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

201–210 of 288 posts

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

#201

Post by bluGill »

thfuran wrote: post #92
ra7 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. Maybe not “all of it”, but most of it is covered. Waymo has always operated 24/7 since the beginning and had 99.4% fleet uptime [1] during the past winter season (SF had record rains). They used to shut down during inclement weather in Phoenix years ago, but their SF rain operations have scaled up with the mileage. Waymo vehicles use its own set of sensors and don’t rely on the vehicle’s safety features,…

>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.

Abs has been mandatory in the us since 2012, and was very common long before that (my base model truck from 1999 has it) we can consider cars without abs statistical noise by now.

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

#202

Post by spookie »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #98
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…

For completion. You actually have real driverless public transport systems functioning for many years now with autonomous metro and rail systems across the world. It is obviously a much easier problem to solve due to its constraints. What is interesting to me is that we have completely altered our transport networks to fit the new paradigm of cars +100 years ago, widening roads, asphalting roads, building motorways,…

The constraints on autonomous public transport systems make them viable. You create a safer system that way. Additionally, you prevent unnecessary work getting multiple vehicles to the same location roughly at the same timeframe.

I understand people want a faster solution! But mixing autonomous vehicles with human drivers isn't the way.

Moreover, these companies commit statistical fallacies discussing safety. Human drivers have driven more, as the article suggests, and in a myriad of environments. Many variables are at play, and it's disingenuous to compare this way.

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

#203

Post by Dylan16807 »

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #198
Dylan16807 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My bigger point is that you only need to check for coder negligence every once in a while, not every time someone gets hit, it's fine if in the typical case nobody risks jail.

The """license to kill""" is one that drivers already have.

And you keep making the waymo side more and more of a strawman with each comment. I would appreciate the goal posts staying in place.

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

#204

Post by spookie »

sw104 wrote: post #160
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…

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…

Your remark on buses being hampered by sharing the road with cars is on point.

I've lived in Porto, and Malmö. Both have done considerable efforts in making certain roads or lanes exclusive to public transportation.

In Porto, for example, these lanes are exclusive to a very interesting set of vehicles: buses, taxis, and motorcycles. It makes a lot of sense, this way you make riding a motorcycle safer (less vehicles), while preventing bus lanes from blocking all other manners of transport.

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

#205

Post by Dylan16807 »

prmoustache wrote: post #194
Dylan16807 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People need cars. You can't take away half of people's cars without massively restructuring transit.

In aggregate, people are correct to feel entitled to get around town without going bankrupt trying. Why would that baffle you?

You're not talking about exceptionally bad drivers, you're talking about half of them. That makes a big difference.

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

#206

Post by kortilla »

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…

Because it doesn’t work unless you burn down 75% of the homes and layout the cities all over again to be packed in like Europe/Asia in a public transit friendly manner.

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

#208

Post by kortilla »

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…

Dozens of billions are being poured in. That’s we got the California high speed rail connecting nowhere to nothing and BART just barely making it to San Jose.

None of that still fixes the last mile problem of suburbia, and buses aren’t a solution. They are slow, too infrequent, and generally uncomfortable.

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

#209

Post by kortilla »

Swenrekcah wrote: post #153
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…

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.

No it’s not a go-to talking point. Better transit has been deprioritized even when self driving was a complete fantasy.

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

#210

Post by kortilla »

sw104 wrote: post #160
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…

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…

> 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.

5 minute? It’s 4 miles to the nearest Caltrain stop from where I live.

Post reply on HN