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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

#251

Post by manquer »

jedberg wrote: post #198
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…

> A better comparison could be with professional taxi drivers for the same city (not Uber or Lyft). > I wouldn’t be surprised if Waymo is either on par or poorer than this group. If you've been in both a human drive cab and a Waymo, you'd definitely not say this. I see cabs have accidents all the time. Never seen a Waymo have one. Also, being in a Waymo feels much safer than a human driven car, even my own when I'm d…

> 4.6 cab crashes, 3.7 livery car crashes, and 6.7 crashes with private cars.

> Waymo 2.1 crashes

The numbers become much less 80+% plus claim in the article as you remove factors. It comes closer to 30% with professional drivers.

Livery car is still not always well maintained a high sitting SUV with better visibility[1], perhaps with all these factors included if it is 20% better it is impressive technical achievement for sure, but not going to create headlines anywhere.

The point is the methodology is not as objective as it could be, and this is biased/selective claim, not that self driving cannot be better than humans.

[1] Also there is major difference in the price point between Waymo and Livery cars, I cannot say how it will influence rates but the different rates means different class of clients using at different times of day/night to different locations that needs to be normalized for.

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

#252

Post by JumpCrisscross »

Terr_ wrote: post #246
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 tauto…

> Imagine

We don’t need to. I could also imagine every human driver is always drunk. But those are suppositions. You’re comparing actual and hypothetical risks.

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

#253

Post by Terr_ »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #252
Terr_ wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 tauto…

> Imagine We don’t need to. I could also imagine every human driver is always drunk. But those are suppositions. You’re comparing actual and hypothetical risks.

Isaac Newton: "Did you see that apple fall? Now imagine that both an elephant and a feather were to begin falling at the same moment, in a place where the atmosphere was--"

Your ancestor: "No, we don't need to. I could also imagine them underwater. Those are suppositions. You're comparing actual and hypothetical falling."

*headdesk*

____

How about this: Which parts of the final TLDR do you disagree with?

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

#254

Post by jedberg »

manquer wrote: post #251
jedberg wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A better comparison could be with professional taxi drivers for the same city (not Uber or Lyft). > I wouldn’t be surprised if Waymo is either on par or poorer than this group. If you've been in both a human drive cab and a Waymo, you'd definitely not say this. I see cabs have accidents all the time. Never seen a Waymo have one. Also, being in a Waymo feels much safer than a human driven car, even my own when I'm d…

> 4.6 cab crashes, 3.7 livery car crashes, and 6.7 crashes with private cars. > Waymo 2.1 crashes The numbers become much less 80+% plus claim in the article as you remove factors. It comes closer to 30% with professional drivers. Livery car is still not always well maintained a high sitting SUV with better visibility[1], perhaps with all these factors included if it is 20% better it is impressive technical achieveme…

The percent improvement doesn't really matter though. The fact that it is better than even just professionals still means that there are fewer crashes, and therefore they are improving overall road safety.

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

#255

Post by 16bytes »

Veserv wrote: post #199
16bytes wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The burden of proof lies with the manufacturer to present sound, robust, transparent, third-party audited evidence. Waymo releases its safety data: https://waymo.com/safety/impact/ , which is backed by public reporting requirements. To say that it is wholly insufficient to make any safety claims on publicly driven 50M miles, is ridiculous. At the very least, it appears sound, robust and transparent, and able to be…

I think I was quite clear on my position. > In the case of Waymo, we have some tentative supporting evidence from this and other studies Waymo has run. However, that is still insufficient, even ignoring the lack of audits by non-conflicted parties, to strongly conclude Waymo is safer than a human. The evidence is promising , but it is only prudent to wait for further confirmation. You are not making a distinction bet…

Assertion: "50M miles shows that Waymo is safer than humans".

Counter-point: "That's false because Cruise had an accident for which they were at fault".

OP: "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."

You: "You do not get to counter-argue."

Yes, they do. OP's point is valid. One can't refute the original assertion by citing one accident by another company. It's a logical fallacy (statistically speaking), and a straw-man (Waymo can't be safe, because other self-driving cars have been found at fault). The validity of the original claim has nothing to do with an invalid counter-claim.

> However, that is still insufficient, even ignoring the lack of audits by non-conflicted parties, to strongly conclude Waymo is safer than a human.

