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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

#121

Post by prmoustache »

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.

> 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.

I am pretty sure among those 51% of people only a fraction is made up of total assholes that wouldn't change the way they drive if rules were more strict while another fraction could accept more and more stringent laws, especially if they come gradually and would increase their standards of driving to keep that privilege.

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

#123

Post by n2d4 »

komali2 wrote: post #116
n2d4 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree, but self-driving cars (in the success case) are something new. More safety, less traffic, no more parking. I could see them make the way to Europe too (I'd love to have Waymos in my rural village, where cars are still common).

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

#124

Post by PinguTS »

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…

Funfact: San Franscisco has a public transport system in the area where the driverless cars are operating.

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

#125

Post by 8organicbits »

fragmede wrote: post #82
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.

Unfortunately, we can't exclude humans that drink, text, have anger issues etc. from driving on the road with you. At any point, the driver next to you could have a stroke, pass out from doing drugs, have a panic attack, etc.

The other drivers on the road shouldn't be a factor here as it's not the thing being studied. A human driving and a self-driving car driving the same route are both equally exposed to danger from the cars around them. The study should control for that variable.

But I think you're getting at a really interesting question. If the ratio of self-driving cars increases in your zip code does your insurance, as a human driver, decrease? I.E. is if safer to drive next to a self-driving car or a human driven car?

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

#126

Post by gorbachev »

bluGill wrote: post #13
cwillu wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of being a safe driver is knowing when it's not safe to drive and resisting pressure to drive anyway.

Maybe, but I do drive on ice and snow all the time, I just slow down.

So do I, but other drivers don't.

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

#127

Post by graeme »

brabel wrote: post #86
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.

The goal here is not to see who is the best under imaginary conditions, it's to determine whether driverless cars are safe in real life as currently deployed. The question you're asking is irrelevant because a world in which all humans don't drink, text or have anger issues is not real.

I think the question would be better framed as “would I, someone who doesn’t do dumb things while driving, be safer in a driverless car?”

Despite the universality of what you cite, driving accidents are likely an 80:20 issue where a small fraction of people cause most of the harm.

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

#128

Post by gambiting »

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...

>>Aren't there examples of European cities that "converted?"

Loads and loads and loads - at least here in the UK, nearly every city centre is converting to be pedestrian only, with cars being pushed further and further out, with councils emphasising that you should really park your car at one of the massive park&ride car parks outside of the city centre then just take a metro or bus in. That's a good thing in my opinion. It's really shocking to look at pictures taken from the city centre just 30 years ago and see that cars basically were prioritized everywhere, the main shopping street in Newcastle for instance used to be a normal road with cars parked on either side - it hasn't been like that for a long time and the city manages just fine.

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

#129

Post by tialaramex »

thfuran wrote: post #92
ra7 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. Maybe not “all of it”, but most of it is covered. Waymo has always operated 24/7 since the beginning and had 99.4% fleet uptime [1] during the past winter season (SF had record rains). They used to shut down during inclement weather in Phoenix years ago, but their SF rain operations have scaled up with the mileage. Waymo vehicles use its own set of sensors and don’t rely on the vehicle’s safety features,…

>so I’m not sure how types of vehicles is relevant for the comparison. Surely "car with ABS and good tires" vs "car without ABS and with bald tires" makes a difference. And presumably waymo operates exclusively the former while some people drive the latter.

Sure, but that's driver discretion, so it's a factor that we should be considering.

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

#130

Post by gambiting »

n2d4 wrote: post #123
komali2 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree, but self-driving cars (in the success case) are something new. More safety, less traffic, no more parking. I could see them make the way to Europe too (I'd love to have Waymos in my rural village, where cars are still common).

>>less traffic, no more parking.

These two goals are incompatible. If the idea is that self driving cars don't need to park, they can just drive around in circles until needed(which is an absolutely insane idea for a whole number of reasons, but let's stick with it for a second), then that will only increase not decrease traffic.

>>I could see them make the way to Europe too

I've love to see a Waymo navigate some narrow British roads where there is no road signage and there is no defined priority.

Like, this is a real situation encountered on a road here by myself just few months ago, skip to 1:30 to see the interesting bit - I'd love to hear proponents of self driving cars explain to me exactly what the car would do in this case. Hand over to a remote operator? There is no signal there, sorry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DO_OsjSRnEU

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