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Waymo says insurance data shows its driverless cars are safer than humans

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Re: Waymo says insurance data shows its driverless cars are safer than humans

#111

Post by mattmanser »

karamanolev wrote: post #95
RandomLensman wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure that can be concluded easily as you would need to synthetically create a human driver profile with the same restrictions as Waymo. It does not say that in the linked article.

If the accident data for humans contains information about weather, location, additional complications, then it should be possible to only filter out accidents that are within Waymo's restriction. You'll similarly need to filter the human-driven miles, but a statistical approach doesn't seem to hard. So ... possible, but TFA doesn't say, of course.

Of course insurance data doesn't contain that.

Have you worked in the real world?

Re: Waymo says insurance data shows its driverless cars are safer than humans

#112

Post by komali2 »

thereisnospork wrote: post #93
prmoustache wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is that 50% (even more) of the population should not be allowed to drive to begin with and we shouldn't wait for any technology to be ready to remove them from the road. That is the real elephant in the room that nobody wants to mention, especially political representatives who would be afraid to lose votes.

Let's not look a gift horse in the mouth though? Petty little things like political ramifications have a funny way of not being so petty,by definition 51% of people in a democracy can decide they will not be stopped from driving.

> by definition 51% of people in a democracy can decide they will not be stopped from driving.

This is an oversimplification. First of all, some percentage of legal drivers are not allowed to vote (non-citizens, 15-18 year olds, felons). Second, this assumes a "pure democracy," which the USA is not for several reasons, first of which is the fact that it's representative, second of which is that its representative rations haven't been updated in like a hundred years (if they were, there'd be thousands of members of congress, and California would have over a tenth of them), and finally, because of disenfranchisement through voter roll purges, gerrymandering, and political arrests (such as when ex-con felons in Florida were directly lied to and told they were allowed to vote so as to entrap them into committing the felony of voting as a felon).

Anyway we shouldn't assume people wouldn't vote against taking away the right to drive, if it came with the building out of good public transit infrastructure in return, which is what the USA desperately needs anyway. Not that I'm naive enough to think there's political will to make this happen, but the whole self driving car thing would be pretty moot if it was easy to get around San Francisco as it is to get around Paris, NYC, Tokyo, Taipei, etc.

Re: Waymo says insurance data shows its driverless cars are safer than humans

#113

Post by komali2 »

n2d4 wrote: post #108
harhargange wrote: post #89

To the folks particularly in US obsessed about driverless cars, why don't you instead focus on public transport, which is by default "driverless" for millions of people if you ignore a couple of metro/train drivers per 1000s of people. The point of a driverless car, from what I understand, is having end-to-end connectivity without the need to drive which is pain. I live in a place where public transport already has l…

As a European, this seems like an impossible feat at this point. It has been tried, but the cities have evolved in a way where this is just unfeasible. EU cities have mostly been built to be dense around train & bus stations. US cities (besides NY) are extremely large, flat, and spread out. Even if you had public transportation, it would be practically impossible to get from A to B because there are no hotspots besid…

Aren't there examples of European cities that "converted?" Amsterdam at least somewhat comes to mind: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/05/amsterdam-bic...

Re: Waymo says insurance data shows its driverless cars are safer than humans

#114

Post by n2d4 »

komali2 wrote: post #113
n2d4 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a European, this seems like an impossible feat at this point. It has been tried, but the cities have evolved in a way where this is just unfeasible. EU cities have mostly been built to be dense around train & bus stations. US cities (besides NY) are extremely large, flat, and spread out. Even if you had public transportation, it would be practically impossible to get from A to B because there are no hotspots besid…

Aren't there examples of European cities that "converted?" Amsterdam at least somewhat comes to mind: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/05/amsterdam-bic...

According to the article, Amsterdam was still built with bicycles in mind:

> At the start of the 20th century, bikes far outnumbered cars in Dutch cities and the bicycle was considered a respectable mode of transport for men and women. But when the Dutch economy began to boom in the post-war era, more and more people were able to afford cars

Amsterdam also has 50% higher population density than Los Angeles, despite housing much fewer people.

Re: Waymo says insurance data shows its driverless cars are safer than humans

#115

Post by komali2 »

Everyone's been crowing about driverless cars today but when I visited SF a month ago and finally witnessed them in action, I was surprised at their poor performance. In the span of just three days I watched them get confused and stop in the middle of 4 way stop sign intersections twice, and at one point as I was crossing an intersection with one waiting at a stop sign, a Cruise vehicle began to slowly inch forward right when I got in front of it. I was curious so I stopped moving to see what it would do, and it suddenly accelerated, swerving around me with maybe a meter to spare as I skipped out of the way (I doubt it would have hit me if I hadn't moved, but I wasn't going to take the chance).

