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

#271

Post by rglullis » Fri, Dec 20, 2024, 12:58 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #244

rglullis wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice strawman. I am not saying to get rid of cars altogether. I am saying that it would be better (and cheaper) for everyone if we took all those resources being out into "autonomous vehicles" and developed public transit first. Reduce the amount of yearly trips that are done by car. Provide alternatives . The important thing about Japan or Europe is not "they don't have cars", but "people make 3-4x less trips by car…

> if we took all those resources being out into "autonomous vehicles" and developed public transit first Waymo has raised about $11bn [1]. That is at best 4 miles of New York subway [2]. It's a third of a train between Bakersfield and Merced [3]. These things aren't competing. To the extent we can compare them on capital efficiency, it's not a good look for American public transit. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10…

You are starting to seem dishonest when you resort to outliers and present them as the baseline.

> To the extent we can compare them on capital efficiency

We can not. This logic is stupid. This logic will take you to the idea that the best thing to do is to get everyone a helicopter because helipads are cheap to build and it costs zero dollars to "build roads in the sky".

Yeah, you are right. These things are not competing. Yes, you are also right that proper infrastructure (re)development in North America will take a lot more money than what Big Tech has invested in self-driving cars.

The upsetting part is to see even supposedly smart people buying into the idea that American Exceptionalism is a real thing, and that you can keep holding on to the hope to find a shortcut away of your problems. Self-driving cars or not, the US is still going to be an expensive, inefficient country that can boast about its amazing economy, yet most people living there are at third-world country levels of development.

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

#272

Post by hnaccount_rng » Fri, Dec 20, 2024, 12:58 PM UTC

necovek wrote: post #233

myrmidon wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding drivers that are drunk or otherwise driving illegally-- why would you want to exclude them from such a study, if you can not exclude them from real traffic? If our current system of checks and incentives is not able to keep them off the road, then you need to take them and the accidents they cause into account when comparing driving safety with an autonomous system. Also note that the margins are too big, s…

Because they don't disappear even with half the non-illegal vehicles being autonomous — some crashes also happen due to avoidance manoeuvres. So the fairer comparison would be to say that if existing SDVs were instead being driven by human drivers, we would have seen ~60 property claims more and ~40 bodily injury claims more (forgot the exact numbers from the paper), which is what, like 0.1% improvement in claims ove…

But.. they would disappear? Not all of course. But some drive under the influence because there is no other convenient way to get home after a night out. And Waymo solves that!

And they are highly aware of their "small number statistics", they literally provide uncertainty ranges. For both SDVs and HDVs. And their values are consistent with increasing data. I.e. they ~only get smaller uncertainties but no significant drift. But they are statistically significantly better (which wasn't the case two years ago)

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

#273

Post by JumpCrisscross » Fri, Dec 20, 2024, 12:59 PM UTC

AstralStorm wrote: post #266

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if we took all those resources being out into "autonomous vehicles" and developed public transit first Waymo has raised about $11bn [1]. That is at best 4 miles of New York subway [2]. It's a third of a train between Bakersfield and Merced [3]. These things aren't competing. To the extent we can compare them on capital efficiency, it's not a good look for American public transit. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10…

Try using a unit per person. It starts to look much less rosy for Waymo and also do not forget roads are still public infrastructure that has to be paid for and maintained. What, you think Waymo will be able to weasel out of road tax or drive without roads?

> Try using a unit per person

Not relevant when we’re comparing project costs. OP argued we should devote self-driving resources to public transit. I’m arguing that’s nonsense.

> roads are still public infrastructure that has to be paid for and maintained

Sure. But that isn’t a new funding commitment. Cancelling Waymo won’t reduce our road costs.