When you have a large, open, peer-reviewed body of evidence, then yes, that's exactly what you get to claim. To reject those claims because Waymo was involved is ad-hominem. It's not how science works. It's not how safety regulations or government oversight works. If you think it's insufficient, you can attack their body of work, but you don't get to reject the claim because they haven't met some unspecific and imaginary burden of proof.

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

#256

Post by vitus »

Lammy wrote: post #159
kajecounterhack wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally fair to be concerned about pervasive surveillance for the _potential_ of privacy violation. Not sure what to do about that. That being said, just speaking with some knowledge of current state: the scans don't live forever. At this point, all the data they collect is way too big to store even for a short period. They'll only keep data in scenarios that are helpful for improving driving performance, which is a…

True; I should have said metadata and not just data since you're right that the volume of raw images would be too big to store indefinitely. It's way more feasible to process the raw images and store the inferences, like number of persons visible in last 5 seconds, or dates and times a person who looks like me has been seen by a Waymo while my particular Android phone is nearby, or dates and times they have seen [my…

> If anyone can share a link to a similar IRL privacy policy for Waymo I would love to read it.

For riders, there's the Waymo One privacy policy: https://support.google.com/waymo/answer/9184840?sjid=5254444...

Beyond that, https://support.google.com/waymo/answer/9190819?hl=en seems to be more relevant to your interests.

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

#257

Post by creer »

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

Cost is only one dimension of renting a car. As long as the car rental companies keep making it as painful as possible, it won't be a solution for usual usage. Hopefully Waymo goes after them too.

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

#258

Post by indigodaddy »

umbra07 wrote: post #173
bluGill wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you cannot brake you are following too close. I know everyone else does it (except 3/4ths of semis!), but you can be the one who maintains a long following distance and thus can stop in time. Every time setup the long following distance 5 cars jump into the gap - but then the gap remains as no more do.

what about when there's an idiot slightly ahead and in the next lane who decides to randomly swerve into my lane? do you also maintain a long following distance when there's a car right next to you in the next lane? I try to, because I don't want to stay in someone's blind spot, but sometimes it's not really possible to fall back.

"what about when there's an idiot slightly ahead and in the next lane who decides to randomly swerve into my lane?"

Exactly, this is the situation I am mostly talking about.

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

#259

Post by creer »

indigodaddy wrote: post #61
OJFord wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably better? 'Who' can process more data faster is likely impossible to answer, but (e.g.) Waymo can train on those scenarios and have way more 'experience' than any individual driver who's seen it once every 10-20 years of their driving career.

Yeah it's interesting, these scenarios are generally at high speeds on an interstate highway, and generally involve some level of predicting what the villain driver is going to do (split second prediction though mind you, it all happens in the blink of an eye), and sometimes the right thing to do is to swerve (if no one is adjacent in surrounding lanes) whilst either not using the brake at all or almost no braking. B…

One big difference in favor of the software is your "after you've confirmed there is no one in the left/right adjacent lane or close enough behind you." The car has been looking in every direction the whole ride. The car already knows what there is to know about all the neighbours. A huge advantage over the human driver.

I feel also that the car having a far better experience of its kinematics / dynamics / features is also a huge advantage - see the good old drifting parallel parking videos.

After that there is the concern about computing reaction time. Can it get stuck hesitating? Clearly the cars hesitate a lot in generally safe places. But we have seen some videos already of a Waymo very smoothly dodging someone running out from in between cars (they were already tracked), and someone mentioned a scooter incident. Hopefully we'll see more videos of emergency responses.

Another comment mentions "r/waymo or r/selfdrivingcars for lots of videos of Waymos avoiding objects."

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

#260

Post by indigodaddy »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #207
umbra07 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what about when there's an idiot slightly ahead and in the next lane who decides to randomly swerve into my lane? do you also maintain a long following distance when there's a car right next to you in the next lane? I try to, because I don't want to stay in someone's blind spot, but sometimes it's not really possible to fall back.

> what about when there's an idiot slightly ahead and in the next lane who decides to randomly swerve into my lane? You're safer hitting them head on while aggressively braking than attempting a microsecond swerve.

Is your nickname anti-swerve or something? Have you never swerved even once in your life?
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