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Waymo Safety Impact

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Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#91

Post by fainpul »

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…

> They see better than humans in all cases (where they operate). They react faster than humans.

You're absolutely right!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp0W5v8GOPc&t=520s

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#92

Post by probabletrain »

sonofhans wrote: post #78
probabletrain wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I know that anecdotal experience is definitionally just that, anecdotal. But I've had a handful of attentive London cabby experiences (and enough in-Waymo experiences) that give me conviction that Waymos are far safer than them. They're out there driving all day every day, it's obvious to me that a Waymo driver is going to be safer than even a professional.

One cabby pulled out of a t junction to end up alongside me on a motorbike – a Waymo would never do that.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#93

Post by LeifCarrotson »

gowld wrote: post #68
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.

That's not how Waymo works, though. Waymo doesn't imitate humans. Waymo is trained to obey traffic laws and avoid collisions.

Waymo immitates humans insofar as its neural net trained on avoiding collisions after millions of miles of video footage and LIDAR data on roads shared with humans causes it to immitate humans.

It's likely manually programmed not to (incorrectly) turn the wheel to the left while stopped and waiting for an opportunity to turn. If you get rear-ended, you'll end up in the lane of oncoming traffic. It's certainly programmed to use its turn signals to indicate when it is going to turn. But after driving around thousands of cars without turn signals on but with their wheels pointed left, it "knows" to predict that they're about to turn, and might immitate humans by anticipating that action and moving to pass the stopped car on the right.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#94

Post by janalsncm »

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…

A year or two ago, would have agreed with you. I used to think they were cherry picking as well.

But Waymos have driven so many miles by this point, if they are hiding some data that would tip the scales back towards human drivers I have yet to see it. If there is a way to slice the data that makes Waymo’s look less safe I would welcome the correction.

If Waymo truly has 80-90% fewer crashes in the conditions they drove in, then it still has policy implications for places like Phoenix that do have good conditions.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#95

Post by jjav »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #55
flipbrad wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What happens at 76mph?

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#96

Post by jonas21 »

sonofhans wrote: post #78
probabletrain wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> For one thing, we don’t have access to all the data

In the US, we do have access to all the data [1]. They're required to report every incident with an injury or any amount of property damage, and it's all available for download as CSV.

> For another, it at best shows that Waymo is safer than average.

No, it shows that Waymo is 6 to 12x safer than average.

[1] https://www.nhtsa.gov/laws-regulations/standing-general-orde...

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#97

Post by _p1l9 »

spankalee wrote: post #83
_p1l9 wrote: post #80

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 zon…

Good thing no one blamed the kid.

I was probably a bit too harsh on the OP. The OP was probably not blaming the kid. But if Waymo isn't being sued and the city isn't being sued, then society has collectively placed blame on the kid and their parents.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#98

Post by 1shooner »

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?

On most US highways (i.e. multi-lane limited access roads), it's customary to leave a path in the left 'passing lane' for any traffic that wants/needs to go faster than you. If cars match speeds across lanes, it impedes faster traffic.

The speed limit itself is a separate convention and regulation. In some places you can be cited for obstructing traffic by going the speed limit in the passing lane if you are matching the speed of cars to your right, effectively blocking the road.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#100

Post by himata4113 »

Taek wrote: post #85
jjmarr wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. This detail sent me, it's crazy that we can pay $25 to have a life saving robot take us across the city yet Spotify is going to blast ads at us the whole time for the sake of making an extra $0.18 (yes that's the actua…

That's around 44.64 (0.18831) per month, no wonder ads are preferrable to companies over subscriptions! That's actually a lot for people that listen to music all day every day at work.
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