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Waymo Safety Impact

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Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#301

Post by jeffreygoesto »

madaxe_again wrote: post #219
rootusrootus wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is still standard advice today, as far as I know. Tires are better, stability control is better, but all else being equal you are still much more dynamically stable and have a lot more friction with the road when the car is stopping in a straight line than when swerving. Also, in the case of someone running a stop sign, it is far from a sure bet they are going to hit their brakes at all, so by swerving you increas…

The common mistake is people swerve and brake , which is a terrible combination - you should accelerate through a sudden manoeuvre, as it maintains control through it, much as you should accelerate through corners in general.

Wunibald Kamm begs to differ. For his circle, it doesn't matter if the additional force that causes the friction to be insufficient is forward or backwards on top of the side force. In critical situations either use your friction for lateral xor longitudinal action, never both at the same time. Brake hard, but then sail through the curve. You want that vector to move along the circle and never leave it. As that is very difficult for an untrained driver, better switch hard between both modes.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#304

Post by srini »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #249
gozucito wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it a bullshit stat though? it's not like you or I can go to a different dimension where all drivers are healthy, fully awake, undistracted, sober, competent, etc.

You don't need to. You just need to be in good condition yourself and actually paying attention. Professional delivery drivers routinely achieve seemingly absurd mileages per incident.

Yes, but I don't actually trust most folks to be in a "good condition". Even the best drivers have their off days.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#305

Post by srini »

themafia wrote: post #166
bryanlarsen wrote: post #88

13X is way more impressive than it seems at first glance. Let's take a simplistic model of accidents: that the average driver is at fault in an accident 50% of the time. So a perfect driver would only halve the number of accidents -- they only eliminate the accidents where they would otherwise have been at fault. But Waymo's numbers are better than the "perfect" driver above. How is that possible? Because in most acc…

> You can avoid a lot of accidents More than 1/2 of roadway fatalities involve alcohol or drugs. An oversized fraction of fatalities are represented by young men under 24. 1/6 of all fatalities are motorcycles. 1/6 of all fatalities are pedestrians being struck by a vehicle.

Do you have a solution for preventing humans from driving while under the influence of alcohol or drugs? Or even preventing humans from driving while texting?

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#306

Post by srini »

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.

From a purely technical perspective, I would expect a Waymo to react to unexpected external stimuli much, much faster than a human. It gives the Waymo options that are unavailable to a human's slower reaction time.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#307

Post by elil17 »

kfarr wrote: post #30
bt1a wrote: post #7

I've been observing their behavior in Atlanta for about the past year. Our roads here are fairly curvy, hilly, and lacking of expected markings, yet I haven't seen a driverless Waymo vehicle make a single odd move. One thing that brought a smile to my face was when I came to a 4-way stop at the same time as a Waymo vehicle at night & I flash my brights to tell the other vehicle to go ahead (southern hospitality) and…

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.

Why wouldn't it be trained to do that? You can easily include that in the training data.

It's not like the people building Waymo have never heard of flashing your brights before.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#308

Post by srini »

necovek wrote: post #284
djsavvy wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The argument was for _how_ people react to Waymos. The OP said folks are more careful. The respondent said, no it's the opposite.

Neither argued that people do not adapt their behavior in the presence of Waymos?

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#309

Post by srini »

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.

I mean, if some subset of those 15% used Waymo, we'd be better off, no?

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#310

Post by yccs27 »

nutjob2 wrote: post #292
Toutouxc wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

On the stretch of motorway that I frequent in Italy, the speed limit is mostly 130 km/h, but the majority of people drive at about 100 to 110 km/h (including me). But there are also people who drive in the left lane, who will tailgate you at 1 or 2 meters because you're doing 130 km/h. These people are idiots, but you get these sorts of people everywhere. On American freeways, you don't have a choice, every lane is d…

Road capacity does not increase with speed above 50 km/h on urban roads or 70 km/h on highways. Following distance scales with speed, so more speed can actually mean fewer cars per unit of time.

In theory, braking distance scales quadratically with speed. In practice, people leave less room on highways, because they rely on others driving predictably, but spacing still increases faster than linear.

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