A comparison to Waymo’s auto liability insurance claims at 25M miles • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by graemep » Fri, Dec 20, 2024, 10:59 AM UTC

qnleigh wrote: post #89

mulmen wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have they banned horses yet? My money is on never. This technology doesn’t need a ban to succeed. It just needs to be allowed.

Horse accidents aren't a leading cause of death though. Seems like it'll depend on how thoroughly self-driving becomes a thing of the past on its own.

They were a leading cause of death when they were a common mode of transport.

Riding a horse is very dangerous. Its just regarded as an acceptable risk (its something many people encourage kids to do) for cultural and social reasons. A British government scientific advisor was fired for pointing out that riding a horse carries about 30 times the risk of a "serious adverse effect" as taking ecstasy.

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

#172

Post by guappa » Fri, Dec 20, 2024, 10:59 AM UTC

kmarc wrote: post #40

wiz21c wrote: post #3

So one day my car insurance company will tell me: "you have to pay us more because you are driving yourself".

My favorite brain picker question: What year would the EU* ban human driven cars on public roads? That's it. Million different opinions ranging from "never" to "within a couple decades for sure", weak, strong opinions, and of course many interesting topics to branch out into. *: sometimes I ask with US, or particular countries, it doesn't really matter for the sake of conversation. Fun fact: people working in automot…

It's no more of a brain picker than "how many beans are there in this black jar that you can't lift or shake?".

It's just saying something without any information.

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

#173

Post by jazzyjackson » Fri, Dec 20, 2024, 10:59 AM UTC

Panzer04 wrote: post #168

heroprotagonist wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 sof…

2.3m people we don't need to pay any more. Jobs'll open up, that money will go somewhere else.

Sure but building yachts is skilled labor, there will have to be a massive retraining operation

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

#174

Post by necovek » Fri, Dec 20, 2024, 11:00 AM UTC

LoLFactor wrote: post #149

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…

It's probably equally simple for a machine (if not simpler) to figure out if a human has looked at the oncoming vehicle with sufficiently advanced cameras and computer vision. However, we use a lot more hints (change of pace, facial expressions that indicate presence and focus, nodding etc), which, while not outside the realm of AI CV, would surely need lots of training, yet it comes pretty naturally to humans.

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

#175

Post by Reubend » Fri, Dec 20, 2024, 11:01 AM UTC

necovek wrote: post #146

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…

> did we exclude drivers who were not eligible to drive

One could argue here that it would be unfair to exclude the worst performing humans. Plenty of humans cause accidents for easily preventable reasons, but that's an honest part of our behavior. Or to rephrase, I think excluding the categories of people who drive terribly, but do still drive nonetheless, would be less representative of reality.

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

No, they didn't. Their methodology didn't adjust for things like highway vs city street miles, although it did adjust for city and state.

> Could we compare "time behind wheel" instead of miles travelled?

We could, but that would incentivize slow driving rather than safe driving. You need to travel the same minimum distance from a hypothetical "Point A" to "Point B" no matter what, but the number of minutes could be inflated easily. Economic factors discourage inflating the number of miles.

> 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.

I think it's fair to criticize the fact that they didn't adjust for geographic area with as much granularity as they should have (i.e. for highways vs city streets, or for excluded zones like airports). But other than that, their methodology seems solid to me.

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

#176

Post by mulmen » Fri, Dec 20, 2024, 11:01 AM UTC

necovek wrote: post #163

mulmen wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point about intent. As a passenger I appreciated how smooth it was but I can see how the lack of “body language” could be disorienting for human drivers. The Waymo driving style is almost passive-aggressive. It has superhuman situational awareness and knowledge. I wonder if it isn’t using blinkers effectively but it’s everyone else that’s technically wrong. It’s also not perfect so who knows. There’s probably st…

That sounds great for Waymo: I'd love to experience a ride in one and I'll make sure to catch a ride next time I am in CA. I wonder what it does in common situations, like stop-and-go traffic with two streets joining at an angle, where one has to yield? In that case, if everyone simply followed the rules, the cars in the yielding street would never get through. While I am passive-aggressive myself as a driver, I reli…

> I wonder what it does in common situations, like stop-and-go traffic with two streets joining at an angle, where one has to yield?

Plan a better route? I can’t picture the situation you describe. Yielding traffic just… yields. When there’s an opening they take it.

On my ride the Waymo took a right turn on red. How is the situation you describe different?

Do you still yield unnecessarily when there are cars behind you?

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

#177

Post by epolanski » Fri, Dec 20, 2024, 11:01 AM UTC

lucianbr wrote: post #117

epolanski wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did write "besides privacy" because it is a valid concern indeed. But considering that most people don't give two damns about their privacy (or at least act like it, keeping 24/7 a tracking device on them and sharing all of their lives non stop) what would be their valid reason to not have a tracking device for insurance purposes on their cars?

Will the data collection and interpretation be perfect? What if the map with the speed limits is inaccurate and my commute goes through a road where the limit is 70, traffic drives at 70, but the system thinks the limit is 30? My car displays the speed limit in the dash, as a helper, and sometimes the above happens. If it had automatic braking for crossing the speed limit, it would be a disaster. Also, if I drive 70…

Those are technical not ethical issues.

In any case, the system works fine in Italy, the purpose is only to provide more data in case of collisions.

The idea is that if you're driving legally and you end up in a costly accident you can prove you were driving and acting correctly.

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

#178

Post by notahacker » Fri, Dec 20, 2024, 11:01 AM UTC

mulmen wrote: post #145

notahacker wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Ambulance drivers might be a step too far unless autonomous systems are expected to drive ambulances at high speed and run red lights. But my point is that they really do need to be a lot better than the median driver given their real world operational expectations, and especially significantly better than the mean driver they're being benchmarked against here, who probably loses their license for the bodily injuries they cause...

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

#179

Post by Dalewyn » Fri, Dec 20, 2024, 11:02 AM UTC

rglullis wrote: post #86

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 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.

>developed proper public transit infrastructure.

No amount of public transport can accomodate the personal whims and demands of anyone let alone everyone. Even Japan, famous for its public transport infrastructure, still has a healthy population of drivers both in metro and rural areas.

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

#180

Post by rglullis » Fri, Dec 20, 2024, 11:02 AM UTC

mulmen wrote: post #106

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.

Nobody says it has to be a car form factor. It can be a self driving van or shuttle or bus. Last mile is a nightmare with all public transit. With the low population density of the US we need a lot of small vehicles to feed transit hubs.

For "last mile", we already have bikes, scooters, skates, plain walking...