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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

#31

Post by gruez »

hyperhopper wrote: post #17
cwillu wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of being a safe driver is knowing when it's not safe to drive and resisting pressure to drive anyway.

If you live in an environment with inclement weather and awkward roads, everybody can't just choose to not drive there, but wayno can. It's a question of their dataset not being comparable, not their individual driving decisions being better on a day to day basis

> If you live in an environment with inclement weather and awkward roads, everybody can't just choose to not drive there, but wayno can.

they accounted for that with zip code data.

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

#32

Post by ra7 »

lolinder wrote: post #25
ra7 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Aren't they operating under a lot of constraints? The comparison should be with human drivers operating under similar conditions and on similar roads, similar cars(eg. new ones), weather conditions etc. The insurance data for the comparison is from the zip codes Waymo currently operates in, so all of that is accounted for. Here is the full study: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2309.01206.pdf

"All of that" is not encompassed in the human driver's home zip code. OP is talking about more than just the zip code, they're also talking about restrictions on the times of day Waymo operates, the types of vehicles they use, whether Waymo shuts down in adverse weather, etc. I'm not sure what all the current and past restrictions are, but those have to be controlled for. The study you linked only discusses one uncon…

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.

This is pretty good as far as “apples-to-apples” comparisons go.

[1] https://waymo.com/blog/2023/08/the-waymo-drivers-rapid-learn...

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

#34

Post by lolinder »

ra7 wrote: post #32
lolinder wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"All of that" is not encompassed in the human driver's home zip code. OP is talking about more than just the zip code, they're also talking about restrictions on the times of day Waymo operates, the types of vehicles they use, whether Waymo shuts down in adverse weather, etc. I'm not sure what all the current and past restrictions are, but those have to be controlled for. The study you linked only discusses one uncon…

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,…

I don't live in SF, but I was under the impression that Waymo's 24/7 operation is a relatively new thing [0].

EDIT: On further research, it looks like for Waymo this change only applied to when they could charge fares, so OP is correct that they were authorized to operate 24/7 [1].

[0] Article from August 10 of this year: https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/10/23827790/waymo-cruise-cpu...

[1] https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/news-and-updates/all-news/cpuc-appro...

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

#35

Post by olliej »

Same BS as usual, failing to control for where, when, and how crashes and incidents occur will alway make self driving look safer: they disable themselves in pretty much every situation where crash rates increase: night, rain, types of road, etc. A legitimate comparison would only compare self driving rates to human driven accidents in the same conditions.

That these companies continue to repeat this kind of BS makes me think that the benefits, if any, are much smaller than anything they’re claiming.

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

#36

Post by ra7 »

lolinder wrote: post #34
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,…

I don't live in SF, but I was under the impression that Waymo's 24/7 operation is a relatively new thing [0]. EDIT: On further research, it looks like for Waymo this change only applied to when they could charge fares, so OP is correct that they were authorized to operate 24/7 [1]. [0] Article from August 10 of this year: https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/10/23827790/waymo-cruise-cpu... [1] https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/news…

Nope. It was Cruise who gave rides only at night. Waymo has operated 24/7 since day 1. The only restriction has been who is approved to ride (they have a long waitlist).

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

#37

Post by afavour »

freetime2 wrote: post #8
belltaco wrote: post #4

Aren't they operating under a lot of constraints? The comparison should be with human drivers operating under similar conditions and on similar roads, similar cars(eg. new ones), weather conditions etc. Plus they have a fleet of support folks and standby remote and dispatchable operators which cannot be cheap, we get no insight into the financials except that they're losing several billion dollars a year. If at the e…

> Plus they have a fleet of support folks and standby remote and dispatchable operators which cannot be cheap, we get no insight into the financials except that they're losing several billion dollars a year. If at the end you end up paying more than for a Uber for the service to be sustainable then what's the point. I think they are banking on the technology continuing to improve, the number of manual interventions d…

Great to hear someone is still pursuing the Uber model long after Uber themselves gave up on it!

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

#40

Post by choppaface »

SmarsJerry wrote: post #6
superkuh wrote: post #2

It's important to remember they're only testing and using these cars in areas that don't have winters. The results don't extrapolate to driving in non-cherry picked areas. This article should only be considered re: the context of local SF politics and the recent Cruise revocation.

If you are comparing insurance rates then you are already comparing a similar area. If insurance companies would give you a discount if your car had self driving enabled that seems like a pretty sure fire guarantee that self driving is better.

Except humans drive all the time and AVs are usually turned off during extreme weather. Additionally, heavy rain days can cause a lot of people to dump Amazon delivery and do Uber for the day because rideshare demand spikes. Even if the AVs are left on, the relative population of the human drivers increases substantially (and the humans are also now also driving in less safe conditions).
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