[HN Gopher] New Study: Waymo is reducing serious crashes and mak...
___________________________________________________________________
New Study: Waymo is reducing serious crashes and making streets
safer
Author : prossercj
Score : 196 points
Date : 2025-05-01 18:49 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (waymo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (waymo.com)
| floxy wrote:
| That's great news. I wonder how much insurance rates will go down
| when autonomous vehicles get popular. Seems like the liability
| portion could go way down.
| xnx wrote:
| It's a 3x effect for insurance agencies: 1) Google/Waymo
| doesn't buy insurance for their vehicles 2) Waymo vehicles are
| much less likely to cause accidents 3) Waymo vehicles actively
| avoid being hit and calm traffic overall
| ziddoap wrote:
| I'm not super familiar with this space, or laws where Waymo
| is active, what do you mean Google/Waymo don't buy insurance
| for their vehicles?
|
| Is having insurance not legally required? Do they just pay
| out when there's an accident where they injure someone?
| jmm5 wrote:
| Large companies with fleets of vehicles often self-insure.
| ziddoap wrote:
| Interesting!
|
| When I was much younger, I worked for a couple companies
| that had (what I would consider) large fleets of
| vehicles, and they all were insured through an insurance
| company. I guess I just assumed that's how it was. I
| wasn't aware self-insuring was a possibility. Thanks.
| floxy wrote:
| Self-driving is probably still new enough that insurance
| companies wouldn't have good actuarial data to properly
| price the risks, so they'd just have to charge exorbitant
| rates.
| bluGill wrote:
| Companies can self insure. That doesn't mean they have
| to. Your accountant can run the numbers to figure out if
| it is worth it.
|
| Often self insure means they still pay an insurance
| company to handle the paperwork, but when there is a
| claim the company pays it.
| pavon wrote:
| In many states, including CA, individuals can post a bond
| instead of carrying insurance. Companies with fleets of
| vehicles can also self-insure. In both cases the car owner
| is liable to pay any damages that insurance would normally
| pay.
| pests wrote:
| It has been classic lore that Bill Gates couldn't get
| anyone to insure him after his younger years (see classic
| mugshot photo used as the silhouette) so he had to self
| insure. Not sure if completely true but I remember the
| stories.
| AIPedant wrote:
| The problem is that Waymos can't replace cars (or even Ubers!)
| since they depend on human oversight and problem-solving. Even
| at a 20:1 ratio it is not feasible for autonomous vehicles to
| employ 10m people to account for every American on the road.
| josefritzishere wrote:
| This does not sound scalable.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| Why can't it replace Ubers?
| ttoinou wrote:
| Those people dont have to be americans though
| IrishTechie wrote:
| Americans only spend 3% of their time driving, so it's maybe
| closer to 300k than 10m. Still not scalable at that though so
| the key will be driving that 20:1 up, which seems very
| possible given enough time.
| wffurr wrote:
| If they keep pushing the hours between requests down like I
| saw on https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Estimated-
| number-of-full..., that might be feasible.
| petra wrote:
| What determines whether 300k is scalable ?
| Scaevolus wrote:
| The human oversight is mostly to tell off people breaking
| rules in the cars, not to fix the driving, and is quite easy
| to automate as they scale.
| AIPedant wrote:
| That might be what human overseers are mostly doing minute-
| to-minute but it's not why it's necessary. The problem is
| AI simply does not have the real-world problem solving
| ability to handle all the minor inconveniences and
| surprises on the road.
| xnx wrote:
| This is a very confusing position. Every Uber has full-time
| 1:1 "oversight". Waymo has a support team that only directs
| actions ( _not_ remote driving) when the vehicle requests. I
| would be very surprised if the number of Waymo rides that
| need any intervention at all is greater than 1 in 20.
| AIPedant wrote:
| My point is you're not going to get much more than half[1]
| of those Uber drivers into a Waymo control center, even if
| they're facing unemployment. The workers have to come from
| somewhere. And it has to be somewhat regular hours, surge
| oversight doesn't make sense.
|
| [1] Edit - I meant 5% not half, I was on the train and very
| frustrated with these comments. (not yours, though it seems
| bad faith to say " _not_ remote driving " when I said
| "problem solving." The problem has always been the 1-5% of
| driving which truly requires sophisticated intelligence,
| that's why the oversight is there.)
