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A comparison to Waymo’s auto liability insurance claims at 25M miles

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Re: A comparison to Waymo’s auto liability insurance claims at 25M miles

#141

Post by heroprotagonist »

mulmen wrote: post #56

I rode in a Waymo recently and was amazed at how good it was. It was easily in the top 5 best drivers I have ridden with. Really really impressive. It wasn’t nearly as cautious or timid as I expected it to be. But it also wasn’t reckless. I would describe it as assertive, but I’m sure some people would call it aggressive. It knows the rules and what’s going on around and acts accordingly. This really should be the no…

> The future is bright.

Ask the 2.3 million employed drivers in the United States how the future looks.

Because pretty soon, they'll all need to be doing something else. And I don't see a technology that will open up 2.3 million jobs for them to move into, or training initiatives to support them while they shift professions.

The future _could_ be bright, if we approach AI right, and build the social safety net to soften the massive amount of transition that will be necessary. But we're not. We're looking at cuts everywhere in the near future. And long term, it seems we have no strategy. Which makes it more likely that a lot of people will be harmed.

Re: A comparison to Waymo’s auto liability insurance claims at 25M miles

#142

Post by tremon »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #94
michaelt wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google/Waymo actually started way earlier, and had fistfuls of cash from the very start. Google hired a bunch of people who'd done well in the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge [1] - including Sebastian Thrun and Chris Urmson who lead the winning team. Thrun is also behind Google Street View which in some regards [2] looks a lot like a self-driving-car sensor suite. So Google was having LIDAR-equipped, high-precision-GPS-eq…

> the confidence to design for L5 autonomy from the start L4. Waymo can't "drive everywhere in all conditions" [1]. (Nobody can. Not to L4 standards of never requiring "you to take over driving.") [1] https://www.sae.org/blog/sae-j3016-update

> Nobody can

Do you mean this in the sense "even humans can't do this, it's too strict a requirement" or in the sense "no self-driving car has achieved this yet"?

Re: A comparison to Waymo’s auto liability insurance claims at 25M miles

#143

Post by BiteCode_dev »

myrmidon wrote: post #130
mindvirus wrote: post #79

I think insurance prices will drive adoption of self driving very quickly. Consider: if a non-self driving car is in an accident with a self driving car, it'll almost always be the non-self driving car at fault. And with the telemetry from the self-driving car, they can prove it too, so accidents that would have been no-fault or shared fault become fully the non-self driving cars fault. And so I think insurance for n…

Why would insurance need to get more expensive for manual drivers as self-driving adoption increases? Ideally, insurance cost for self-driving cars would just be lower than insurance costs now (proportional to risk), and even insurance costs for manual drivers might go down because their risk decreases as well.

Because insurers are in the game to make money, and they will bait and switch.

Re: A comparison to Waymo’s auto liability insurance claims at 25M miles

#144

Post by rglullis »

gizmondo wrote: post #138
rglullis wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole thing with self-driving cars is that it feels like the story of NASA's space pen. All this money being poured into a technology that would not be needed if the richest country in the world had the common sense of simply getting rid of its car dependency and developed proper public transit infrastructure.

I live in Switzerland which has a reputation for having good public transport. Still own a car because in many cases you can't beat convenience. Can't wait for Waymo to come here.

> Still own a car because in many cases you can't beat convenience

What about the places where people own cars not because it is the better choice, but the only choice?

Re: A comparison to Waymo’s auto liability insurance claims at 25M miles

#145

Post by mulmen »

notahacker wrote: post #110
mulmen wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd want to compare to our best drivers (e.g. ambulance drivers), not average drivers. Why? As long as it is better than the median driver the roads are safer.

> Why? As long as it is better than the median driver the roads are safer. The intent is to increase miles driven, and the drivers a commercial service can be expected to replace first are professionals, not "median drivers". In practice accident stats are also benchmarked against mean drivers in a world in which serious accidents disproportionately involve inadequate drivers (or conditions Waymo does not deploy in)

Then shouldn’t the comparison be to Uber instead of an ambulance?

