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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

#131

Post by spike021 »

PinguTS wrote: post #124
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…

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

It took how many years just to add one new line?

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

#132

Post by worldsayshi »

fodkodrasz wrote: post #120
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…

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.

I suspect that if a metro would be built in a large car centric city over time the city would adapt to the metro and become less car centric. But making the economical argument for building the metro in the first place would be very hard. It would pay back over a time scale that capitalist economies hardly consider.

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

#133

Post by teaearlgraycold »

spike021 wrote: post #131
PinguTS wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It took how many years just to add one new line?

How many years to implement self driving cars?

But really I think they’re the future of the city.

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

#134

Post by oakesm9 »

gambiting wrote: post #130
n2d4 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 nar…

No idea what a driverless car would do, but that VW driver acts like they’ve never reversed in their life…

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

#135

Post by mnky9800n »

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…

But then there would be slightly less money for guns and old people's free healthcare and monthly checks.

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

#136

Post by RandomLensman »

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.

You need the driving data to contain that, too, not just the accident data to create similar driving profiles. Might not be so easy.

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

#137

Post by _xivi »

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.

>> "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.

But the cars are constrained within specific geographic zones. Ignoring anything else, that alone lead to many assumptions that need to be taken into consideration.

This isn't "real world". This is more like open air lab expirement, where some subjects (Waymo) have special constraints. The drivers they're comparing against, don't share the same constraints. You can't draw a generic statement from that, no matter how you twist it.

This is a marketing stunt first and foremost.

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

#138

Post by thfuran »

tialaramex wrote: post #129
thfuran wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

That depends on exactly what you're trying to measure.

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

#139

Post by gghffguhvc »

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…

I use Waymos in SF. For every Waymo trip I do maybe 8 e-bike trips and 20 walking commutes. I’ve taken Waymos to BART stations. Waymo has just replaced Uber for trips in SF for me.

It would be nice if the city added more BART coverage but it seems unlikely one will ever be added within 10min walk of my house. There is already one 10min e-bike ride, but I’m not comfortable locking my e-bike there.

To bus to the BART station is 10min walk + 3min wait avg then 10min on bus.

Uber/Lyft/Waymo will always be part of my commuting solution for where I live. I just happen to find Waymo the more pleasant experience.

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