Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nbcbayarea.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 288 posts

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

#81

Post by raincole »

noja wrote: post #79
sinuhe69 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe for the insurance purposes, this difference is irrelevant. The point is under the current condition, Waymo driverless cars are safer than human controlled cars, thus the question of liability and permit to operate should be cleared. The question whether humans are truly inferior to robots in term of controlling cars is rather a question of ego than a practical one.

> I believe for the insurance purposes, this difference is irrelevant. Can you explain this some more? My understanding is that an insurance policy is valid in a certain set of circumstances.

They can argue that if you drive in in unintended conditions, it's your fault and they won't pay?

(But if it's true, it just make me want a self-drive car even less)

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

#82

Post by fragmede »

zw123456 wrote: post #67

Computers don't drink, don't text and don't have road rage, so their claims might be plausible in a broad statistical way. My guess is that if you excluded humans that drink, text, have anger issues etc. then the humans probably win out.

Unfortunately, we can't exclude humans that drink, text, have anger issues etc. from driving on the road with you. At any point, the driver next to you could have a stroke, pass out from doing drugs, have a panic attack, etc.

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

#83

Post by avereveard »

cwillu wrote: post #9
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…

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

but if waimo is opting out of difficult days, leaving the human to pick up that part, it will severely bias the safety comparisons because then of course humans will have more crash per mile

then any 'same period comparison' are destined to just measure this first-pick bias. they are going to need to compare with the driver data from the period before waymo introduction (while accounting for other constraints, so excluding rides on freeway, etc)

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

#84

Post by Dylan16807 »

tsimionescu wrote: post #70
fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the problem with Uber’s self-driving initiative was that they didn’t know what they were doing, except for the main guy who stole the IP from Google.

I think the Uber model they mean is the more general "sell your service at a loss today to increase market share, hoping it will become cheaper for you tomorrow".

If we're talking about Uber without self-driving, then the vast majority of costs are outside of Uber's hands. Even if they get their servers, payment processing, and customer support down to $0, it only helps the business model a mild amount.

On the other hand Waymo is paying enormous amounts to design systems and outfit their cars, and when that gets significantly cheaper the entire service gets significantly cheaper to provide. If they get those costs down then they're simply buying and running cars, which is much better than needing cars and drivers.

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

#85

Post by mahkeiro »

lolinder wrote: post #27
ehsankia wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're comparing to other accidents in the same (geofenced) zipcode, then why is it not an accurate comparison?

The linked study even calls this out: the zip codes they controlled for are the residence zip code, which means accidents that happen on the freeway (where Waymo typically doesn't drive) or even in other zip codes are included in the human baseline.

In Phoenix, the waymo drive on the freeway around the city, and given the number of crashes I see in that city I have few doubt that Waymo cars are safer.

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

#86

Post by brabel »

zw123456 wrote: post #67

Computers don't drink, don't text and don't have road rage, so their claims might be plausible in a broad statistical way. My guess is that if you excluded humans that drink, text, have anger issues etc. then the humans probably win out.

The goal here is not to see who is the best under imaginary conditions, it's to determine whether driverless cars are safe in real life as currently deployed. The question you're asking is irrelevant because a world in which all humans don't drink, text or have anger issues is not real.

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

#87

Post by brabel »

nielsbot wrote: post #64

I can imagine this is true--But I'd be curious to know how Waymo's robots compare with the safest human drivers (under similar conditions), not the average of all humans.

While that's an entertaining question, why would they care about that when they're just trying to determine the price they should charge for insurance?

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

#88

Post by Dylan16807 »

prmoustache wrote: post #75
2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not bullish on self driving cars, but that's a bit unfair. If their car performs better than 50% of the population, then that sounds like a success.

The thing is that 50% (even more) of the population should not be allowed to drive to begin with and we shouldn't wait for any technology to be ready to remove them from the road. That is the real elephant in the room that nobody wants to mention, especially political representatives who would be afraid to lose votes.

You need to set up alternatives or you're destroying lives and they'll drive anyway.

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

#89

Post by harhargange »

To the folks particularly in US obsessed about driverless cars, why don't you instead focus on public transport, which is by default "driverless" for millions of people if you ignore a couple of metro/train drivers per 1000s of people.

The point of a driverless car, from what I understand, is having end-to-end connectivity without the need to drive which is pain.

I live in a place where public transport already has last mile connectivity and I walk the rest of the way. Never owned a car and never plan to.

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

#90

Post by Dylan16807 »

oldbbsnickname wrote: post #61

Fox claims it's a better henhouse guard than humans. But of course. Their insurance company isn't an unbiased source. I'll believe this when there's independent evidence. Also, I want to see evidence to see data for all pilot AI driving products: traffic collisions, injuries per collision, arrive sooner or later than humans, and pedestrian injuries rate.

> Their insurance company isn't an unbiased source.

The insurance company would like to keep Waymo as a customer, but only if the rates are accurate. If they give Waymo an incorrect discount, they lose piles of money.

Post reply on HN