I know I only have anecdotal data but I'm really interested in returning to SF and fucking with these cars more to see just how "good" they really are. I find when you actually stand up for your rights as a pedestrian and bicyclists, vehicles tend to fall into chaotic behavior. At least a self driving car won't actively try to run me off the road on purpose (former Houstonian bicyclist), but at the very least they should know to just stop and wait if there's some crazy dude standing around in the middle of the pedestrian crosswalk. Maybe beep or something, but not accelerate suddenly and cross within a meter at alarming speed.

I did email cruise about the incident with a timestamp and the "name" of the car (I think... it was plastered on the door with "bruschetta"), they emailed back saying:

> I'm sorry to hear you experienced this. At Cruise we take safety very seriously and this is not the experience we’d like you to have. This issue is being escalated to the appropriate team to be looked into further. Your input is greatly appreciated as we grow our ride-hail service, We appreciate your assistance.

Never heard back from them after that. Wish I had recorded it. Next time I come to SF, I'm bringing my gopro.

Re: Waymo says insurance data shows its driverless cars are safer than humans

#116

Post by komali2 »

n2d4 wrote: post #114
komali2 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't there examples of European cities that "converted?" Amsterdam at least somewhat comes to mind: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/05/amsterdam-bic...

According to the article, Amsterdam was still built with bicycles in mind: > At the start of the 20th century, bikes far outnumbered cars in Dutch cities and the bicycle was considered a respectable mode of transport for men and women. But when the Dutch economy began to boom in the post-war era, more and more people were able to afford cars Amsterdam also has 50% higher population density than Los Angeles, despite h…

Well fair enough, but I really don't think Americans should throw their hands up in the air and say "we just can't do it." This is the country that landed a man on the moon after all, it should be a solvable problem. Maybe the Europeans can't help with their own experience, but the American solution of "just add another lane" is self-evidently unsustainable. Something new is needed.

Re: Waymo says insurance data shows its driverless cars are safer than humans

#118

Post by prmoustache »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #88
prmoustache wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is that 50% (even more) of the population should not be allowed to drive to begin with and we shouldn't wait for any technology to be ready to remove them from the road. That is the real elephant in the room that nobody wants to mention, especially political representatives who would be afraid to lose votes.

You need to set up alternatives or you're destroying lives and they'll drive anyway.

This is knee jerk reaction. Why the states and cities would have their role to increase public transit, other alternatives would set them up naturally in fact from private sector or people adopting other means of transportation.

[1] which would become immediately more profitable or less unprofitable depending on the area.

Re: Waymo says insurance data shows its driverless cars are safer than humans

#119

Post by 8organicbits »

sfn42 wrote: post #76
zw123456 wrote: post #67

Computers don't drink, don't text and don't have road rage, so their claims might be plausible in a broad statistical way. My guess is that if you excluded humans that drink, text, have anger issues etc. then the humans probably win out.

Why would you exclude them? They're relevant.

We're approaching a time when people get to choose to drive themselves vs use a self-driving car, and that decision is personal. There's a lot of nuance hidden in these statistics. If a self-driving car is slightly safer than drink driving, but otherwise slightly worse than the average sober driver, that's relevant to people who never drink. Using a self-driving car would, statistically, lower their personal safety given those assumptions.

From another angle, imagine if we could aggressively ban drink drivers from the road, enforce regular eye exams, suspend the licenses of speeders, etc. Currently the lack of alternate transportation options makes these policies unpopular. Banning a driver could make it difficult for someone to commute to work, for example. Banning poor eye-sight could isolate the elderly. It's "too harsh". If affordable self-driving cars were an option (or damn it... public transit...) then these policies would likely have public support. So there could be a future where the bottom x% of drivers aren't allowed to drive.

Re: Waymo says insurance data shows its driverless cars are safer than humans

#120

Post by fodkodrasz »

n2d4 wrote: post #108
harhargange wrote: post #89

To the folks particularly in US obsessed about driverless cars, why don't you instead focus on public transport, which is by default "driverless" for millions of people if you ignore a couple of metro/train drivers per 1000s of people. The point of a driverless car, from what I understand, is having end-to-end connectivity without the need to drive which is pain. I live in a place where public transport already has l…

As a European, this seems like an impossible feat at this point. It has been tried, but the cities have evolved in a way where this is just unfeasible. EU cities have mostly been built to be dense around train & bus stations. US cities (besides NY) are extremely large, flat, and spread out. Even if you had public transportation, it would be practically impossible to get from A to B because there are no hotspots besid…

Wild idea: maybe they could try to make a pilot project of that in - ironically - the decaying Motor City maybe.

Also: the big car mania spilling over from the US to Europe makes driving in European cities/roads more and more difficult, as formerly bidirectional parts are now choke points where only a single oversized SUV can fit through at a time.

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