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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

#401

Post by whimsicalism »

ecshafer wrote: post #66
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> those instinctual "decide which way to swerve in a split-second" scenarios that come up maybe once every 10-20 years The correct answer is almost always to hit the brakes. Not to swerve. And Waymo will hit the brakes earlier than you or me.

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.

? just brake and rely on the abs

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

#402

Post by Zigurd »

happyopossum wrote: post #337
mavhc wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only more than a 9/11 every day of the year

120 traffic deaths per day in the US - not sure where you’re getting your data, but you’re off by more than an order of magnitude

About 3900 per day worldwide. About 1000 more than on 9/11.

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

#403

Post by jessriedel »

kajecounterhack wrote: post #160
jessriedel wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 clea…

I don't think the Jaguars are particularly spacious or nice. They just got a good deal on the platform. If anything, given the commodity nature of vehicles I'd expect car quality to improve. Cleanliness doesn't seem that related to how expensive the tech is either - if anything it would only go down if it ceased to affect willingness to pay. As it stands, clean cars are important to their customers. If usage increase…

> Cleanliness doesn't seem that related to how expensive the tech is either - if anything it would only go down if it ceased to affect willingness to pay.

If a service is necessarily expensive, it will more by wealthy people, who have a higher willingness to pay for cleanliness.

> As it stands, clean cars are important to their customers.

This varies depending on the customer.

> If usage increases, cleaning can ostensibly increase too, no?

Greater usage can lead to economies of scale that push down the cost of cleaning, but I think we're already at the scale (hundreds of cars) where most of the economies of scale have been reached. I expect it's close to linear from now on.

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

#405

Post by kajecounterhack »

jessriedel wrote: post #403
kajecounterhack wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the Jaguars are particularly spacious or nice. They just got a good deal on the platform. If anything, given the commodity nature of vehicles I'd expect car quality to improve. Cleanliness doesn't seem that related to how expensive the tech is either - if anything it would only go down if it ceased to affect willingness to pay. As it stands, clean cars are important to their customers. If usage increase…

> Cleanliness doesn't seem that related to how expensive the tech is either - if anything it would only go down if it ceased to affect willingness to pay. If a service is necessarily expensive, it will more by wealthy people, who have a higher willingness to pay for cleanliness. > As it stands, clean cars are important to their customers. This varies depending on the customer. > If usage increases, cleaning can osten…

Higher willingness to pay does not matter unless the market is segmented. So if the tech gets cheaper, unless they explicitly make an expensive "oft-cleaned" tier and a less expensive "less-oft-cleaned" tier, what matters is average willingness to pay.

"Once the tech becomes cheap, expect the car quality and cleanliness to go down" -- here you were positing that the _average_ willingness to pay for cleanliness will go down enough to affect things, barring any market segmentation. And I disagree:

1. You're assuming that the reason _why_ Waymo's cars tend to be cleaner than your typical Uber / Lyft is to satisfy a wealthy clientele. This elides a big reason for the existing gap: Uber / Lyft drivers aren't professionally managed. You don't directly pay for your Uber driver's interior car cleaning when you buy a ride, but the salary of folks managing Waymo's fleets is factored directly into pricing. Even if Waymo's clientele were less wealthy, you have to clean your cars and pass the cost on to all users. Additionally, interior cameras are pretty motivating to not mess up cars!

2. You're assuming that the cars today don't get maximum utilization, and that with more utilization you'd see dirtier cars. This is a pretty bad assumption - the cars are being utilized about as heavily as you can hope. In SF for most of Waymo's existence demand has outstripped supply. And the cars are still very clean :)

So if the usage is the same, and peoples' expectations for cleanliness are the same, why would rate of cleaning change as time goes on for the service?

The only thing I can think is if no reasonable alternatives to Waymo arise - in that case, cleanliness could go down but it has less to do with the clientele / willingness to pay, and more to do with competition / monopoly.

As another note, I just don't see how cleaning-based market segmentation would make good operational sense. Is cleaning the car slightly less frequently really gonna help the bottom line? Is the price differential big enough at single-ride scale? Do even rental car companies do this for their fleets - the cheap ones still seem to clean their cars.

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

#406

Post by kajecounterhack »

mort96 wrote: post #395
kajecounterhack wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes sense. Honest question - what's the harm in being targeted by ads? Is it just scrolling youtube more often than you should? Or is there a nefarious side that I'm failing to consider? For me the thing I hate about location tracking and the ilk is primarily about its harmful externalities (e.g. put into use by gov't, abusive users, or by Google for anticompetitive reasons), not targeted advertising itself.

I find it disgusting that our society invests so much effort into manipulating everyone, companies spend billions on armies of psychologists, computer science experts and data centres whose only job is to manipulate people into buying things they don't need. Targeted advertising is even more disgusting than non-targeted advertising, because there you're trying to find an individual person's weaknesses for more effect…

I guess. But bringing new products to market requires distribution, and do you have a better way for people to crack that? Targeted advertising through say, Instagram, has enabled a lot of small businesses whom would otherwise struggle to aggregate demand.