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

#274

Post by hnaccount_rng » Fri, Dec 20, 2024, 1:02 PM UTC

necovek wrote: post #242

f1shy wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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"

What's the guarantee we'll have only fully up-to-date, safety-checked self-driving vehicles in the future with no messed up sensors or controls (there'll be impaired people doing the checks, right? :))? This is simple with a small, experimental fleet — so we are looking at the best case scenario for these vehicles, but the question is what does it fall down to in a realistic commercial application? That would also be…

I think you should open the PDF and look into that xD Really they discussed this. I'm still skeptical that they measure what we are interested in. But _your_ points they discuss

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

#275

Post by hnaccount_rng » Fri, Dec 20, 2024, 1:03 PM UTC

suddenlybananas wrote: post #63

zurfer wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The authors are from: a Swiss Reinsurance Company, Ltd, Switzerland b Zardini Lab (research affiliate), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA c Autonomous Systems Laboratory (research affiliate), Stanford University, USA d Waymo LLC, USA e Casualty Actuarial Society, USA

So you can't really trust it due to the obvious conflict of interest.

I mean.. I get that for the Waymo guys. But the SwissRE ones? Seriously? Who _should_ do that evaluation? You will necessarily have Waymo co-authors. They have to provide the data. They are the only ones who have that..

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

#276

Post by rglullis » Fri, Dec 20, 2024, 1:03 PM UTC

mulmen wrote: post #261

rglullis wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> stop is uncovered and service is reliable And it doesn't even occur to you that the problem is the poor infrastructure? Do you honestly think that the optimal solution here is just to keep waiting for some trillion dollar corporation to be able to sell some new product that will bring you more "convenience" (at the cost of dependency and yet-more environmental costs related to cars and its required parking infrastr…

> And it doesn't even occur to you that the problem is the poor infrastructure? It has occurred to me. > Do you honestly think that the optimal solution here is just to keep waiting for some trillion dollar corporation to be able to sell some new product that will bring you more "convenience" Not sure where you got this idea. I’m not waiting for anything. I’m still excited for self driving vehicles to compliment the…

> Why would a self driving car need to park? The ability to always be in use is one of the advantages.

They are not going to be always in use. Unless you got a perfectly uniform distribution of demand over time, eventually most of these cars will have to be parked somewhere.

And whey they do, let's hope they don't keep doing this: https://www.ctvnews.ca/video/c2977546-lot-full-of-self-drivi...

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

#277

Post by Brian_K_White » Fri, Dec 20, 2024, 1:04 PM UTC

Mawr wrote: post #256

LoLFactor wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 is not possible for me to see you in your car with any sort of reliability; even if I could the benefits are dubious and again, unreliable. Looking at your car is all I need anyway - I can tell if you've seen me by your behavior, you're either slowing down to yield to me or you're not. If you're not, the only possible outcome of knowing you're seeing me is being misled into stepping into your path of travel.

It's not all or nothing. A hundred different things all add up and none of them do the entire job, nor are entirely unnecessary simply because they don't do the entire job.

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

#278

Post by myrmidon » Fri, Dec 20, 2024, 1:07 PM 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…

I neither own nor really like cars, but I think a ban within the next 50 years is super unlikely, and anyone that disagrees is delusional :P

Just consider vintage cars: These are vastly more dangerous for both occupants and pedestrians/cyclists than existing cars and also pollute more. They have not been banned in the last century and no ban seems to be coming anytime soon.

If you are not gonna ban vintage cars, why would you ever ban manual driving (which is much less harmful in multiple ways)?

Once adoption picks up, a ban becomes useless anyway because the fraction of problematic cars decreases (and no longer really matters), while any decisive legislative action towards bans gets tons of pushback from enthusiasts (and no real political gain, because the average voter does not give a shit about single digit traffic accident rate reduction anyway).

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

#279

Post by anal_reactor » Fri, Dec 20, 2024, 1:09 PM UTC

paganel wrote: post #229

anal_reactor wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ah yes. Technological progress will never happen.

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

#280

Post by hnaccount_rng » Fri, Dec 20, 2024, 1:12 PM UTC

aithrowawaycomm wrote: post #128

nmca wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re trying to to characterise personal risk and they were tying to characterise societal risk; both are valid.

No, I am saying that it is misleading to draw conclusions about societal risk from this study.

Why? They are measuring an accident rate per mile driven. Assuming that miles driven is a constant (which I'm actually not sure about), they show a reduction of accidents to be expected if all miles were driven by their cars. Which is the thing that society may care about?