Shifting to neutral removes engine braking and allows for more controlled slowing down.
Re: New Study: Waymo is reducing serious crashes and making streets safer
#130Earlier 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.
> 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 perceptio…
man, the Googs already has a library of images of you. If there's anything about you that the Googs doesn't already know, I'd be shocked. the Googs probably knows you better than your therapist, because you've only shared with your therapist what you wanted. the Googs gets data about you from places you know nothing about.
being concerned that a Waymo car took your picture isn't invalid, but man is it a tear drop in the rain of everything else the Googs is doing.