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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

#71

Post by ddalex »

threeseed wrote: post #57
d--b wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Elon Musk will yield enough power in the US government to influence safety policies in such a way that is harmful to waymo. It doesn't seem like conflict of interest is bothering him much.

Elon Musk is already planning on scrapping the self driving crash reporting: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/trump-...

So Musk is effectively the most powerful man on the planet right now, he's a major player in 3 key industries, and the head of effective (de)regulation in the largest consumer market by dollar volume.

Isn't this a bit like ole' good Crassus in ancient Rome? Head of the government and richest buddy aroubnd? If history repeats, we'll see the American Imperial Era rising up very soon, were the interests of the state will fraction between the interests of the oligarchs and the lines blurry between law and personal convenience of the wealthist citizens

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

#72

Post by [deleted] »

khazhoux wrote: post #60
palata wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're "objectively" higher risk, based on a study by the company building the autopilot, right? How objective is that?

Like the Borg, every Waymo is the same driver. So in column A, the insurance company has a meta-driver with many millions of miles of statistics. In column B, we have slow-reaction and non-lidar-equipped you, who had a fender-bender last year and a speeding ticket 3 years ago.

[deleted]

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

#73

Post by richardw »

ddalex wrote: post #65
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

Swiss Re is the actual thing when it comes to actuarial tables and statistics.

And would be very motivated to know the correct numbers in this case.

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

#74

Post by aithrowawaycomm »

zurfer wrote: post #25

It seems like they compared apples to apples. Which make that an exciting result! “The benchmark was calibrated using both mileage (driving exposure) and residence zip-code (geographic region). Specifically, only the claims associated with vehicles registered to addresses (i.e., where the insured resides) within Waymo’s operating zip codes in San Francisco, the Phoenix metropolitan region, Los Angeles, and Austin wer…

I don't think this is apples-to-apples. You need to somehow filter to people who are not speeding or otherwise breaking traffic laws. My problem with studies like these is "human-operated" is an enormous catch-all that blends together too many causes for accidents.

1) Not filtering out drunk drivers is downright misleading. I am less interested in "is mandatory self-driving safer than human drivers?" than "is mandatory self-driving safer than mandatory breathalyzer ignition?" There are some uniquely human downsides which are fair comparisons to AI - distractions, slowness, anger -but drunk drivers should be removed from this.

2) The bigger problem is people rationally speeding or running red lights. Waymo is strictly legal, but Tesla self-driving historically encouraged speeding, rolling stop signs, etc. Ubers and Lyft are preferred if you're in a hurry precisely because human drivers bend the law. Human speeding is not caused by a lack of intelligence and needing an AI to figure it out that it's dangerous: humans do it because they are selfish and reckless, and someone like Tesla will make a driving AI that fulfills their selfish demands. There is absolutely no reason to think that a speeding Waymo would be safer than a speeding human.

Studies like this makes me worry about a medium-term where driving is more dangerous for everyone: lawful drivers get in more accidents because they're using sub-human AI, whereas nothing changes for unlawful drivers because they are using dangerous AI, turning off the AI and driving drunk, etc.

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

#75

Post by vineyardmike »

sebstefan wrote: post #24

I can't trust that number if it comes from Waymo.com. I'd need to see it from an independant third party who has no interest having their finger on the scale

Most of this data they publish to the Government for legal reasons. Sure they could lie to the Government, but ask Cruise how well that went.

Anecdotally, I see Waymos around town, and they are very clearly driving in a slower, safer, more cautious manner. a 92% reduction seems very plausible.

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

#76

Post by amelius »

d--b wrote: post #41
ArtTimeInvestor wrote: post #35

Is there any possible future, where Waymo is NOT one of the major players in self driving software?

Maybe Elon Musk will yield enough power in the US government to influence safety policies in such a way that is harmful to waymo. It doesn't seem like conflict of interest is bothering him much.

I bet he wants to ban Lidar.

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

#77

Post by JumpCrisscross »

rytis wrote: post #19
chollida1 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the dream. As a cyclist I would hope that day comes very soon.

Or even as a pedestrian. I'm sure AI will be fine to slow down if it sees a massive puddle and avoid soaking everyone in 3m radius just for lolz.

> Or even as a pedestrian

Or even as anyone who is ever on the road.

Despite the law, driving in America is a necessity for many. That means our bar for taking it away is high. Quantify the safety delta and have an available alternative, and we can start lowering the bar for taking dangerous drivers off the road. (Frankly either >1 DUI or >1 at-fault crash should result in license revocation. We should also delay license issuance until 18 years old and have restrictions on the license until 20 [1].)

[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/3343314

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

#78

Post by [deleted] »

vineyardmike wrote: post #75
sebstefan wrote: post #24

I can't trust that number if it comes from Waymo.com. I'd need to see it from an independant third party who has no interest having their finger on the scale

Most of this data they publish to the Government for legal reasons. Sure they could lie to the Government, but ask Cruise how well that went. Anecdotally, I see Waymos around town, and they are very clearly driving in a slower, safer, more cautious manner. a 92% reduction seems very plausible.

[deleted]

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

#79

Post by mindvirus »

I think insurance prices will drive adoption of self driving very quickly.

Consider: if a non-self driving car is in an accident with a self driving car, it'll almost always be the non-self driving car at fault. And with the telemetry from the self-driving car, they can prove it too, so accidents that would have been no-fault or shared fault become fully the non-self driving cars fault. And so I think insurance for non-self driving cars gets expensive fast as there are more and more self driving cars on the road.

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

#80

Post by meiraleal »

mulmen wrote: post #56

I rode in a Waymo recently and was amazed at how good it was. It was easily in the top 5 best drivers I have ridden with. Really really impressive. It wasn’t nearly as cautious or timid as I expected it to be. But it also wasn’t reckless. I would describe it as assertive, but I’m sure some people would call it aggressive. It knows the rules and what’s going on around and acts accordingly. This really should be the no…

> The future is bright.

We have been there. The internet and then Google, Facebook were the same. Big Tech can't be trusted.

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