|
| Every Lyft driver I've spoken to drives because a) they
| like driving b) they like choosing their own hours and c)
| they don't want a boss. Telling them to go into an office
| for an 8 hour shift with a manager is not gonna work, they
| will find something more appealing. It's a different kind
| of employee. (I would enjoy that line of work but I would
| hate to drive for Uber, way too stressful.)
| bluGill wrote:
| How does oversight handle issue. They are not remote driving,
| but what are they doing. The more important question is can
| the car have me (who is already inside it) tell it what to
| do?
| AIPedant wrote:
| Waymo doesn't say very much, but other self-driving
| services have been more open. It is things like "the fire
| truck is at a weird angle and the car didn't know what to
| do, draw a path where it pulls slightly into an oncoming
| lane so it can get around." A lot of common sense stuff
| which is far beyond the reach of AI in 2025.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Waymo says Waymo is safe.
| https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-05-16/woman-ge...
| floxy wrote:
| Seems like it would more informative to link to an issue with
| Waymo instead of Cruise.
| returningfory2 wrote:
| Tens of thousands of Americas are killed every year in car
| crashes. The existence of a case or some cases where a self-
| driving car caused injury has zero value. What matters is the
| rate of cases per mile driven.
| timewizard wrote:
| The US drives about 3.2 trillion miles per year. Waymo has
| 56.7 million miles over several years. Their percentage data
| is essentially useless.
|
| 50% of fatalities involve alcohol or drugs and are often
| single vehicle accidents.
|
| 25% involve youth or inexperience.
|
| 15% involve motorcycles.
|
| 15% involve pedestrians.
|
| What I really need to see is a complete breakdown of every
| accident a Waymo has had. Then I can start to compare their
| actual performance to the previously known outcomes.
| p_j_w wrote:
| > The US drives about 3.2 trillion miles per year. Waymo
| has 56.7 million miles over several years. Their percentage
| data is essentially useless.
|
| Your third sentence doesn't follow from your first two. On
| what grounds do you draw this conclusion?
| prasadjoglekar wrote:
| This is the statistic I was hoping to see. It wasn't in the
| paper as best as I looked.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| How would you compare single-incident reports to get to a
| meaningful conclusion?My guess is that Waymo makes mistakes
| that a human wouldn't, and vice versa. At that point the
| overall safety record, which normalizes those differences,
| seems the most relevant.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _The US drives about 3.2 trillion miles per year. Waymo
| has 56.7 million miles over several years. Their percentage
| data is essentially useless._
|
| No, that's not how statistics works.
|
| The percentage data's accuracy depends mainly on the number
| of incidents recorded (and somewhat on the rate of
| incidents). But the percentage of the whole is _completely_
| irrelevant.
|
| If you are basing something on 10 incidents but it's 50% of
| the total, it's still terrible accuracy.
|
| Whereas if you are basing something on 100,000 incidents
| but it's only 0.1% of the total, it's still going to be
| quite accurate, assuming the incidents come from the same
| overall distribution.
| timewizard wrote:
| > If you are basing something on 10 incidents but it's
| 50% of the total, it's still terrible accuracy.
|
| The ratio of 3.2 trillion to 56.7 million, which is
| already incredibly generous to Waymo's position, is 5
| orders of magnitude in difference. So any calculations
| from Waymos data are going to be insanely inaccurate and
| not something you can extrapolate from.
|
| The main, and most obvious case, evidenced by this, is
| Waymo does not operate where snow falls. Human beings do.
|
| We're missing so much of the picture I don't think you
| can say Waymo's are 75% less accident prone, or 80% less
| likely to hit a pedestrian. Those are just nonsense
| numbers.
| achatham wrote:
| The paper under discussion only considers human accidents
| in similar environments to where Waymo operates. So it's
| only making a claim about like-for-like driving.
|
| You could still say you care about snow driving and want
| to see that comparison, but it doesn't mean the claims in
| this paper are wrong.
| DAGdug wrote:
| This! (Thank you for the comment). There's a reason a
| 1000 random samples is adequate to reasonably estimate
| what's common metrics in a population the size of USA or
| India (or infinitely large).
