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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

#221

Post by mulmen »

rglullis wrote: post #209
jazzyjackson wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really fun stuff but most people have a limited amount of time in the day so if they can afford to take a car they're going to take a car.

> limited amount of time in the day For trips shorter than 2 miles, I can bet you that it's faster for me to hop on my bike (or to find an electric scooter) and get to my destination than it is to drive. And let's not even talk about the time to find parking.

The grocery store is 1.3 miles from here but it’s a 300’ climb and it’s 42f and raining right now. Even with my e-bike that’s not pleasant. On a conventional bike that’s unrealistic for all but the most hardcore cyclists.

There’s a bus that serves that route but the stop is uncovered and service is unreliable because it’s immediately after a rest stop where the human drivers take care of their biological needs.

A robo-bus would be more predictable and enable more frequent service.

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

#222

Post by guappa »

sofixa wrote: post #70
thiagocsf wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes. The old anti-privacy mantra: you have nothing to worry about, if you have nothing to hide.

It's a question if you put people's individual "privacy" (quotes because you're driving in public, on public roads paid for by the public, under public laws, and under the public's view - there's not really privacy as to how you're driving, everyone out there can see it) over people's collective right to live? Road deaths are among the leading causes of death in multiple developed countries.

Roads are public but unless you have someone following around you can't know where everyone is at all times. But with tracker now you have mass surveillance!

We criticize chinese government but we do much worse.

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

#223

Post by f1shy »

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 (under the influence, no valid driving permit, cars with issues [braking broken]...)?

now THAT would be massaging statistics! Just take the best drivers, that had enough sleep, no drink, perfect car conditions... No. You have to compare with the whole world, "as it is"

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

#224

Post by mulmen »

nextweek2 wrote: post #216
mstade wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just in CA for a few weeks and drove in SF quite a bit. There are Waymo cars everywhere and from the perspective of a driver I was more than a little cautious driving behind or next to one of them. I would rate their driving as quite good, but their signaling of intent was terrible. More than once did I see them use turn signals, only to never actually turn. Turn the signals on, then off again, then on again, e…

In England we call them "Indicators" as opposed to turn signals. My driving instructor said, they are call that because they are only indicating they might go that way. Never assume they will. It was some defensive driving advice. I can understand that it's annoying that inconsistent use of turn signals is an annoyance, it isn't as bad a people that don't use them at all, but my understand is that the American road s…

We have roundabouts. We don’t have them everywhere but then I bet you don’t either.

My home town in Idaho has built at least five I am aware of in as many years, with more planned.

My neighborhood in Seattle plants a tree in the middle of unmarked intersections which effectively creates a mini roundabout.

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

#225

Post by rglullis »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #183
HPsquared wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With self-driving tech, buses could be made a lot smaller and more frequent. They are large and infrequent because of fixed per-vehicle costs (mostly the driver). EDIT: Small size then enables personalized routing: a multi-passenger taxi taking a set of people to similar destinations.

That makes a lot of sense, I never thought of the labor as the limiting factor on bus route (clearly I just never thought very hard about it) but boy would it be nice if there was a 9 passenger van every 5 minutes to replace a full size bus every 30.

Vans to complement buses are definitely a thing in São Paulo, and the cost of labor is not a limiting factor.

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

#226

Post by jstummbillig »

ArtTimeInvestor wrote: post #35

Is there any possible future, where Waymo is NOT one of the major players in self driving software?

Have they solved their mapping problem? Because that, more so than the added Lidar hardware cost, seems like the lynchpin here: As soon as Tesla works, it works everywhere*.

Last I heard Waymo, they have to do every city, one at a time – and there are a lot of cities.

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

#227

Post by gizmondo »

michaelt wrote: post #119
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

I thought L4 was Tesla Autopilot style, someone in the driving seat, hands on the wheel, ready to take over with half a second's notice, and taking liability for insurance purposes? And the geofenced "freeway driving only" stuff some German carmakers are coming out with? Whereas Waymo's taxis don't have anyone in the driving seat at all?

> I thought L4 was Tesla Autopilot style, someone in the driving seat, hands on the wheel, ready to take over with half a second's notice, and taking liability for insurance purposes?

That's L2.

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

#228

Post by Philpax »

michaelt wrote: post #119
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

I thought L4 was Tesla Autopilot style, someone in the driving seat, hands on the wheel, ready to take over with half a second's notice, and taking liability for insurance purposes? And the geofenced "freeway driving only" stuff some German carmakers are coming out with? Whereas Waymo's taxis don't have anyone in the driving seat at all?

I was under the same impression, but the parent poster is right: the main difference between L4 and L5 is universal applicability. Waymo is L4 as it can drive without a driver, but only in certain areas.

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

#229

Post by paganel »

anal_reactor wrote: post #190
paganel wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should also ask for more money from sick people when it comes to health insurance, as they’re more prone to getting sick again and again and hence consume resources, after all how many Luigis can there be? Which is to say that naked capitalism works until it doesn’t, and when it stops working big chances are that it won’t do it gracefully, see how present-day health insurance CEOs are now scared shitless of Big…

If self-driving cars are widely available, and they can drive everywhere a normal car can go, then you're not driving manually because you need to do so, you're driving manually because you like it, and the society isn't there to pay for your hobbies.

> If self-driving cars are widely available

They won't be "widely available" because of the higher prices, just look at the EV market right now. You won't get a self-driving $2,000 clunker, and when you drive a $2,000 clunker you don't do it because you "like it", but because that's all that you can afford.

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

#230

Post by necovek »

Reubend wrote: post #175
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 a…

I understand that viewpoint from an insurance perspective, but not necessarily from my own safety perspective: I wonder how well Waymo would fare in circumstances I see as a driver. Eg. humans can control whether they drive under the influence or not (eg. if you don't take your car to a bar, you ain't coming back driving it).

But most notably, aggregated statistics like these focus on comparisons similar to comparing averages vs better statistical representations (like average vs median or p75 or... eg. it's possible for one driver to cause 20 collisions, and in a set of 10 drivers with no other collisions, we'd be at 2 collisions per driver instead of 0 really).

It's also not only about highway/city street miles, it's also about time of day: if Waymo is proportionally less on the streets and areas where there is more risky driving (eg. around bars and around midnight to 3am when there are also drunk pedestrians around) compared to human drivers, that would obviously skew the numbers in SDV's favour. Again, potentially they did since they acknowledge a separate study focusing on those, but later on they only talk about aggregated insurance claims.

They also acknowledge they are not accounting for accident severity, not even by using the dollar amount: while they had no fatalities, it's obviously important to weigh accidents by their severity.

With all this said, this does demonstrate current insurance liability of an average human driver compared to a Waymo SDV in Phoenix and SFO, but only once we have more comparable data should we make a bigger claim.

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