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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

#191

Post by okoma »

If the inference is drawn from the number of claims the first question that comes to mind is, how easy is it to file a claim with Waymo?

Also, do people behave differently when involved in an accident with a driverless car?

For example, at McDonalds, the automatic checkouts don’t simply substitute expensive workforce but actually boost sales of addons because people are less inhibited by a screen than by a human.

So, do people just drive off if it was a minor bump?

Finally, does Waymo initiate claims? If it were me, I wouldn’t. Id simply partner with a mechanic and fix issues internally as part of a fleet maintenance system.

If that’s the case, I’d roughly half the stats before doing any additional inference.

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

#192

Post by dathinab »

dagw wrote: post #185
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 live in a place where public transport already has last mile connectivity As do I, but if driverless taxis at even close to the price of public transport became a thing, I would never take a bus ever again.

but if you live in an area with a nicely sustainable population density and there are no subventions (e.g. for cars/roads) involved this seems quite impossible to ever be the case

Which means it's probably will be the case for the US as most of the us is either has a less sustainable, too low (e.g. "typical" US metro area, and well the endless rural areas(1)) or too high (e.g. city center) density.

(1): Through very rural areas might not be substainable for any self driving car service either, so people there will most most likely still have their own car. And for reasons of serviceability much more likely a non self driving car.

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

#193

Post by throwaway2037 »

bertil wrote: post #189
cipheredStones wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There’s progress because there’s investment. If dozens of billions were poured into public transport, it would improve dramatically. How can I be so so sure? Because that’s what a lot of countries have done, China first among many, and their public transport network has dramatically improved. The main issue is how much the private car industry avoids having to pay for the astounding externalities they generate: pollu…

It is strange that you chose China! Have you seen how many kilometers of urban freeways they built in the last 30 years? It is crazy. Look at the Beijing ring roads -- a traffic clogged hell space.

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

#194

Post by prmoustache »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #183
prmoustache wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And people would share drive or whatever it takes to make up for that.

Lots of people have no one else going near their workplace at nearly the same time. Shared drives can't get anywhere near half of people to work. So you have to fall back on paid trips, and that is too much money for a random shift making anything in the realm of minimum wage. It just doesn't work economically. Many many areas without sufficient transit will suffer badly.

If people are not willing to drive correctly without being distracted or under influence, that is their fault. We shouldn't have to trade security of everybody for the conveniency of the reckless ones. That whole sense of entitlement is baffling.

Besides cars are more expensive than riding a bike to a place where public transit is available.

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

#195

Post by gambiting »

n2d4 wrote: post #173
gambiting wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see any indication(other than some people on HN saying this) that people would not want to own a personal vehicle anymore just because self driving cars are a thing. Whether the car drives itself or not, people want to have their own personal space. Not to mention the (very common) need for things like child seats which don't really work with shared cars.

Well, that is Waymo's plan, which is explicitly a robotaxi, that this article is about. If we were talking about Teslas, the self-driving vision for instance would be different.

Well yes, let me rephrase that - I don't see any indication that people would switch to robotaxis over owning a personal vehicle. I see that now already - it would be cheaper for me to take a taxi(you know, normal human operated kind) to work every day and back than to own my own car. Once you add up the finance payments, insurance, maintanance and fuel, I could easily just Uber every day to work and back and it would actually save me money. I don't want to do that though, as I like the flexibility of owning my own car - and that feeling doesn't change even with robotaxis. Maybe I'm an outlier?

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

#196

Post by bluGill »

soco wrote: post #170
sw104 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 car…

So let me understand this: waiting stuck in traffic in your car (self-driving or not) is acceptable, but waiting stuck in traffic in a bus is not?

A bus is already slower than my car because of the need to stop to let others on. Plus a bus is much less likely to take a direct route to where I want to be thus requiring me to go someplace I don't want to go just to transfer to a different bus to get there. Finally when I drive i often am on faster roads that a bus wouldn't be on because there is nobody else to pick up (unless I transferred to an express bus)

Most people, throughout history have had a fixed time budget to get to work. They move if the trip takes more than half an hour. They will not take jobs (or will move) if it is farther away. We see this across civilizations, from hunter gathers following herds to modern people. There are exceptions but they are exceptions.

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

#197

Post by bluGill »

HPsquared wrote: post #184
occz wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

USA has trouble building enough houses as it is, or a single bridge or piece of infrastructure, and you say they can simply rebuild entire cities?

Over 50 years.

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

#198

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #171
otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But Waymo seems to be developing their code properly so it would never trigger for them. Allow me to not trust what their marketing department says. These are legal issues, "fake it till you make it" doesn't work here.

Sure, don't trust them, but at least see it's very possible, and that not being punished in that case wouldn't really be different from normal drivers.

"Conduct an investigation and punish the responsible in case of criminal negligence" is very different from "shit happens, so what if somebody died, Waymo's marketing decided that total collective happiness increased anyways".

Manslaugher is not the place to apply software startup disruption ideas.

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

#199

Post by bluGill »

noja wrote: post #79
sinuhe69 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe for the insurance purposes, this difference is irrelevant. The point is under the current condition, Waymo driverless cars are safer than human controlled cars, thus the question of liability and permit to operate should be cleared. The question whether humans are truly inferior to robots in term of controlling cars is rather a question of ego than a practical one.

> I believe for the insurance purposes, this difference is irrelevant. Can you explain this some more? My understanding is that an insurance policy is valid in a certain set of circumstances.

My insurance covers me driving any road in the US. I can't drive in Mexico but if it is a legal road in the US I can drive it any time. They assume i'm mostly driving near my house, but I can drive elsewhere.

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

#200

Post by throwaway2037 »

prmoustache wrote: post #75
2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not bullish on self driving cars, but that's a bit unfair. If their car performs better than 50% of the population, then that sounds like a success.

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.

    remove them from the road
What if that was you? Or is everyone on HN a "good driver"? I am terrible driver. I am so easily distracted by construction sites or nice nature.
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