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Waymo Safety Impact

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Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#411

Post by necovek »

jjmarr wrote: post #407
necovek wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo uses new cars which probably have 100km/h (62mph) to zero stopping distance around 36m (120ft) — that's what my 2020 car quotes and tests at. As stopping distance grows quadratically, from 50km/h it would have stopped in 8m. Two lane street is usually at least 8m wide. The claim was that after braking for 10m, it was still going at 40km/h. It'd take another 6-7m to come to a full stop. If it was a full 18m stop…

To be honest, I don't know how to convert freedom units to km/h. I based my estimate on the Waymo going slower than other cars and the city speed limit in Toronto being 50 km/h, and I took a stab at the numbers. I think it was Beverly Blvd which the internet says has a speed limit of 35 mph = 56 kph at the time? I was in the back seat so I couldn't judge the distance that well. I passed the other car in a second so I…

Understood: I wasn't trying to nitpick the numbers, but simply showing that you were likely crediting Waymo a tad too much for what it has done.

Human drivers correct each others' mistakes every single day, and we don't hear about them because... well, nothing has happened. The argument could be made that Waymos will make fewer mistakes, so fewer evasive maneuvers will be needed, but it's great to hear that Waymo's performance is coming closer to bringing good human driver capability with faster reaction time enabled by tech.

I appreciate you converting to SI units, but I am ok with you keeping them as-is too: either side can do the conversion to whatever they need, and HN is very much a mixed audience.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#412

Post by lern_too_spel »

cco wrote: post #155
jjmarr wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo saved my life in LA. When I visited LA, I rode in a Waymo going the speed limit in the right lane on a very busy street. The Waymo approached an intersection where it had the right of way, when suddenly a car ignored its stop sign and drove into the road. In less than a second, the Waymo moved into the left lane and kept going. I didn't even realize what was happening until after it was over. Most human drivers…

Thankfully they've now shipped their own product, YouTube Music. And Google Pay, imagine my surprise back in 2021 when I signed up for Waymo and realized I had to manually type in my credit card. No Google Pay??? C'mon y'all, you're Alphabet!

Next thing you know, they're going to add Alexa support before Assistant/Gemini. The PMs at Alphabet are famously incompetent. Another example from the archives: Google wrote the original official Twitter app for Android instead of letting Twitter do it themselves. It wasn't to help the Android platform because multiple third party Twitter apps for Android already existed.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#413

Post by Dylan16807 »

rootusrootus wrote: post #374
Dylan16807 wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't make sense to me. If you want to change lanes, and worst case scenario you're right next to someone, go 2mph slower for 20 seconds and they'll be shifted by 60 feet. I'm sure you can plan your lane changes on a freeway 20 seconds in advance.

It is the dynamics. When lanes are pacing each other the gaps all tighten up. So sure, you can slow down a bit to find the gap behind you, except that gap is not big enough to fit in. So you turn on your signal and wait for someone polite enough to let you in, meanwhile the guy behind you is riding you like a pony because you are no longer keeping up with traffic. When traffic isn't balled up so tight, you can plan f…

If the gaps all tighten up then the road is carrying more traffic? That's an interesting tradeoff.

I haven't experienced people riding right on me for a tiny speed change.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#414

Post by Dylan16807 »

zx8080 wrote: post #363
Dylan16807 wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you not like people being funny, or is there something else you're reacting so strongly to?

Mixing saving one's life with rating for a drink in the same comment makes feel very weird. Not funny, TBH, but actually it reads like a millions of generated bad review comments on amazon, expedia etc.

It's his own life, he can be silly about it. Also the life saving isn't that literal, it avoided a crash.

When I see generated reviews they're boring, they don't have unexpected mood shifts that still fit the topic.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#415

Post by fragmede »

socalgal2 wrote: post #323
fragmede wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about some games to pass the time? Make some exclusives so I look forwards to a 20 minute cross-town drive!

why does the car need games? Just use your phone/tablet/laptop

Because those are the same games I have available while not in a Waymo and I can play them anytime/anywhere. By having Waymo exclusive games that save state between rides that aren't available outside the Waymo, it builds the "only in Waymo" excitement.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#417

Post by jjmarr »

zx8080 wrote: post #363
Dylan16807 wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you not like people being funny, or is there something else you're reacting so strongly to?

Mixing saving one's life with rating for a drink in the same comment makes feel very weird. Not funny, TBH, but actually it reads like a millions of generated bad review comments on amazon, expedia etc.

4.5 stars was for the ride. I didn't taste the Erewhon smoothie and can't rate it.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#419

Post by bitfilped »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #336
bitfilped wrote: post #258

Great, what's more concerning than crash rates though are impeding emergency vehicles, blocking roads, stalling when traffic lights are down, rolling past school buses with stop arms out, navigating in construction zones and lots of other issues that are left out of this report.

No, I think those are solidly less concerning than crash and injury rates. Like, could you imagine yourself seeing a self driving car that's perfect in all the ways like that, no dumb quirks, but it crashes twice as often as a human, and saying "well it got the important stuff right"

Autonomous vehicles need to be safer than human drivers, not trading one set of safety concerns for different ones.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#420

Post by Dylan16807 »

bitfilped wrote: post #419
Dylan16807 wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I think those are solidly less concerning than crash and injury rates. Like, could you imagine yourself seeing a self driving car that's perfect in all the ways like that, no dumb quirks, but it crashes twice as often as a human, and saying "well it got the important stuff right"

Autonomous vehicles need to be safer than human drivers, not trading one set of safety concerns for different ones.

Waymo's cars are safer.

You have to pick one thing to be more important. Accident rates, or the stuff you listed in your first comment. Which one do you pick?

These cars are not one step forward, one step back. They're five steps forward, one step back. Saving lives is much bigger than the weirdness.

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