| timewizard wrote:
| Random samples of the _same_ user base.
|
| If the user base of "waymo riders" and "everyday drivers"
| does not match then you're not sampling what you think
| you are.
| DAGdug wrote:
| Yeah, that's fair, but is implicit since I'm arguing
| against the "sample size is inadequate" POV, not the
| "there are distributional biases in data" POV. There are
| a gazillion ways to adjust for these biases (ex.
| propensity score matching) going beyond just user-base
| but also including weather type, road type, location,
| time of day, day of week, traffic density, pedestrian
| density ... that can be done easily with far less than
| the sample size waymo has. And I bet they do these
| adjustments.
| D-Coder wrote:
| > 50% of fatalities involve alcohol or drugs and are often
| single vehicle accidents.
|
| This suggests that Waymo is cutting traffic fatalities by
| 50% (per million miles) right off the top.
| timewizard wrote:
| If an only if every drunk person decides to take one
| instead of driving themselves home.
|
| Drunk people being known for having exceptionally poor
| judgement and self awareness.
|
| It suggests that they _could_ cut fatalities by that
| much. Then again, a whole new mode of accident, where the
| inebriated decide to step out of a moving vehicle and
| injure themselves that way.
|
| This is a dynamic system where human decisions are never
| fully removed from the loop.
| standardUser wrote:
| > Then again, a whole new mode of accident, where the
| inebriated decide to step out of a moving vehicle and
| injure themselves that way.
|
| If I understand correctly, you believe that the advent of
| self-driving cars will cause passengers to voluntarily
| exit a moving vehicle? That sounds like absolute nonsense
| with no basis in reality.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| You'll be happy to know, then, that the NHTSA publishes the
| data you're looking for at https://www.nhtsa.gov/laws-
| regulations/standing-general-orde..., in addition to
| Waymo's own reporting in their safety hub. For me
| personally, I find summary data to be more informative than
| a pile of individual reports, but I hope your comparison
| goes well!
| bluGill wrote:
| I do want to know how Waymo compares to middle ages adults
| who are not on alcohol/drugs. However that they are better
| than humans overall is still a big deal even if the data is
| somewhat suspect by not doing that additional breakdown.
| boulos wrote:
| Our safety research team is interested in this topic,
| too! In a previous study, they've tried to model it:
|
| > Building on that, the Collision Avoidance Benchmarking
| paper presents a novel methodology to evaluate how well
| autonomous driving systems avoid crashes. The study,
| which to our knowledge is the first of its kind,
| introduces a reference model that represents an ideal
| human state for driving--the response time and evasive
| action of a human driver that is non-impaired, with eyes
| always on the conflict (NIEON). Put simply, unlike an
| average human driver, NIEON is always attentive and
| doesn't get distracted or fatigued1. The data showed that
| the Waymo Driver outperformed the NIEON human driver
| model by avoiding more collisions and mitigating serious
| injury risk in simulated fatal crash scenarios.
|
| (From https://waymo.com/blog/2022/09/benchmarking-av-
| safety)
|
| AIUI (I'm not on that team), a major challenge is getting
| good _baseline_ data. Collision reports may not
| (reliably) capture that kind of data, and it 's clearly
| subjective or often self-reported outside of cases like
| DUI charges.
| Veserv wrote:
| For which any such system must be assumed unsafe until proven
| safe and the burden of proof lies with the manufacturer to
| present sound, robust, transparent, third-party audited
| evidence.
|
| You do not get to counter-argue: "What matters is the rate of
| cases per mile driven" without actually presenting that
| number with supporting evidence. Otherwise the only sound
| conclusion is the default presumption of non-safety.
|
| In the case of Waymo, we have some tentative supporting
| evidence from this and other studies Waymo has run. However,
| that is still insufficient, even ignoring the lack of audits
| by non-conflicted parties, to strongly conclude Waymo is
| safer than a human. The evidence is promising, but it is only
| prudent to wait for further confirmation.
|
| In contrast, Cruise was almost definitely not safer than a
| human driver.
|
| In 2023, Cruise ADS cars drove 2,064,728 miles [1] and were
| involved in, by my count, 29 collisions with 5 causing injury
| [2], namely incidents on 2023-05-04, 2023-05-21, 2023-06-09,
| 2023-08-18, 2023-10-02.
