this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2023

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7.1 million miles, 3 minor injuries: Waymo’s safety data looks good (arstechnica.com)

submitted 10 months ago by L4s to c/technology

13 comments fedilink hide all child comments

7.1 million miles, 3 minor injuries: Waymo’s safety data looks good::Waymo says its cars cause injuries six times less often than human drivers.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 10 months ago (2 children)

If those same miles had been driven by typical human drivers in the same cities, we would have expected around 13 injury crashes.

I'm going to set aside my distrust at self reported safety statistics from tech companies for a sec to say two things:

First, I don't think that's the right comparison. You need to compare them to taxis.

Second, we need to know how often waymos employees intervene. From the NYT, cruise employed 1.5 staff-members per car, intervening to assist these not-so-self driving vehicles every 2.5 to 5 miles, making them actually less autonomous than regular cars.

Source : https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/03/technology/cruise-general-motors-self-driving-cars.html?unlocked_article_code=1.7kw.o5Fq.5WLwCg2_ONB9&smid=url-share

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I agree that "autonomous" taxis need to be compared to professional drivers, and I'd even take it further by combining your two points. If they want to say "autonomous" vehicles are currently safer than professional drivers, they need a way to compare how many humans are involved too. I'm sure we could make conventional taxis safer too if they not only had a driver but a command centre where drivers are being observed and altered to dangerous situations!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

Yeah that's a great point! Taxis also drive different kinds of miles than typical human drivers, who probably normally drive at rush hour when it's more dangerous whereas I'd expect taxis to have disproportionately more miles during safer times.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

First, I don’t think that’s the right comparison. You need to compare them to taxis.

It's not just that, you generally have a significant distribution shift when comparing the self-drivers/driving assistants to normal humans. This is because people only use self-driving in situations where it has a chance of working, which is especially true with stuff like tesla's self-driving where ultimately people are not even going to start the autopilot when it gets tricky (nevermind intervening dynamically: they won't start it in the first place!)

For instance, one of the most common confounding factors is the ratio of highway driving vs non-highway driving: Highways are inherently less accident prone since you don't have to deal with intersections, oncoming traffic, people merging in from every random house, or children chasing a ball into the street. Self-drivers tend to report a lot more highway traffic than ordinary drivers, due to how the availability of technology dictates where you end up measuring. You can correct for that by e.g. explicitly computing the likelihood p(accident|highway) and use a common p(highway) derived from the entire population of car traffic.

[–] Ghostalmedia 13 points 10 months ago

And all 3 times the Waymo was rear ended by a human driver.

[–] CaptainSpaceman 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Is this the end of taxi drivers? Also will this speed up delivery drivers service if they dont need to drive/navigate a vehicle, just deliver goods?

[–] chakan2 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Unlikely...these things drive like grandma after Sunday service.

[–] SuperIce 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Not really, they just drive the speed limit. I've been in Waymos a few times, and sure, on wide roads where people go 15mph over the speed limit, they're quite slow. But I've also seen the Waymos go faster than other cars in more narrow roads since people were going slower than the speed limit.

Realistically, the Waymos are the only cars following the law, which can make them feel slow at times.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

But I’ve also seen the Waymos go faster than other cars in more narrow roads since people were going slower than the speed limit.

So, what you're saying is Waymos either drive too slow on arterial roads or don't drive to the conditions of residential roads. Got it!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

A speed limit is different from a speed suggestion

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Yes, but speed limits are also limits, not required exact speeds. On residential roads, people drive slower for a reason and Waymo probably should too!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Well, if nothing else, we can clearly see that you are less likely to be injured than in a regular car.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Waymo on Wednesday released new crash data based on the company's first 7.1 million miles of fully driverless operations in Arizona and California.

So Waymo is going to have to work hard to convince the public that its technology not only has the potential to make the roads safer in the future, but is already doing so now.

If Waymo can maintain its excellent safety record in the coming months and years, it will have a strong argument for continued expansion regardless of what happens in the rest of the industry.

To help evaluate the study, I talked to David Zuby, the chief research officer at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

The IIHS is a well-respected nonprofit that is funded by the insurance industry, which has a strong interest in promoting automotive safety.

Ultimately, Zuby believes that the true rate of crashes for human-driven vehicles lies somewhere between Waymo’s adjusted and unadjusted figures.

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