Re: A comparison to Waymo’s auto liability insurance claims at 25M miles

#146

Post by necovek »

This sounds quite a bit like massaging statistics until you get the numbers you like.

A few things that pop to mind: did we exclude drivers who were not eligible to drive (under the influence, no valid driving permit, cars with issues [braking broken]...)? (This mostly matters for evaluating the average performance compared to average non-impaired human — a drunk person might mess up with self-driving vehicle sensors as well just for kicks once they are in suitable numbers and widely available)

Did Waymo drive across all the same areas and time periods as the humans did with an equal "proportion"?

Could we compare "time behind wheel" instead of miles travelled? (Eg. lots of small crashes happen when traffic is at a standstill)

There are so many ways to slice and dice this and come up with favourable results for self-driving systems that I can't but be dubious of any claim.

But notably, if we can liberate ourselves from driving through congested traffic, it would certainly reduce the incentive to speed and aim for more efficient driving as we'd be free to do other stuff while we get to our destination — and simply slowing down would buy both human and software drivers time to react and avoid most crashes (nothing really saves you from someone recklessly driving straight into your car).

Re: A comparison to Waymo’s auto liability insurance claims at 25M miles

#147

Post by usrusr »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #93

I just heard someone mention in a podcast how as a cyclist they need to make eye contact with drivers to be safe, and there is no one to make eye contact with. Waymo would say "don't worry, it sees you" and maybe the numbers even show they do some percentage more than the average human driver, but that still does not reproduce the self-help aspect of you looking at a driver until you see that that driver sees you. I…

As a cyclist I avoid eye contact like the plague: it's only a small minority of drivers, but that small minority is dangerous enough to outweigh all benefits eye contact might have with others. Some drivers will inevitably read eye contact as "the cyclist has seen me and understood that my big and dangerous car will crush them without taking harm so they will yield no matter what traffic rules might say, so I will go". Eye contact is like a green light to them.

If I do want to yield despite having priority I can do that just as safely without eye contact and if I want to assert priority it's objectively less dangerous (because of that minority) if I do it without eye contact. Nothing to gain, so much to lose. The reality on the ground is what the car does, and I will focus on that. Taking guesses from looking at the driver is counterproductive.

Re: A comparison to Waymo’s auto liability insurance claims at 25M miles

#149

Post by LoLFactor »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #93

I just heard someone mention in a podcast how as a cyclist they need to make eye contact with drivers to be safe, and there is no one to make eye contact with. Waymo would say "don't worry, it sees you" and maybe the numbers even show they do some percentage more than the average human driver, but that still does not reproduce the self-help aspect of you looking at a driver until you see that that driver sees you. I…

This.

I'm always surprised how few people know as pedestrians to look at me, the driver and not my car. Some don't even look at the car. I developed a habit of looking for their gaze and if they don't look back, assume they're not fully aware and just am more cautious.

This works because I, as a human, know this and can compensate when they just rush the crosswalk without being fully aware of their surroundings.

How do you do that with a machine?

Re: A comparison to Waymo’s auto liability insurance claims at 25M miles

#150

Post by wccrawford »

khazhoux wrote: post #60
palata wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're "objectively" higher risk, based on a study by the company building the autopilot, right? How objective is that?

Like the Borg, every Waymo is the same driver. So in column A, the insurance company has a meta-driver with many millions of miles of statistics. In column B, we have slow-reaction and non-lidar-equipped you, who had a fender-bender last year and a speeding ticket 3 years ago.

That's initially true, but as the car ages, and maintenance is done (or not done, or done improperly) the car's aspects will change.

And as new cars are developed, obviously there are more "drivers". Essentially every year there'll be new drivers for every company that makes autonomous cars, possibly multiple.

Yeah, it's still a lot fewer than the individual humans, but it's definitely not just "one driver".

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