|
| That is ~72,000 miles per collision and ~400,000 miles per
| injury in contrast to the national human averages of ~500,000
| per reported collision (which is non-comparable) and
| ~1,270,000 miles per injury (which is comparable). So, absent
| a more detailed analysis, Cruise ADS cars were ~3x MORE
| likely to be involved in a injury causing collision per mile.
|
| Details and evidence matter in these discussions. Blanket
| rhetoric and optimism is not prudent when discussing new
| safety-critical systems.
|
| [1] https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2024/02/03/2023-di
| sen...
|
| [2] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-industry-
| services/auto...
| standardUser wrote:
| I'm not sure what you're getting at here. By _all_
| accounts, Waymo operates more safely than a human driver.
| It 's operated tens of millions of rides in several major
| cities over several years, hence all the useful data. There
| is absolutely nothing stopping the continued expansion of
| self-driving vehicles, Waymo or otherwise, and there are
| myriad factors moving it forward rapidly.
| Veserv wrote:
| I think I was pretty clear.
|
| > You do not get to counter-argue: "What matters is the
| rate of cases per mile driven" without actually
| presenting that number with supporting evidence.
| Otherwise the only sound conclusion is the default
| presumption of non-safety.
|
| I then pointed out how Waymo does present such evidence.
| But, if you applied that argument to Cruise you would be
| wrong. That demonstrates how that argument (when not
| presenting the numbers) can be used to support both good
| and bad and is thus a bad argument.
|
| The correct argument when somebody points to anecdotes of
| bad outcomes is to present statistically sound data of
| good outcomes, not argue they did not present
| statistically sound data of bad outcomes thus you get to
| assume it is good.
| 16bytes wrote:
| > The burden of proof lies with the manufacturer to present
| sound, robust, transparent, third-party audited evidence.
|
| Waymo releases its safety data:
| https://waymo.com/safety/impact/, which is backed by public
| reporting requirements.
|
| To say that it is wholly insufficient to make _any_ safety
| claims on publicly driven 50M miles, is ridiculous. At the
| very least, it appears sound, robust and transparent, and
| able to be validated.
|
| > https://waymo.com/blog/2024/12/new-swiss-re-study-waymo
|
| Is Swiss Re a valid third party? They also address peer-
| reviewed and external validation in the above safety impact
| page.
|
| I can understand being skeptical because of Cruise and
| especially claims made by Telsa, but there is a
| preponderance of supporting data for Waymo.
|
| Given all of this evidence, you would still conclude Waymo
| is unsafe?
| Veserv wrote:
| I think I was quite clear on my position.
|
| > In the case of Waymo, we have some tentative supporting
| evidence from this and other studies Waymo has run.
| However, that is still insufficient, even ignoring the
| lack of audits by non-conflicted parties, to _strongly
| conclude_ Waymo is safer than a human. The _evidence is
| promising_ , but it is only prudent to wait for further
| confirmation.
|
| You are not making a distinction between concluding
| unsafe and not being able to conclude safe. It is
| standard practice to not presume safety and that positive
| evidence of safety must be presented. Failure to
| demonstrate statistically sound evidence of danger is not
| proof of safety. Failure to disprove X is not proof of X.
| This is a very important point to avoid fallacious
| conclusions on these matters.
|
| To discuss your specific points. Yes, the data is
| promising, but it is insufficient.
|
| Traffic fatalities occur on the order of 1 per 60-80
| million miles. Waymo has yet to reach even one expected
| traffic fatality yet. They appear to be on track to doing
| better, but there is not enough data yet.
|
| The reports Waymo present are authored by Waymo. Even the
| Swiss Re study is in cooperation with Swiss Re, not a
| independent study by Swiss Re. The studies are fairly
| transparent, they point to various public datasets, there
| are fairly extensive public reporting requirements, and
| Waymo has not demonstrated clear malfeasance, so we can
| tentatively assume they are "honest". But we have plenty
| of examples of bad actors such as Cruise, cigarette
| companies, VW , etc. who have done end-runs around these
| types of basic safeguards.
