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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

#241

Post by AlotOfReading »

porphyra wrote: post #169
condiment wrote: post #107

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…

It honestly feels like they spend years validating each new platform, e.g. the Zeekr was announced years ago and only recently are they very rarely seen on the streets but only as Waymo Engineering mules. Likewise the transition from the Chrysler Pacifica to the I-Pace took a while. Hopefully they figure something out to scale up to more platforms soon. They announced a partnership with Hyundai a few years ago, also…

The zeekr vehicles were heavily affected by changing regulations and tariffs around Chinese made automobiles. The Hyundai vehicles haven't started production yet. They're in an awkward situation because they made a bad prediction about the political direction without a backup plan and it went south right as they were entering production.

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

#242

Post by ecshafer »

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?

If you are in a situation where your car is sliding, like down a slick hill. You dont hit breaks, you put the car into neutral and steer into the way your car is sliding to try and keep the car on the road.

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

#243

Post by amanaplanacanal »

MattGrommes wrote: post #211
femiagbabiaka wrote: post #28

Anecdotally, as someone who bikes a lot in SF, Waymo's are a lot safer than human drivers simply because they follow the letter of traffic laws. Stopping at stop signs, waiting for pedestrians to clear the box, following the posted speed limits, etc.

Just following the letter of the law is so huge. Even people who think they're being nice by doing something out of the ordinary make the situation so much more dangerous because now you don't know what's going to happen. Even if they weren't great drivers, the consistency makes so much of a difference.

Oof yes. People who stop when they have the right of way and try to wave other drivers to go first just end up slowing everybody down.

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

#244

Post by ecshafer »

Aloisius wrote: post #139
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.

The correct answer is to not drive so fast (or at all) in conditions where braking might lead to a skid. I'd expect an autonomous vehicle to be rather better at this given they can hook directly into the electronic stability control system in a vehicle and constantly monitor temperature (and ideally measure upcoming road temperature). Also, shifting into neutral is really only a thing for old vehicles without ABS/ESC…

I am in upstate new york, unless the situation is extremely bad, just dont drive isnt a valid answer for 5 months a year.

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

#245

Post by Manuel_D »

Lammy wrote: post #192
Manuel_D wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human drivers have dash cams, too. Maybe without as sophisticated a data ingestion system as google, but they could theoretically put their dashcam footage on youtube if they wanted to.

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...

A ring camera can do image recognition and store durations of video where a person is in frame. I'm not sure what the privacy difference is between these two. Is lidar and radar recording that much more of a privacy concern than video recording.

I'm pretty sure between traffic cameras and security cameras lots of commuters on th street are being filmed. With or without Waymos

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

#246

Post by Terr_ »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #222
Terr_ wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> But they [manual vehicles] aren’t [being operated by a corporation with a very strong incentive to publicly demonstrate safety]. These [automated vehicles] are.

Uh, yes, you're kinda repeating my thesis, and two copies don't cancel each other out.

> Planes could be less safe if pilots flew them into cliffs on the regular, but they don’t and so are not.

I don't understand what you're trying to convey with this tautology.

_________

Imagine two fleets of cars/planes/whatever with utterly identical equipment and expertise. The only difference is that for one of them, the management is being pressured by politicians to demonstrate a high degree of safety.

For that scenario, wouldn't you agree that the better-safety comes from temporary external cause? And also agree that the better-safety is unlikely to persist long after the incentive disappears?

[TLDR] Some portion of Waymo's safety-stats are due to the investor/regulatory context in which it currently operates, rather than the underlying technology; the effects of that portion will not be permanent; this should affect how we do comparisons.

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

#247

Post by kajecounterhack »

ra7 wrote: post #175
kajecounterhack wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They won't have to if they use sliding power doors (the geely cars have them). They should have had them for the jaguar generation :) Dooring people aside, what do you do if someone just leaves the door open when they leave their ride?!

Oh, that's already a problem for them. There are videos of many Waymos stranded because the previous rider didn't close the door fully.

Haha yep! I meant that as a rhetorical question, it's just silly to not move to sliding power doors.

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

#248

Post by manquer »

pb7 wrote: post #186
manquer wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is one, Humans drive in all weather conditions on all types of roads and also many types of personal vehicles of varying ages and conditions. Waymo is limited to few specific locations with decent roads and does not drive in poor weather and is limited to a relatively large and safer expensive SUV that is maintained professionally in a fleet. Studies like this rarely account for such factors , they are compare o…

Waymos drive in all weather in the cities they're deployed in; cities where people crash all the time in all types of weather.

Waymo ( and self driving programs as well) have been careful not to go for public large scale deployments in any city with difficult weather and for good reason focused on cities like Austin, Phoenix, Los Angeles, SF[1] so far with easy driving weather.

There have been promising progress and there have been hints of a New York trial soon, but it it well known that self driving cars have not done large scale trial in cities with bad weather.

[1] Yes, I am aware SF gets a bit of bad weather with fog and rain but not nearly not as much to make driving quite unsafe like somewhere that gets a feet of snow in 24 hours in winter, and likely promixity to engineering HQs and favourable regulatory climate influenced the SF choice.

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

#249

Post by manquer »

riquito wrote: post #204
manquer wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is one, Humans drive in all weather conditions on all types of roads and also many types of personal vehicles of varying ages and conditions. Waymo is limited to few specific locations with decent roads and does not drive in poor weather and is limited to a relatively large and safer expensive SUV that is maintained professionally in a fleet. Studies like this rarely account for such factors , they are compare o…

> Waymo is limited to few specific locations with decent roads and does not drive in poor weather the study is comparing Waymo to accidents occurred in the same cities where Waymo operates, and my understanding is that Waymo drives 7 days a week, 24h a day in those cities, so same roads, same weather. Seems a legit comparison

Not the same cars though, people are not driving newish mid range SUV with professional maintenance all the time.

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

#250

Post by D-Coder »

mdeeks wrote: post #83
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…

My favorite thing from my first Waymo ride was watching a lady walk up to the middle of the street to cross. The Waymo saw her, slowed, and waited to let her cross. She smiled and waved and immediately felt dumb because who is she waving to? Do I wave back? We laughed at each other as it drove away. Ever since then my fear melted away. They see every direction, never blink, and are courteous and careful with pedestri…

Hey, sometimes I say "Thanks!" to Siri.

Might as well keep an automatic response even if it's not always useful.

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