Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nbcbayarea.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 288 posts

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

#151

Post by tetris11 »

jstummbillig wrote: post #148
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 am currently sitting in a European train that was a replacement for another train that had, at point of replacement, a delay of 30 minutes on a 55 minute trip. Since, well, everything could be much better and it's still fairly unclear who makes substantial progress on one of these problems, I am fairly happy to let various playbooks play out and see where progress can be made.

Rheinland? If so, they're expanding that line. Its a temporary problem?

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

#152

Post by robertlagrant »

fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #104
tsimionescu wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the Uber model they mean is the more general "sell your service at a loss today to increase market share, hoping it will become cheaper for you tomorrow".

People heard the news Uber is profitable these days, right? The plan worked. Turns out, the fixed cost of technology has less of an impact on your margin when amortized across a larger business. So growing by losing money can make you more profitable later.

I don't know the details, but I heard Uber Eats is what tipped them into profitability.

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

#153

Post by Swenrekcah »

cipheredStones wrote: post #143
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…

The fact that someone always makes this sort of comment when driverless cars come up is really weird to me. I've never owned a car, use public transit very regularly, and think the state of it in the US is pretty bad and underinvested in. However, that's due to a huge set of systemic factors (political, organizational, spatial, ...) which nobody seems to have made much progress on, and not for lack of trying. Yeah, i…

It is because one of the go-to talking points for postponing and diffusing support for better transit is the promise of self driving cars that will somehow solve everything.

It doesn’t make sense because the traffic jam problem with cars comes not from human drivers but the physics of the car itself, but it is a persistent talking point nevertheless.

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

#154

Post by lozenge »

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...

Amsterdam was 2-4 storey apartments with narrow streets, but the streets were taken over by cars. Once enough traffic was removed/space reserved for busses, trams and bikes, the public transport was able to effectively serve users.

The US has huge areas where each lot must be single family, at least 50% yard, etc. As well as huge parking lots around businesses. Therefore putting the residents much further from the places they need to be. Meaning busses and bikes would need to travel further. They still need to stop at an interval of say, 10 minutes walk, and therefore they're slower. Even if you gave them a dedicated lane this would not help.

As well, in London I can take a bus and usually access dozens of services at my destination, like food, entertainment, shopping, etc. In the US, a destination might just have one service, and just a few random businesses in walking distance. Again increasing the number of miles travelled.

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

#155

Post by Swenrekcah »

robertlagrant wrote: post #145
worldsayshi wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, capitalist economies tax effort and spend it on longer-term things. It's democracies where things can be rolled back by the next leader that are the main cause of short-termism. (I don't have a better alternative to democracy; just stating that's where the flaw is. Well, that and zero incentive to do things well/efficiently outside of political kudos).

Things used to work pretty well in capitalist democracies when the capitalists were well regulated and taxed and the demagogues didn’t have unrestricted personal access to the voter base.

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

#156

Post by lozenge »

n2d4 wrote: post #144
gambiting wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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…

Less traffic and no parking is compatible because there are fewer total cars, as Waymos are shared.

If 60% of people want to travel at 8:30am and they don't want to share a vehicle, then there needs to be that many cars and space for them to park.

You can park them further away from their destination, this increases traffic massively driving to the parking.

As well, if the ride is comfortable then people will be willing to plan longer commutes. An induced demand which increases the number of miles driven and hence traffic. Watching TV in the car is a major appeal of self driving.

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

#157

Post by robertlagrant »

prmoustache wrote: post #118
Dylan16807 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Getting those people into self-driving cars would be fantastic. Pretending there's a larger issue at play that overshadows that fantasticness is just pessimism. Sometimes it's easier to spend billions and grapple ingeniously with reality to create something new than it is to change the mind of a public official.

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

#158

Post by lynx23 »

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…

Even metro is going for driverless in the not so distant future. In Vienna, the first driverless metro is about to go online in roughly 2 years IIRC.

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

#159

Post by occz »

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…

U.S cities were rebuilt to accommodate cars, and there's no reason they can't be rebuilt to undo this damage.

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

#160

Post by sw104 »

cipheredStones wrote: post #143
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…

The fact that someone always makes this sort of comment when driverless cars come up is really weird to me. I've never owned a car, use public transit very regularly, and think the state of it in the US is pretty bad and underinvested in. However, that's due to a huge set of systemic factors (political, organizational, spatial, ...) which nobody seems to have made much progress on, and not for lack of trying. Yeah, i…

Where I live in Northern England, buses are (amongst other reasons) mostly hampered in their reliability by delays and cancellations caused by sharing roads congested with cars.

Here there's an almost palpable attitude of disgust towards using the bus. Almost a me versus the plebs attitude. The car represents the people's private island.

It would be slightly improved if people moved from tank-like SUVs to smaller cars, even better improved by embracing 1/2 seat cars (which will never happen because the design isn't conformist, see the Smart Car), and most improved by people putting their ego aside and taking the bus.

For a country hitting 2/3 of adults being overweight and obese, it may be a perk that public transport doesn't provide A-to-B delivery and instead people get a 5 minute walk somewhere in their day.

Instead it looks like self-driving cars will win out due to people's behaviour.

Post reply on HN