|
| Waymo operational domain is not equivalent to standard
| human operational domain. They attempt to account for
| this in their studies, but it is a fairly complex topic
| with poor public datasets (which is why they cooperated
| with Swiss Re) so the correctness of their analysis has
| not been borne out yet. When Waymo incorporates freeways
| into their public offerings this will enable a less
| complicated analysis which would lend greater confidence
| to their conclusions.
|
| Waymo is still in "testing". As their processes appear to
| be good, we should assume that their testing procedures
| are _safer_ than should be expected out of actual
| deployment or verification procedures. That is not a
| negative statement. In fact, it would be problematic if
| their "testing" procedures were less or even equal in
| safety to their deployment procedures. That is just how
| testing is. You can and must apply more scrutiny to
| incomplete systems in use and prevent increased risks
| especially while under scrutiny otherwise you are almost
| certainly going to be worse off in deployment where there
| is less scrutiny. We have yet to see how this will
| translate out to deployment, so we will need to wait and
| see if safety while under test will appropriately apply
| to safety while in release. This is analogous to improved
| outcomes for patients in medical studies even if they are
| given the placebo because they just get more care in
| general while in the study.
|
| Anyways, Waymo appears to be doing as well and honestly
| as can be determined by a third party observer. I am
| optimistic about their data and outcomes, but it is only
| prudent to avoid over-optimism in safety-critical systems
| and not accept lazy evidence or arguments. High standards
| are the only way to safety.
| stefan_ wrote:
| The reason they investigate every airplane crash for a root
| cause is not necessarily because the number of deaths tilts
| the statistics, it's because they are highly complicated
| mechanical and electrical machines where there is always the
| chance for a _systematic fault_ that will doom many further
| planes if not found and rectified.
|
| The same of course applies to self-driving cars; they are
| literally cars driven by software, of course you need to do a
| root cause investigation every time to rule out that it's not
| a bug in the software that will kill another person (and many
| after) when the next car happens to go down that rare branch
| of the system. It's embarrassing to see that the people that
| call themselves engineers at these companies have not held
| their work to this standard, and are instead publishing
| glossy brochures making whacky statistical arguments.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Why do you think they don't do root cause investigations?
|
| I've personally read through the root cause reports for
| most of the notable AV accidents. They're not always quite
| as intensive as aerospace, but I'd be hard pressed to
| describe any of them as wacky statistical arguments.
|
| Obviously most of those reports aren't public, but I'm
| assuming you also have industry access.
| bluGill wrote:
| The real shame is we don't investigate normal human drivers
| the same way.
| Lammy wrote:
| > Tens of thousands of Americas are killed every year in car
| crashes.
|
| CDC "Underlying Cause of Death" dataset sez
| https://wonder.cdc.gov/ucd-icd10-expanded.html
| https://i.imgur.com/4PB0xyC.jpeg
|
| - "Person injured in unspecified motor-vehicle accident,
| traffic" is the 50th leading cause of death at 0.4% of
| deaths.
|
| - "Person injured in collision between other specified motor
| vehicles (traffic)" is the 108th leading cause of death at
| 0.2% of deaths.
| garrettjoecox wrote:
| Was your intent to disprove or back up the claims of
| parent?
|
| 0.4% and 0.2% sound low, but make up for ~110,000 deaths.
| Spread across a 5 year period does indeed equal "tens of
| thousands" every year.
| Lammy wrote:
| My intent was to have some real data. Do you only write
| comments to persuade others? Form your own opinion,
| because now you have data to inform one.
| 6510 wrote:
| The mcdrive is the most dangerous road.
| ahahahahah wrote:
| It sounds like you are refuting the parent's claim. But
| those two categories add up to ~110,000 deaths over a 6
| year period, which seems like can be reasonably described
| as 10000s per year.
