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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

#441

Post by CalRobert »

tim333 wrote: post #391
CalRobert wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ride my bike several times a day, and I have very mixed views about Waymo, etc. I care immensely about traffic safety (so much I moved to the Netherlands). If you took the world as it is now and left everything the same except that every car was a waymo and there were no human-driven cars left, I would be ecstatic. Humans are horrible drivers and some of them are downright murderous. If every car were a waymo I cou…

>removes any incentive not to have an incredibly long commute The roads only have so much capacity which is not going to change much whether the cars are self driven or not. In London they have deliberately reduced road capacity to reduce traffic by blocking off lanes, side streets and the like. I could see a future where the normal way to get around is a self driving cab to the station at each end with a train for t…

Something like that would be nice - self-driving cabs for last-mile journeys make sense for areas that are hard to serve otherwise, though funny enough you just described my exact commute, except that I use a rental bike (ov-fiets) between the station and work.

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

#442

Post by mulmen »

yencabulator wrote: post #399
mulmen wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then self driving vehicles will be a new choice.

Self driving vehicles, with current technology, are unrealistic outside major cities. Major cities are the places where you least need a personal car. Google Maps still thinks the speed limit on a nearby highway is 35 mph. We spent several months without lane markers on the highway. Any vehicle driving around here based on the current self-driving architecture, requiring central mapping/planning and good infrastructu…

My Waymo ride went through a construction zone without trouble. I don’t know how much mapping it needs or how they keep it current but it’s not constrained to ideal conditions.

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

#443

Post by mulmen »

rglullis wrote: post #225
jazzyjackson wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In my city the cost of labor is very much a limiting factor. Robot drivers will open up transit options that aren’t practical now.

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

#444

Post by mulmen »

rsynnott wrote: post #306
mulmen wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody says it has to be a car form factor. It can be a self driving van or shuttle or bus. Last mile is a nightmare with all public transit. With the low population density of the US we need a lot of small vehicles to feed transit hubs.

> Last mile is a nightmare with all public transit. In rural areas, sure. In urban and dense suburban areas, in most developed countries there's probably a bus stop within easy walking distance.

Yes, the last mile is walked. That’s the problem. It’s not practical to put a train station or bus stop at every corner. This is why cars exist everywhere. If those cars can be automated they can be shared even more efficiently than Ubers and allow more efficient bus and train routes.

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

#445

Post by rglullis »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #439
rglullis wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Waymo/Google/Alphabet really cares about people's safety and this is nothing but a pet project where the amount raised ($11bn) in 15 years is ~3% of their whole revenue in 2023, they wouldn't mind open sourcing their whole system, including for other commercial ventures. Until then, the whole thing is nothing but a Trojan horse to let encroach themselves even more into another aspect of our lives. Also: > world’s…

> they wouldn't mind open sourcing their whole system, including for other commercial ventures You seem to just not like that this is done by Google. (Or by any private entity.) That is fine. I, like, hate this one restaurant in New York. But be honest about your motivations and check your biases. This isn’t self-driving cars vs public transit debate because there isn’t one. If Google were funding a leg of passenger…

This is not a matter of who is doing it, but (a) why and (b) second-order effects.

> If Google were funding a leg of passenger rail I suspect you’d be similarly incensed.

It depends on (a) why and (b) second-order effects.

Are they doing it, e.g, because they want to build a new campus in a lower-cost-of-living area, and they want to make the idea of living in Tuscaloosa, AL more palatable by having it connected to Atlanta, GA with train service that does not take 6(!!!!) hours as Amtrak currently does? Amazing, go Google!

Oh, they want to make it so that everyone can use it at reasonable prices, but Google employees can do it for free and get priority boarding? Fine, if that's what it takes to get private enterprises investing in infrastructure, I'm okay with it.

Oh, they want to do it because they are going to use it as a test-bed for some revolutionary transportation technology that they pinky-promise will eventually work as some Futurama-style tube network where anyone can go door-to-door as fast as possible? And they are offering the whole thing for free (or heavily subsidized) for everyone that enrolls in their beta program? Then please Google go fuck itself, because we all know how this is just bait.

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

#446

Post by Arnt »

leobg wrote: post #440
gruez wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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, eventually turn perhaps but not always. >Humans are terrible at this too, but we also use more subtle and inadvertent signals like the slight movement to the line telling me they're likely about to switch lanes, only to see the signal go on halfway into it. Isn't waymo's behavior preferred…

He said he can’t trust the turn signals. I’m case of a human driver, there would be the behavioral cues to fall back on. But with Waymo, you can’t predict its next move at all.

Did he see it turn without signals?

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

#447

Post by Brian_K_White »

zahlman wrote: post #382
Qem wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Having seen these things live in action, it creeped me out to see an empty drivers seat. I wonder if the safety gains could be just due to people being creeped out around them, and behaving more cautiously. Perhaps results would be different if they carried mannequins simulating a real driver in the wheel.

Couldn't they just put a passenger in that seat?

What would that accomplish? The passenger is not operating the vehicle. If the cyclist and the passenger make eye contact, so what?

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

#448

Post by leobg »

Arnt wrote: post #446
leobg wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He said he can’t trust the turn signals. I’m case of a human driver, there would be the behavioral cues to fall back on. But with Waymo, you can’t predict its next move at all.

Did he see it turn without signals?

Not explicitly, I think. But if it uses the turn signals without turning, I wouldn’t feel to confident that an actual turn would be preceded by a signal, much less one with enough time for me to react (“I will turn” vs “I am turning now”).

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

#449

Post by cma »

fragmede wrote: post #97
cma wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In SF they drive on the freeway, way more than 30kph. https://waymo.com/blog/2024/01/from-surface-streets-to-freew...

That link is for Phoenix. They're not yet driving on the freeway in SF.

Thanks, didn't catch that, still driving on the freeway but maybe not in heavy rain yet.

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

#450

Post by RivieraKid »

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…

They can handle almost all weather except snow. Freeways are coming soon. From what I heard, San Francisco is way above average in terms of driving difficulty.
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