Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives • Hacker News Board

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#731

Post by krupan » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 2:38 PM UTC

timster6442 wrote: post #528

jonas21 wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Waymo says it has 170 million miles and I found 2 fatal accidents it was involved in (fault doesn't matter as fault is not included in the other stat either) I suppose you can claim fault doesn't matter. But if you read the narratives of both fatal incidents, they are so clearly not the Waymo's fault that I don't see how you can hold it against them. In the first [1], the Waymo was stopped at a red light when the c…

I agree that these cases are ridiculous to blame on the waymo entirely, but to give logic to their reasoning here you're unsure if on average the 1.3 fatalities per 100 million miles (FPMM) may also be on average ridiculously not the drivers fault as well. Perhaps if you were to throw out all ridiculous cases you'd have an average of CDL's having a 0.3 FPMM vs Waymo's having 0 FPMM. The nuance you describe at the end…

Um, in those two examples where it was ridiculously not waymo's fault it was still absolutely the fault of a human driver. I'm struggling to imagine a significant amount of cases where it's ridiculously not the fault of any human driver.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#732

Post by littlecorner » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 2:39 PM UTC

ericmay wrote: post #686

littlecorner wrote: post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will work for a few cities like New York or San Francisco but not for rural communities and won't be efficient for smaller cities or towns that are spread out. At least not without sacrificing independency and speed, which we're constantly trying to escape from

If you’re thinking about New York and San Francisco when you’re thinking about transportation you are starting off on the wrong frame of reference. Think more like a random city or town in Europe, perhaps Bordeaux since I was recently reading about it. Smaller cities/towns with tiny populations shouldn’t dictate how everyone else lives and suck up resources and taxpayer dollars for asinine highway projects. Most of A…

I'm thinking more from my context where it probably wouldn't make sense. Small city that's rather spread out and quickly transitions into farmland. And a big culture of driving to neighboring counties for vacations

Which is the difficulty in talking about "America needs to do such and such": we are much more diverse, and when we're talking about one context someone else hears their context or isn't able to imagine a different context. Perhaps these kind of conversations would be better had at local levels than national

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#733

Post by LanceH » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 2:40 PM UTC

hamdingers wrote: post #290

giantg2 wrote: post #234

Better driver education and higher test standards would save lives too. So would banning alcohol. None of these solutions, including automated cars, will be mandated any time soon. It's not enough to have data, you also have to have societal buy-in. Interesting that Waymo chooses to compare accident rates with the average driver vs the rideshare drivers their cars replace. The numbers wouldn't look as impressive beca…

> rideshare drivers are involved in fewer serious accidents than the average person. Do you have evidence of this? It's certainly true for some kinds of professional drivers (i.e. truck and bus drivers) but I can't find any kind of crashes/100m mile numbers for rideshare drivers. Anecdotally as both a rider and road user I find rideshare drivers to be some of the worst. Aggressive, distracted, impatient, and overconf…

The cars are generally in good repair. They are typically taking decent enough roads. They are sober (or more sober than the average driver). They are driving "normal" routes -- from a house to a business, or a club to an apartment, often on routes they've run many times.

I don't know where you've been getting your aggressive, distracted, impatient, overconfident drivers. Most of my ride sharing has been airport to/from home or hotel, so maybe there is some selection bias there. It all seems routine as anything.

Personally, I can't get past the car being in good condition as something which is often overlooked.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#734

Post by xnx » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 2:40 PM UTC

estebank wrote: post #458

johnfn wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a biker, I've had human drivers intentionally try to drive me off the road or hit me. Neither driver education nor higher test standards will solve that problem.

Earlier today saw a guy on a pick up truck griefing an empty Waymo by brake checking and boxing it, all over the road for about 10 minutes and over 5 blocks (no idea how much earlier it started), causing every other driver to freak out or be confused about what was going on. All the while all I could think was "you're spending your time making it more likely for a collision to happen, all to 'anger' a toaster with 36…

Some group (my bet is on "transit advocates") will try and paint Waymo as "Flock on wheels".