|
| But, more importantly, you missed a bunch of relevant
| categories:
|
| V89.2 (Person injured in unspecified motor-vehicle
| accident, traffic) 80,434
|
| V87.7 (Person injured in collision between other specified
| motor vehicles (traffic)) 29,982
|
| V09.2 (Pedestrian injured in traffic accident involving
| other and unspecified motor vehicles) 27,934
|
| V03.1 (Pedestrian injured in collision with car, pick-up
| truck or van, traffic accident) 15,129
|
| V43.5 (Car occupant injured in collision with car, pick-up
| truck or van, driver injured in traffic accident) 9,810
|
| V29.9 (Motorcycle rider [any] injured in unspecified
| traffic accident) 8,410
|
| V29.4 (Driver injured in collision with other and
| unspecified motor vehicles in traffic accident) 7,688
|
| V47.5 (Car occupant injured in collision with fixed or
| stationary object, driver injured in traffic accident)
| 6,379
|
| V49.9 (Car occupant [any] injured in unspecified traffic
| accident) 6,349
|
| V23.4 (Motorcycle rider injured in collision with car,
| pick-up truck or van, driver injured in traffic accident)
| 5,851
|
| V43.6 (Car occupant injured in collision with car, pick-up
| truck or van, passenger injured in traffic accident) 3,728
|
| V27.4 (Motorcycle rider injured in collision with fixed or
| stationary object, driver injured in traffic accident)
| 3,504
| breadwinner wrote:
| You could also link to all of the people killed by self-driving
| Teslas. In my opinion, Teslas (especially) are bringing a bad
| name to the entire field.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Note that even in the case you linked to, with Cruise, the
| initial accident was caused by a human driver.
| lucasrim wrote:
| Was genuinely impressed when I took my first Waymo, not only for
| comfort, but the small microdecisions it made as a driver. As a
| person whose lost a parent to a sleepy driver, and a victim to 2
| texting drivers, I welcome AI driving revolution.
| FredPret wrote:
| Sorry for your loss. I hope we get road deaths to 0.
| carlgreene wrote:
| This will surely get some skepticism as it's a Waymo study, but
| it's nice to see a real-world dataset this large at 56M miles. An
| 85 % drop in serious-injury crashes and 96 % fewer intersection
| collisions is a strong signal that Level 4 ADS can meaningfully
| improve safety in ride-hail settings. Still curious about how
| much of that comes from operational design versus the core
| autonomy, but it's a big leap beyond "novelty demo."
|
| Really excited for autonomy to become more and more common place.
| People drive more and more like distracted lunatics these days it
| seems
| buckle8017 wrote:
| It's an incentive problem.
|
| Uber/Lyft drivers are strongly incentivized to drive as quickly
| and aggressively as possible.
|
| The individual drivers are trading risk for cash.
|
| A company like Google isn't going to make that trade because
| it's actually the wrong trade across millions of hours.
| somanyphotons wrote:
| I may be out-of-date here, but I had thought the
| accelerometers in the phone detected if drivers were too
| jerky in the movements of the car and that the drivers would
| be informed of poor service
| pests wrote:
| DoorDash (so food not people) will give you a report for
| hard braking / acceleration but it doesn't actually affect
| anything afaict.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Good point: Part of Waymo's safety stats comes from settings
| that are probably tuned right now in favor of safety stats
| even if it means a longer or less-profitable ride. It doesn't
| care if you're going to lose your job if you're five minutes
| late.
|
| So a fairer comparison would be contrasting Waymo rides to
| trips conducted by the Ultra Safe Even If It's Slower
| Chauffeur Company.
| notatoad wrote:
| >a fairer comparison would be contrasting Waymo rides to
| trips conducted by the Ultra Safe Even If It's Slower
| Chauffeur Company.
|
| no, comparing them to real alternatives is the fair
| comparison. that they've got their settings tuned in favour
| of safety stats is the whole point, not something that you
| should be trying to factor out of the comparisons.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > they've got their settings tuned in favour of safety
| stats is the whole point
|
| _For now_ , yes. My point is that there's very often big
| gap between "how safely does it work in a lab when the
| people running it are trying to play up its safety"
| versus "how safely will X actually work once we start
| using it everywhere."
|
| Manually-driven vehicles could be a lot safer if they
| were being prototyped under strict guidance as well!
|
| If we want self-driving cars to retain the same safety
| later, there needs to be something which prevents humans
| from flicking the safety-versus-speed dial a little bit
| over and over in order to make quarterly earnings
| projections.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Ultra Safe Even if it's Slower Chauffeur company doesn't
| exist and doesn't have data that can be compared. This is a
| comparison against the thing Waymo is actually replacing.
