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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

#301

Post by bluGill »

twiceaday wrote: post #230
zdragnar wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the first years maybe. However governments are watching this data and will make it mandatory on when they decide it is really better. (Assuming it is better in unbiased study) There are many governments, it only takes one and the car makers will be looking at if the override button is worth having.

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

#302

Post by netdevphoenix »

Lammy wrote: post #116
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.

> 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…

Do you dislike it enough to be happy with the increased car incidents that a human dominated driving world implies?

Why are you so worried of something snapping tens of thousands of pics of your body (mostly identical) that don't tell much about you while the world's biggest ad companies know you better than any single human ever will. I feel popular western sci fi has made people fear companies taking some visual data of their bodies covering minutes at max while fully overlooking the dangers of having your behavioural data covering years at a very granular level.

Yes, I know it's not a choice, both are bad. But I find people everywhere, including here in HN, are overly conscious of getting a few minute worth pictures of their bodies uploaded to some private servers while they are nowhere near as conscious when it comes to non-visual data about them (which I would argue mostly covers behavioural data imo).

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

#303

Post by bluGill »

creer wrote: post #257
biophysboy wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Very much. They often don't have cars at all - despite letting you reserve them. Or they are not open when your train arrives / leaves. I'm considering a 3 day drive my next trip in part because it is the only way to be sure we can get around when there.

(we are going to a remote location where I wouldn't expect public transit to serve, but the train station is in a small town that still should have some transit but doesn't)

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

#304

Post by a2128 »

ordinaryradical wrote: post #108

Literally 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 found I can't rely on it too much. Rain and a momentary (2-second) power blackout and suddenly my pickup in 3 minutes is cancelled and they're sending me a human driver who's 20 minutes away. Wonder what happens if the blackout occurs during the ride

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

#305

Post by irrational »

A few weeks ago we were in Santa Monica on vacation. This was my first time seeing Waymo vehicles in the wild. We did see one blatantly run a red light, well after the light had changed. Fortunately no car was crossing at the same time. It wasn’t like the sun was somehow obscuring the traffic light at that time. I was surprised it did something so unsafe.

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

#306

Post by echoangle »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #201
Lammy wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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 :/ It's not going to be stored forever. That would be incredibly expensive. Those cars are taking in TB of information each daily. Scale that to 10s of millions of cars. It's just not going to happen. Maybe a…

> Scale that to 10s of millions of cars.

Don’t they currently have less than 1000 cars? I don’t think they will keep every recording forever but technically, they still could at the current scale.

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

#307

Post by me_me_me »

philomath_mn wrote: post #58
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…

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.

[dead]

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

#308

Post by thelastgallon »

Lammy wrote: post #171
hackncheese wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely a big privacy concern, especially for people like you who aren't using the technology, and haven't consented to giving your data. But car crashes are the third highest cause of death in the US ( https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm ). As a society, I think the benefit outweighs the cost in this case, and we can (theoretically) continue to make progress on privacy as a society. Seems…

> But car crashes are the third highest cause of death in the US ( https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm ). No, that says “Accidents (unintentional injuries)” as a category are collectively the third leading cause of death, and that category contains a lot of things. CDC “Underlying Cause of Death” dataset sez… https://wonder.cdc.gov/ucd-icd10-expanded.html https://i.imgur.com/4PB0xyC.jpeg - “P…

Approximately 1.19 million people die each year as a result of road traffic crashes.

Road traffic injuries are the leading cause of death for children and young adults aged 5–29 years.

More than half of all road traffic deaths are among vulnerable road users, including pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists.

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/road-traffi...

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

#309

Post by thelastgallon »

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…

More than half of all road traffic deaths are among vulnerable road users, including pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/road-traffi...

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

#310

Post by kaliqt »

RandomBacon wrote: post #298
GavinMcG wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That mistake might induce human error—which is absolutely a source of danger—but it undoubtedly had a clear path to pull around the “stopped” vehicle, and as you said, you can generally trust Wayno not to plow into pedestrians. So what made it “lucky” that no one was hurt?

If the "stopped" vehicle made the turn as the Waymo made the presumably-illegal turn into the "stopped" vehicle that was now moving?

So the answer is that we clearly need that car also to be a Waymo. Problem solved! Hah.
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