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

#411

Post by ASalazarMX » Fri, Dec 20, 2024, 6:11 PM UTC

skygazer wrote: post #402

ASalazarMX wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo, take note: instead of displaying a human walking, display googly eyes glancing at pedestrians.

Ah, now we know what to do with the Vision Pro's outward lenticular eye visualizations.

Didn't know about this. Only Apple would think of taking live video of your eyes and projecting them on the exterior of the visor... and call it Eye Sight...

Potential users will read "external display" and immediately think of many uses, and I'd bet the last of them would be "stream my eyes". It's perfectly bland and corporate, I suppose Apple is aiming for normalization, "VR googles you could wear at a party without feeling dorky!".

The iFixIt teardown was very interesting, nevertheless.

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

#412

Post by kasey_junk » Fri, Dec 20, 2024, 6:15 PM UTC

zahlman wrote: post #366

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…

>That is at best 4 miles of New York subway [2]. It's a third of a train between Bakersfield and Merced [3]. Bakersfield to Merced is 171 miles of intercity high-speed rail. It's unclear to me why Californians need to make such trips with any significant frequency, and it's certainly not what I'd normally think of as "public transit". 22 years ago in Toronto, the Sheppard line (3.4 mi, underground) was built for less…

Chicago is extending an existing above ground train line along an existing freeway (no right of way issues, not a subway, etc) 5.6 miles. It’s four stops and a new rail yard. 3.6B.

https://www.transitchicago.com/ctas-36-billion-red-line-exte...

It may be an American problem but it’s certainly not just NYC. But of course most of Waymos market is American as well.

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

#413

Post by creer » Fri, Dec 20, 2024, 6:15 PM UTC

pfooti wrote: post #322

Brian_K_White wrote: post #93

I just heard someone mention in a podcast how as a cyclist they need to make eye contact with drivers to be safe, and there is no one to make eye contact with. Waymo would say "don't worry, it sees you" and maybe the numbers even show they do some percentage more than the average human driver, but that still does not reproduce the self-help aspect of you looking at a driver until you see that that driver sees you. I…

The waymos in SF seem to indicate that they see a pedestrian (when they are waiting to turn) by showing a pedestrian symbol on their spinning lidar hat. It's pretty obvious, but I don't know how consistently it is shown.

Oh that's interesting thank you. Will look for it.

I do believe that computers are much more likely to have attention span and sensor capacity to reliably spot pedestrians and other random wheeled traffic. The problem is "reliably", which needs to be near 100% for the pedestrian to decide to ignore that it's still in full motion. So it will be interesting to see if such notification helps or not. If we were all wearing AR glasses, a specific car could signal a specific person that it noticed and is tracking them - that THEY are safe from IT. But we are a few years from that.

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

#414

Post by creer » Fri, Dec 20, 2024, 6:16 PM UTC

LoLFactor wrote: post #149

Brian_K_White wrote: post #93

I just heard someone mention in a podcast how as a cyclist they need to make eye contact with drivers to be safe, and there is no one to make eye contact with. Waymo would say "don't worry, it sees you" and maybe the numbers even show they do some percentage more than the average human driver, but that still does not reproduce the self-help aspect of you looking at a driver until you see that that driver sees you. I…

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…

Hey I'm always surprised at how many pedestrians walk around all in black (or dark) with no light, no reflecting stripe, no nothing and no care in the world. Even with the best of intention of drivers, it's a death wish. And it's everywhere.

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

#415

Post by wstrange » Fri, Dec 20, 2024, 6:28 PM UTC

jstummbillig wrote: post #401

wstrange wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mapping problem keeps getting brought up (often by Tesla enthusiasts). It just doesn't seem like a huge problem? If you have cars equipped with high resolution Lidar and cameras, mapping new routes seems like it ought to scale as the fleet is expanded. This problem seems embarrassingly parallel.

I don't understand. You first need the map, then you can drive, yes? How does the fleet help in the creation of a new map?

The fleet car drives very slowly the first time, perhaps under supervision of a human.

The point is - you have a massive fleet of cars with all the right sensors to create a high resolution map.

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

#416

Post by rglullis » Fri, Dec 20, 2024, 6:40 PM UTC

tim333 wrote: post #390

rglullis wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> mutually-beneficial coëxistence Their side is benefiting a lot more than ours, and the few benefits that we might end up seeing come with a good amount of harm inflicted by them.

I like my tech toys - the usual macbook, iphone, internet etc. provided by big tech. I'm not sure how they are supposed to have harmed me?

This is the type of comment that makes you look either like a privileged elite that is part of Big Tech, or just a clueless moron whose day at the barrel is yet to come.

Do you really need a list of ways how Big Tech has harmed society? If things like "Surveillance Capitalism" is not enough, maybe:

- the collapse of quality journalism, because SEO and content farms made impossible to maintain a financially sustainable team of independent reporters?

- The absolute destruction of people's ability to read a piece of text for longer than 15 seconds?

- The mental health crisis in teens and even young adults caused by social media?

- Planned obsolescence and the removal of our right to repair things on our own?

- The normalization of the "gig economy" not just for young kids who are looking for some extra cash, but as the main source of income for grown up adults, with actual families to support?

