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Waymo Safety Impact

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Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#51

Post by gfody »

mtklein wrote: post #37
Retric wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo as a system has crossed the threshold where I trust them more than average driver, but all this hardware is relatively new, well maintained, and their software is closely tied to it. I’m way less confident of self driving in the hands of the general public when differed maintenance often results in people and even companies driving with squealing breaks and balding tires etc.

I am also not looking forward to the system transitioning from "big experiment, burn money to make it good" to "established business unit, tweak it to death for incrementally more money / personal promotion." We're still in the honeymoon period and I very much expect to hate Waymo in 10 or 15 years when they reach a steady state.

enshitification should be a new certainty along with death and taxes

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#52

Post by skippyboxedhero »

sonofhans wrote: post #13

“Safer” == “Safer than all other human drivers in the same city.” By their own admission, this is not a straightforward comparison. If they could do the math for the same routes, times of day, and conditions … maybe I’d believe it. Otherwise, this data is trivial to cherrypick, and they have every reason to present it as well as possible. I believe Waymos are pretty safe, and that’s a great thing. “Safer than humans…

accidents are not equally distributed across humans. more serious accidents will be caused by people who are habitually doing things that are unsafe but, for various reasons, most places lack effective ways to stop these people driving so they keep causing accidents.

the metric is not some nebulous aspect of skill but the bottom decile of human drivers causing accidents. it is not difficult to believe that an AI can drive better than this group, it is not a high bar, below the 10th percentile are people who should not be driving but cause most of the accidents.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#53

Post by jjmarr »

jedberg wrote: post #3

Anecdotally, both from riding in them and walking/driving next to/around them, this feels obvious. They never get distracted. Sure, they sometimes make mistakes, but the mistakes are never "I didn't see that". They see better than humans in all cases (where they operate). They react faster than humans. The one case where they hit a child, it was because the child jumped in front of the car. And they showed that they…

Waymo saved my life in LA.

When I visited LA, I rode in a Waymo going the speed limit in the right lane on a very busy street. The Waymo approached an intersection where it had the right of way, when suddenly a car ignored its stop sign and drove into the road.

In less than a second, the Waymo moved into the left lane and kept going. I didn't even realize what was happening until after it was over.

Most human drivers would've t-boned the car at 50+ km/h. Maybe they would've braked and reduced the impact, which would be the right move. A human swerving probably would've overshot into oncoming traffic. Only a robot could've safely swerved into another lane and avoid the crash entirely.

Unfortunately, the Waymo only supported Spotify and did not work with my YouTube Music subscription, so I was listening to an advertisement at the time of my near-death experience. 4.5 stars overall.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#54

Post by whyenot »

jedberg wrote: post #3

Anecdotally, both from riding in them and walking/driving next to/around them, this feels obvious. They never get distracted. Sure, they sometimes make mistakes, but the mistakes are never "I didn't see that". They see better than humans in all cases (where they operate). They react faster than humans. The one case where they hit a child, it was because the child jumped in front of the car. And they showed that they…

There is also a different kind of increased safety. There is no driver. No weird conversations about slaughtering goats, no sexual advances. No worrying that your driver is going to assault you or attempt to kidnap you. I know, it's all very far fetched, and Uber/Lyft drivers are almost always nice, courteous and professional, but I have experienced a few times when that hasn't been the case. With Waymo, it's not even an issue.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#55

Post by TimTheTinker »

flipbrad wrote: post #47
leovander wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make sure to never be in a hurry to get anywhere because you might then get stuck behind a fleet of them going exactly the speed limit, grid locking you in.

Isn't the correct answer to this, lobbying for higher speed limits? Rather than chastizing obedience to current rules.

Yes, agreed. Though speed limits higher than 75 are not something I will ever support.*

* Unless we're talking about removing a speed limit altogether and regulating unsafe driving using other criteria.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#56

Post by jmalicki »

djsavvy wrote: post #36
kfarr wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It definitely does not respond to flashing headlights in that manner. You’re observing its default behavior when at a 4 way stop with other vehicles not moving.

How are you saying that so confidently? Waymos respond to traffic cops directing traffic manually

Unlike the traffic cops directing traffic that would likely require special programming, "proceed if the other car flashes its lights at you" is completely the kind of thing that could just accidentally fall out of a neural network learning to imitate humans.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#57

Post by tjoff »

snewman wrote: post #28
sonofhans wrote: post #13

“Safer” == “Safer than all other human drivers in the same city.” By their own admission, this is not a straightforward comparison. If they could do the math for the same routes, times of day, and conditions … maybe I’d believe it. Otherwise, this data is trivial to cherrypick, and they have every reason to present it as well as possible. I believe Waymos are pretty safe, and that’s a great thing. “Safer than humans…

In essentially all cases where a Waymo and a human-driven car have collided, the human driver has clearly been at fault. This seems definitive and not susceptible to cherry picking.

That could just be, and seems to be in some cases at least, because Waymo doesn't behave like a human would, and people gets tripped up.

I don't doubt Waymos are very safe, but I always irk at these comparisons. Majority of human accidents are due to gross negligence and/or driving under some influence or serious fatigue. A system incapable of alcohol etc. is better than that? Well that is a substantially lower bar than you can possibly imagine. Add to that that all systems have constraints on how and where they are able to go. Combined even Tesla can be made to look good.

Depending on the context and question it might still be the question to pose. But people often make the leap to assume that a typical Waymo is x better than a typical human driver which is an entirely different question entirely.

Waymo is for sure one of the (if not the only) good players out there though, gives me some hope.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#58

Post by jeffbee »

Retric wrote: post #26
jedberg wrote: post #3

Anecdotally, both from riding in them and walking/driving next to/around them, this feels obvious. They never get distracted. Sure, they sometimes make mistakes, but the mistakes are never "I didn't see that". They see better than humans in all cases (where they operate). They react faster than humans. The one case where they hit a child, it was because the child jumped in front of the car. And they showed that they…

Waymo as a system has crossed the threshold where I trust them more than average driver, but all this hardware is relatively new, well maintained, and their software is closely tied to it. I’m way less confident of self driving in the hands of the general public when differed maintenance often results in people and even companies driving with squealing breaks and balding tires etc.

Waymo's software has crossed multiple generations of sensors and vehicles over almost two decades. It does not seem to be tightly coupled to a particular device.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#59

Post by vel0city »

amarant wrote: post #46
sonofhans wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get your idea, but it does rather sound like asking a 4,000lb death robot to follow you around closely and hope that it doesn’t screw up …

To turn the colourful phrasing against you, I too would like a death robot to protect me from all the murder monkeys having a death race around me if I was out biking on the road/death race track.

Wouldn't the better solution be to prevent those murder monkeys from doing the death races around where people would want to cycle? Some kind of grade-separated trail? More regulations on those murder monkey death races?

Crazy thought, I know.

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