Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Waymo Safety Impact

waymo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 424 posts

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#281

Post by kcrwfrd_ »

jjmarr wrote: post #259
kcrwfrd_ wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was the verdict on the smoothie?

He said it was overpriced but bought it again from a different Erewhon so I assumed he liked it (Canadian understatement). There's apparently a quality gap between locations. The pre-Waymo one was from Erewhon Grove and was freshly blended. Erewhon Beverly Hills on Rodeo Drive premade a bunch of them and left them lying around for a while before selling. My brother's theory is that Erewhon Grove customers are people…

I think they have rotating specials. These are pre-made, cheaper, and smaller. When you have a membership this is the one you get for free (once a month).

They used to have a “Dr. Paul's Raw Animal-Based Smoothie” that I looooved, but unfortunately they stopped making it. Still sad about that one :(

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#282

Post by necovek »

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.

You seem to be thinking this is compared to median driver, and not average one: if most accidents are caused by small number of bad drivers, your average will be bad, but even median might still be good.

And this does not even compare the drivers, but simply miles driven.

So I think that 80% of human drivers would likely be safer than Waymo unless they are driving under the influence or extremely tired or distracted.

Note that "13x safer" already implies being in the top 10%, though.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#283

Post by cm2012 »

whatever1 wrote: post #209
rossjudson wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number of people who think they're top tier drivers never ceases to amaze me.

Yes statistics are full of drivers with more than one accidents at fault. 15% of the drivers are causing more than 70% of the accidents. I don’t care about the average driver. I care about the median. It is not a high bar to expect an autonomous system to be better than 90% of the American drivers.

Median and average driver are close to identical. This isn't income.

(Edit: I now think my comment above is wrong)

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#284

Post by necovek »

djsavvy wrote: post #39
Detrytus wrote: post #5

Someone once said that this is because Waymos are novelty, and they still behave a bit weird, like being slow and undecisive. Which leads to humans being super-careful around them. So the Waymo safety record is actually not their own achievement. I guess we'll have to wait to one of the two things to happen to really assess Waymo's performance: 1. They need to lose their markings and easily distinguishable features (…

That would make sense a while ago, but definitely not in SF for locals who have lived here a while. For me as a pedestrian/bicyclist/motorcyclist I actually feel safer around them than any other car.

You seem to confirm the point that you adapt your behavior in presence of Waymos, even if you believe it is in the other direction.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#285

Post by lostlogin »

jjmarr wrote: post #255
achatham wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do support YouTube Music and actually supported that before Spotify. But we only do ad-supported on Spotify and iHeartRadio (also paid Spotify).

It looks like YouTube Music was only added in October? I took the ride in September. https://support.google.com/waymo/answer/16623742?hl=en

Maybe you could recreate it now, but with better music?

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#286

Post by HDThoreaun »

epolanski wrote: post #187
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.

In Italy several cities lowered the maximum speed from 50 to 30 km/h. There was a huge fight over it, car drivers in those cities were mad. Plenty of politicians opposed it. One year later stats were super clear: streets got way safer and the number of fatal accidents dropped to near 0. Time to traverse cities didn't change much, as it was already limited mostly by traffic and lights.

I think this ignores the argument the high speed limit people make which basically boils down to "sure some people will die or get injured but its worth it because driving faster is fun"

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#287

Post by HDThoreaun »

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?

speed limits in the US are barely suggestions, let alone rules

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#288

Post by gorfian_robot »

anecdotally from Mesa:

DoorDash has these little cute robots doing delivery. I often seen them followed by a person on a e-bike. This has been going on for more than a year. My recent Lyft driver said one reason is because the Waymo's ignore the other robot and kill them and the bike ensures they don't.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#289

Post by CalRobert »

necovek wrote: post #269
Ferret7446 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're humongously overselling the average driver. I mean, the stats for waymo vs human drivers speak for themselves.

Depends on how you define "average driver": what if 95% of the crashes are caused by 5% of the drivers? My reading of all the human crash stats has been that majority of them happen when human drivers are impaired (drunk, drugged or too tired): as this is something we could (in theory, at least) control, I'd like to see and compare with stats for non-impaired human drivers too. Then, I'd like to see it compared to at…

To be fair, if 5% of drivers cause 95% of crashes then the average driver is still terrible.

The median one might be better, but does it even matter? The average driver is still wreaking havoc.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#290

Post by whatever1 »

cm2012 wrote: post #283
whatever1 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes statistics are full of drivers with more than one accidents at fault. 15% of the drivers are causing more than 70% of the accidents. I don’t care about the average driver. I care about the median. It is not a high bar to expect an autonomous system to be better than 90% of the American drivers.

Median and average driver are close to identical. This isn't income. (Edit: I now think my comment above is wrong)

Driver risk is a Pareto distribution.
Post reply on HN