- (Google and Facebook mostly) adopting the absolutely anti-competitive practice of "when we get a competitor, we buy them out as early as possible or just keep offering our stuff for free until they eventually run out of money"?

- Apple outright refusing to let people install alternative app stores, because they know that without this artificial scarcity they would not be worth 1/10th of what they are today?

Seriously, get out of SV bubble.

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

#417

Post by necovek » Fri, Dec 20, 2024, 6:50 PM UTC

hnaccount_rng wrote: post #407

necovek wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went through the report, and they reference other studies that consider my points, but they end up only measuring incident numbers, don't specifically say how comparable were the driving conditions (iow whether they are representative). If anything, they could have removed incidents by human drivers which did not happen within their operating constraints, but I did not see that mentioned.

But that data isn’t available to them. They are (iiuc) simply looking at the full set of insurance data and their own set. There simply is no driver-level data which would allow statistically relevant conclusions. Up to now their data for their own cars is still not able to strongly constrain the results. You wouldn’t be able to tell effects of sensor degradation. But let me ask this instead: What kind of analysis wo…

The report specifically mentions a number of other studies and claims it improves on their methodology, and seems to want to have their methodology become the "gold" standard of measuring SDV vs HDV performance:

  "This methodology establishes a foundation for future research into the safety impact potential of ADS and offers a framework for assessment as these systems continue to scale and develop."

Or:

  "By analyzing an unprecedented volume of autonomous miles, introducing a novel benchmark, and utilizing third-party liability insurance claims, we aim to set a new standard for ADS safety evaluation."

Which leads me to worry that they are pushing for this to be considered comparative, and they want policy to be influenced by their claims. And they do:

  "Our findings have the potential to significantly impact policy decisions, insurance practices, and public acceptance of ADS technology, contributing to the broader societal dialogue on the future of autonomous transportation."

So I would like for them to compare to median non-impaired human driver with a car in good order (both in time-to-destination and safety), aggregate those over time of day, week and year (basically ensure identical driving conditions between comparison miles), adding claim dollar amount as weight for how severe the incident was. I believe that would be a great start.

With them being Google and already tracking most Android phones as they go through traffic (they use this for traffic conditions), they do have a very rich data set they could compare to as well, but excluding that, they could exclude insurance claims which have happened in conditions they don't operate in (claims will always have time of event and location).

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

#418

Post by jajko » Fri, Dec 20, 2024, 6:50 PM UTC

creer wrote: post #405

arnaudsm wrote: post #392

These results are meaningless, Waymo only drives in controlled, good weather, urban streets, while the human control group does not. This is not science, this is PR. We need independent investigations. And remember that currently, self-driving cars in California are exempt from traffic tickets : https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/jan/04/self-driv... We learned that the hard way with Boeing, you cannot trust…

"controlled areas" is relative - for example it includes mayhem zone SOMA and the hills. Also they just got started, relatively speaking, and have been expanding. Give it a minute. Really, computers seem more naturally suited to driving in SF than humans - from the point of view of paying attention to enough things, not having to pay attention to map navigation and having more modes of sensory input than humans.

I'll believe such companies with my life and life of my family when they can handle usual South east Asia capital city for example also during monsoon, say Bombay. Because this is in stake, nothing less.

This aint some web app deployment where flaws are annoying but thats about it.

I've just finished 2 day 1500km drive back home across Europe in various storms, heavy rain, a bit of snow, a lot of it in the dark, tons of properly dangerous idiots, weird non standard marked repairs (we talk about germany), some serious accidents along the way, few nearly misses. Our F11 BMW 5 series took it on effortlessly, complementing my and wife's skills but not interfering. I am not stellar but definitely above average driver. I've done this drive maybe 30x over past 15 years, without kids normally in one 16-18 hour push. Nr of clueless idiots is definitely rising and roads are definitely more full.

No way in hell I'll trust something fully with most precious stuff in my life until its properly battle proven by billions of miles in harsh complex situations, which what you describe it isnt. Till then there is no self driving, just steps towards it. I don't need this for driving around some short distances that much. Good luck with beta testing to ya all.

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

#419

Post by JumpCrisscross » Fri, Dec 20, 2024, 6:59 PM UTC

rglullis wrote: post #271

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…

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 com…

> 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

For fuck’s sake, the world’s largest rail system and navigable waterways say hello.

I’ve advocated for public transit. But it’s turning into zealotry when an $11bn project showing actual gains is turned into a soapbox for decrying a pet project.

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

#420

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Dec 20, 2024, 7:01 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #99

rglullis wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole thing with self-driving cars is that it feels like the story of NASA's space pen. All this money being poured into a technology that would not be needed if the richest country in the world had the common sense of simply getting rid of its car dependency and developed proper public transit infrastructure.

> the story of NASA's space pen As an example of an urban legend/facile pop science take being treated as fact [1]? > if the richest country in the world had the common sense of simply getting rid of its car dependency and developed proper public transit infrastructure Is there a single developed economy that doesn't make significant use of trucks and cars? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Pen#Uses_in_the_U.S.…

[deleted]