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#735

Post by krupan » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 2:44 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #234

Better driver education and higher test standards would save lives too. So would banning alcohol. None of these solutions, including automated cars, will be mandated any time soon. It's not enough to have data, you also have to have societal buy-in. Interesting that Waymo chooses to compare accident rates with the average driver vs the rideshare drivers their cars replace. The numbers wouldn't look as impressive beca…

Waymo (and rideshare) replace regular human drivers. No need to compare only against rideshare drivers.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#736

Post by LtWorf » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 2:44 PM UTC

simianwords wrote: post #554

alexgoodhart wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using public safety as a cudgel to mandate adherence to any technology is a nonstarter. The imposition is huge. We’re talking about privacy, movement and its relationships with housing/work/family management/safety. At the very least, it needs to be plainly stated that this concept is not being studied out of curiosity. A few companies have a gigantic investment in seeing massive, government-facilitated adoption that…

i'm kinda hating how privacy is becoming a boogeyman to oppose literally anything. i'm predicting that public will catch hold of this rhetoric eventually. literally any. single. thing. gets opposed on privacy grounds. and its a good move because technology by definition works by passing information around so it lends to being opposed this way everywhere. i think Foucault is partly responsible for this with his whole…

What rhetoric? It's not like it's made up…

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#737

Post by Lifetrajectory » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 2:45 PM UTC

Researchers estimate roughly half of human crashes go unreported, and up to one-third of injury accidents, because drivers hope to avoid insurance price hikes: that is an imprtant point.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#738

Post by VikingCoder » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 2:47 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #234

Better driver education and higher test standards would save lives too. So would banning alcohol. None of these solutions, including automated cars, will be mandated any time soon. It's not enough to have data, you also have to have societal buy-in. Interesting that Waymo chooses to compare accident rates with the average driver vs the rideshare drivers their cars replace. The numbers wouldn't look as impressive beca…

I was very bullish on full self-driving.

Now I think "guard rails" is the thing I'm hoping for. Your car actively tries to prevent accidents.

Then, I think once that's seen as working really well, I think what's next is that it will become prohibitively expensive to insure your car without keeping the guard rails on all the time.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#739

Post by ericmay » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 2:51 PM UTC

littlecorner wrote: post #732

ericmay wrote: post #686

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re thinking about New York and San Francisco when you’re thinking about transportation you are starting off on the wrong frame of reference. Think more like a random city or town in Europe, perhaps Bordeaux since I was recently reading about it. Smaller cities/towns with tiny populations shouldn’t dictate how everyone else lives and suck up resources and taxpayer dollars for asinine highway projects. Most of A…

I'm thinking more from my context where it probably wouldn't make sense. Small city that's rather spread out and quickly transitions into farmland. And a big culture of driving to neighboring counties for vacations Which is the difficulty in talking about "America needs to do such and such": we are much more diverse, and when we're talking about one context someone else hears their context or isn't able to imagine a…

That's a fair criticism, but most of America does live in cities and urban environments and so the default context would be more akin to what I described. Where you live is the minority and the exception.

Unfortunately transportation policy is heavily influenced at the national level and the federal government doles out gargantuan amounts of funding to keep the highway lobbying industry happy. We can't only have a local conversation or even a state conversation, though of course those conversations happen as well and are arguably more important.

Re: Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

#740

Post by jeffbee » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 2:51 PM UTC

ArnoVW wrote: post #524

jonas21 wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Waymo says it has 170 million miles and I found 2 fatal accidents it was involved in (fault doesn't matter as fault is not included in the other stat either) I suppose you can claim fault doesn't matter. But if you read the narratives of both fatal incidents, they are so clearly not the Waymo's fault that I don't see how you can hold it against them. In the first [1], the Waymo was stopped at a red light when the c…

That second accident looks like it could be one on those typical cases of SDC causing accidents by behaving unexpectedly (like braking for a pedestrian where human drivers would have denied right of way) I havent read the doc and I am not arguing either way, just saying that you can cause an accident in other ways than by ploughing into someone.

Hi. This position is utterly idiotic, even if you were just trying to steel-man it. If a self-driving car can "cause" accidents by yielding to crosswalks then the only sensible course of action is to immediately ban human drivers in cities, starting this morning, zero exceptions, no tolerance.