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Waymo Safety Impact

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Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#71

Post by altruios »

Car centric design is ruining this country.

The great deal: let's redesign our cities to be car free. Consider the economic boom that amount of renovation would produce. Consider the increased economic activity from happier and more productive people. Consider the increased space for nature, parks, real estate, development.

Cars are the worst thing to have been invented. Optimizing the personal automobile leads to optimizing for a horrible living experience in the city. Let us reconsider all of this. This is bad. We can do better. We must.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#72

Post by xnx »

scj wrote: post #24

"For example, the current cities Waymo operates in do not have appreciable snow fall, and as a result neither the Waymo nor the human benchmark data include this type of inclement weather." I'm happy to see this acknowledged, and hope it's a sign that they appreciate the difficulties of winter driving.

They're definitely aware and working on it: https://x.com/dmitri_dolgov/status/2028863520037867820

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#73

Post by cgeier »

pokot0 wrote: post #63

My question is: is safer than average human good enough? When I drive I have the option to choose to be safe or not. When a computer drives I lose that option. So for 49% of the people, safer than the average human is less safe than before. I think we need to reach "Safer than the safest 10% of humans". Also these reports should be done by a government agency.

Yes, it's good enough. Because you cannot control who else is on the street around you. Having cars around you that are driving safer than the average is better than them driving average.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#74

Post by weusedto »

Anecdote from 1000s of miles biking: I bike a lot in the Bay, for fun, exercise, commute, all of the above (I'm a friendly one, I promise!) and the comfort I feel when I see a Waymo alongside me or at a stop sign is immediately apparent. I have been hit 5-10x riding in NYC and SF (nothing serious, gratefully, mostly just people turning right not knowing/caring I was there), and the Waymo's awareness that I exist is immediately obvious and so different from a large percentage of human drivers. I hope the meaningful improvement in safety continues to convince people this should be a part of the future.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#76

Post by j0e1 »

shawabawa3 wrote: post #62
jmalicki wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hopefully if they ever go to Sri Lanka they get localised tuning because I was surprised to find out flashing your lights over there doesn't mean "go ahead", it means "if you don't get out of my way I will ram you"

This is true for India too though traffic there isn't known for its rules.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#77

Post by JumpCrisscross »

altruios wrote: post #71

Car centric design is ruining this country. The great deal: let's redesign our cities to be car free. Consider the economic boom that amount of renovation would produce. Consider the increased economic activity from happier and more productive people. Consider the increased space for nature, parks, real estate, development. Cars are the worst thing to have been invented. Optimizing the personal automobile leads to op…

> let's redesign our cities to be car free

Or, let's not spend trillions of dollars on a behavioural experiment and get pedestrian safety with now-proven kit.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#78

Post by sonofhans »

probabletrain wrote: post #34
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…

If you were choosing between getting into a Waymo or a car driven by a human driver (where Waymo operates, for a route that Waymo would do), the data shows that the Waymo is safer.

No, it does not. For one thing, we don’t have access to all the data, just what’s being told us. For another, it at best shows that Waymo is safer than average. Safer than an attentive London Cabby? I bet not.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#79

Post by JumpCrisscross »

Toutouxc wrote: post #67
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.

Is this something that I’m too European to understand? How do you get “stuck” behind someone doing the speed limit?

> How do you get “stuck” behind someone doing the speed limit?

"Only 46.5 percent of U.S. drivers consider going more than 15 miles per hour over the speed limit on the freeway to be "extremely" or "very" dangerous — with 40.6 percent openly admitting to doing it at least "a few times" in the last 30 days" [1].

[1] https://usa.streetsblog.org/2023/11/30/why-so-many-u-s-drive...

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#80

Post by _p1l9 »

Blaming the kid here is absurd. The kid lives in a system where pedestrians are second class citizens in a world dictated by the auto-petro industrial complex. An industry that has co-opted unelected traffic "engineer" in the US and completely changed the way we live for the last 70 years and have made Americans fatter and less connected.

If the child lived in a neighborhood where cars went slower (it was a 25mph zone) he wouldn't have gotten hit in the first place. Praising Waymo here is like praising a priest for not molesting a child. Yes it's good that the waymo slowed down more than the average car, but really the whole system should be completely rethought. Instead, we're pouring billions into single occupancy vehicles, when we should've been pouring billions into high speed rail, subways, etc.

I'm hopeful that waymos converge on a more efficient design and improve cities in general. As it stands, they are a way for the rich to commute without having to exchange pleasantries with the underclass.

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