So it's not like pure evil. In many cases there's a service being provided to match users to products they want / that don't suck.

> with targeted ads in the mix, there's a huge incentive to collect it and correlate it with all the other data Google has, which is creepy.

Strongly agree that in theory this shit can be used nefariously. That said, Google is far from the scariest of the bunch despite being the biggest. Telecom for example wants to deep inspect your network packets, and they can tell where you are physically today, anywhere in the country without even having cameras driving around 5 US cities.

Stronger regulations around data rights and privacy have been proven to work by the EU. I don't really see another solution apart from a legislative one.

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

#407

Post by herewulf »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #356
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…

One night a few weeks ago I took a Waymo ride at night. Somewhere out in an unfamiliar neighborhoood, I realized that I hadn't seen a human being for dozens of blocks. The streets were full of cars , but every single one was an empty Waymo or Zoox. I spent the rest of the ride musing about what would happen if an armed mugger jumped in front of the car at the next traffic light, and the whole thing felt a little bit…

Feature request: Don't brake for armed muggers.

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

#408

Post by jessriedel »

kajecounterhack wrote: post #405
jessriedel wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cleanliness doesn't seem that related to how expensive the tech is either - if anything it would only go down if it ceased to affect willingness to pay. If a service is necessarily expensive, it will more by wealthy people, who have a higher willingness to pay for cleanliness. > As it stands, clean cars are important to their customers. This varies depending on the customer. > If usage increases, cleaning can osten…

Higher willingness to pay does not matter unless the market is segmented. So if the tech gets cheaper, unless they explicitly make an expensive "oft-cleaned" tier and a less expensive "less-oft-cleaned" tier, what matters is average willingness to pay. "Once the tech becomes cheap, expect the car quality and cleanliness to go down" -- here you were positing that the _average_ willingness to pay for cleanliness will g…

> Higher willingness to pay does not matter unless the market is segmented.

Incorrect.

> unless they explicitly make an expensive "oft-cleaned" tier and a less expensive "less-oft-cleaned" tier,

That's exactly what I'm saying would happen. We already have it with Uber Black.

> You're assuming that the cars today don't get maximum utilization, and that with more utilization you'd see dirtier cars.

No, I'm not assuming that.

> As another note, I just don't see how cleaning-based market segmentation would make good operational sense

Again, Uber Black.

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

#409

Post by kajecounterhack »

jessriedel wrote: post #408
kajecounterhack wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Higher willingness to pay does not matter unless the market is segmented. So if the tech gets cheaper, unless they explicitly make an expensive "oft-cleaned" tier and a less expensive "less-oft-cleaned" tier, what matters is average willingness to pay. "Once the tech becomes cheap, expect the car quality and cleanliness to go down" -- here you were positing that the _average_ willingness to pay for cleanliness will g…

> Higher willingness to pay does not matter unless the market is segmented. Incorrect. > unless they explicitly make an expensive "oft-cleaned" tier and a less expensive "less-oft-cleaned" tier, That's exactly what I'm saying would happen. We already have it with Uber Black. > You're assuming that the cars today don't get maximum utilization, and that with more utilization you'd see dirtier cars. No, I'm not assuming…

> That's exactly what I'm saying would happen. We already have it with Uber Black.

But I'm saying we _don't_ have that for Waymo, and it's very unlikely to happen, for many reasons. A big reason is simply that managing a fleet in heterogeneous fashion as you're describing (different cleaning schedules for the cars) doesn't really make sense IRL. It's a purely imagined scenario on your part.

> Incorrect.

Pray tell how I can pay for a cleaner car when there's only one option, car or no car?

> No, I'm not assuming that.

Then please explain how cars would get dirtier as the service scales up? If today is already seeing the cars at full utilization, barring a cost-cutting measure that determined that cleaning less frequently would be a significant cost savings (which is a big assumption on your part), then we should be seeing roughly how clean the cars will be into perpetuity.

> Again, Uber Black.

Uber Black achieves higher standards for cleaning by farming that out to the people renting out their personal vehicles. The drivers are incentivized to clean the cars more (than UberX drivers) to get more expensive fares.

But again, fleet management companies already do this for _all_ their cars. So for Waymo this is moot.

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

#410

Post by scld »

manquer wrote: post #379
scld wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe humans shouldn't drive in those conditions then.

It may not be option to most people in the US (most self driving use case is built around the US market) In America driving is a economic necessity, from going to work to even the grocery shop needs cars and dependency increases inversely with affluence [1] Mass public transit is non existent barring very few regions. So car (for commute) and flight (for long distance) are the only two viable transit options . People…

This is a chicken and egg scenario. Before we had cars, people got to work fine. Now we're OK with killing 40,000 people a year and injuring many more so that people can "get to work".
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