One way to inteprent their data is that Waymo is LESS efficient protecting cyclists and motorcyclists compared to pedestriants. As a motorcycle rider I hope they will work to fix that gap.
[deleted]
New Study: Waymo is reducing serious crashes and making streets safer
221–230 of 413 posts
Re: New Study: Waymo is reducing serious crashes and making streets safer
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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.
> they've got their settings tuned in favour of safety stats is the whole point For now , yes. My point is that there's very often big gap between "how safely does it work in a lab when the people running it are trying to play up its safety" versus "how safely will X actually work once we start using it everywhere." Manually-driven vehicles could be a lot safer if they were being prototyped under strict guidance as w…
> Manually-driven vehicles could be a lot safer if they were being prototyped under strict guidance as well
But they aren’t. These are. Planes could be less safe if pilots flew them into cliffs on the regular, but they don’t and so are not.
Re: New Study: Waymo is reducing serious crashes and making streets safer
#223Earlier 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 the OP means in a manual transmission. Auto will decouple at low speeds / engine braking won't be as severe. In a manual car, in 1st gear, I could possibly see it.
As someone who grew up BEFORE ABS, drove in the winter (in Canada), including first winter owning my own car with sport tires because I couldn't afford winter tires, spun / slid a few times even with top-of-the-line winter tires, etc.
ABS is a game changer in the snow. I used to go to an empty parking lot every winter during early snowfalls to play around and skid, start/stop, etc. Even EARLY ABS ('94 VW) means that 98% of the time (IMHO), the answer even in snow/ice is "slam on the brakes". Sure, you might have a few percent longer stopping distance than an expert who can do threshold braking - are you an expert? And the fact that you don't lose control of the steering is a huge advantage.
Re: New Study: Waymo is reducing serious crashes and making streets safer
#224As 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…
It’s really cool to read reports like this, keeping in mind that just a few years ago many people were loudly proclaiming self driving cars were decades away, and would never be safer drivers than humans.
If they keep up the slow and steady improvements and roll outs to cities worldwide it’s hard to imagine my one year old ever needing to drive a vehicle.
Re: New Study: Waymo is reducing serious crashes and making streets safer
#225As 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…
The thing I dislike about Waymo is other drivers. I've now had it happen twice that a car will fully blow through an intersection because they know a Waymo will slam on the breaks to avoid a collision. They basically abuse the car's reflexes. Also in any sort of situation where the Waymo is being very cautious the biggest danger is the impatient people behind the Waymo who will break the law to go out and around it.
I mean, if you want to merge in heavy traffic and nobody is letting you in everyone knows to cut in front of a very expensive car. They’ll brake.
Re: New Study: Waymo is reducing serious crashes and making streets safer
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
I will be sure to think of that the next time I see a human driver whose car has 29 dash cams, 5 lidars, 4 radars, and is using four H100s to process all of its realtime images of me: https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2024/10/27/waymos-5-6...
What is someone doing with all that which they can't do with front and back dashcams?
Correlation of data across time and other cars in the fleet.
Re: New Study: Waymo is reducing serious crashes and making streets safer
#227This article has a huge conflict of interest. I would like more independent data.
Seems like the rest of the HN crowd is swooning over Waymo. Nothing but glowing reviews. As they become the monopolist, like they always do, watch how they’ll run the age old playbook to destroy the market and then hike prices. I’m not against self-driving cars. I’m against self-driving cars owned by a few megacorps, that will have even control and surveillance capabilities in addition to what’s already in your pocke…
> I’m not against self-driving cars. I’m against self-driving cars owned by a few megacorps
Perfect is the enemy of the good. This sort of technological NIMBYism is, in practice, opposition to self-driving cars and their safety benefits.
Re: New Study: Waymo is reducing serious crashes and making streets safer
#228As 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…
Unwary drivers would be at the bottom of my List-of-Dangerous-SF-Things
Re: New Study: Waymo is reducing serious crashes and making streets safer
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
This also came up recently in a thread about speed governors: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43812856 Just a few governor-equipped vehicles (e.g. from public fleets or prior speeding offenders) can reduce speeding on the whole road.
On most roads, speeding isn’t a safety issue and shouldn’t be discouraged, as road throughput is important. Speed limits are usually set too low due to standardized inflexible policies or desire for revenue. On some roads, however, it is a massive safety issue, and everyone is driving unsafely because the road is designed badly for its intended purpose. (So-called “stroads” are the canonical example.)
It’s an issue for everyone not in a car
Re: New Study: Waymo is reducing serious crashes and making streets safer
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
I bet that when this tech is in normal cars some will have it tuned to drive much more aggressively and/or simply have that be a setting. I suspect that would be a big selling point / driving tacitly would be an anti-selling point.
Nah, insurance companies will change their coverage rates based on the feature, and / or it'll become another legally mandated feature like backup cameras.
Point is, there is flexibility in how different brands implement it. I think it will be the same as eco mode / sports mode / track mode.