| rozap wrote:
| There was a study a few years back that showed male uber
| drivers earned more than female drivers. How could this be
| so, when the dispatch algorithm doesn't discriminate? Turns
| out men just drive a little faster in the aggregate so they
| made iirc around 3% more money.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| Not sure if this is the study but this looks like a good
| study where they found it was 7% when the study was done.
|
| https://economics.uchicago.edu/news/study-finds-gender-
| pay-g...
| rozap wrote:
| Yep that was it, an even bigger gap than I remembered.
| Thanks for linking it.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I think the problem is a general one about drivers, not just
| ride-sharers. I live in a fairly busy area and I am beset by
| aggressive drivers any time I need to cross a busy road. So
| many drivers simply ignore pedestrians by default. Not that
| many of them have Uber or Lyft signs in the window, if
| anything commercial drivers tend to be a bit more careful in
| my experience because the downside risk is being unable to
| work any driving job.
| bluGill wrote:
| About half of commercial drivers is my conclusion. (though
| I'm not collecting statistically valid data) Just judging
| by the number of commercial vehicles who drive into the
| crosswalk I use often.
| xnx wrote:
| It's good to be skeptical of the source, but I can't remember
| seeing any substantive criticism of the methodology or
| conclusions.
| manquer wrote:
| Here is one,
|
| Humans drive in all weather conditions on all types of roads
| and also many types of personal vehicles of varying ages and
| conditions.
|
| Waymo is limited to few specific locations with decent roads
| and does not drive in poor weather and is limited to a
| relatively large and safer expensive SUV that is maintained
| professionally in a fleet.
|
| Studies like this rarely account for such factors , they are
| compare optimal conditions for self driving to average
| conditions for humans.
|
| Even if waymo was better when accounting for these factors ,
| if it was much worse in the conditions humans typically are
| expected to drive [1] they self driving is still less safe
| than humans on average .
|
| A better comparison could be with professional taxi drivers
| for the same city (not Uber or Lyft).
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if Waymo is either on par or poorer
| than this group .
|
| [1] no study will ever show this as they wouldn't be able to
| trial it under those conditions if it is not safe enough
| pb7 wrote:
| Waymos drive in all weather in the cities they're deployed
| in; cities where people crash all the time in all types of
| weather.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I am very curious where waymo is at in adverse conditions.
| Do the cars totally lock up and become useless? Or are they
| at the level of your 65 year old mother driving in a
| thunderstorm at night? Passable, but nothing they are gonna
| put their name on.
|
| Seems they intend to come to Washington D.C. next year,
| which does get a pretty wide gamut of weather.
| jedberg wrote:
| > A better comparison could be with professional taxi
| drivers for the same city (not Uber or Lyft). > I wouldn't
| be surprised if Waymo is either on par or poorer than this
| group.
|
| If you've been in both a human drive cab and a Waymo, you'd
| definitely not say this. I see cabs have accidents all the
| time. Never seen a Waymo have one.
|
| Also, being in a Waymo _feels_ much safer than a human
| driven car, even my own when I 'm driving!
|
| I highly doubt taxicabs are safer than Waymos.
|
| In fact, here is some data:
|
| Over every 1 million miles driven, there are 4.6 cab
| crashes, 3.7 livery car crashes, and 6.7 crashes with
| private cars. And according to Waymo, they have 2.1 crashes
| per million miles.
| riquito wrote:
| > Waymo is limited to few specific locations with decent
| roads and does not drive in poor weather
|
| the study is comparing Waymo to accidents occurred in the
| same cities where Waymo operates, and my understanding is
| that Waymo drives 7 days a week, 24h a day in those cities,
| so same roads, same weather. Seems a legit comparison
| kfarr wrote:
| This is great and there's another area of influence that I've
| heard other traffic engineers discuss: platoon pacing. A platoon
| is the word that traffic engineers give to a group of cars
| traveling together. A platoon is most explicitly visible on a
| corridor with signals timed for a green wave, but occurs in many
| other contexts.
|
| Human drivers often race when in a platoon-- not even on purpose
| it's just an instinct to go as fast or faster than other cars
| which has a feedback effect to increase platoon speed.
|
| Waymos, following the exact speed limit, don't do this. On 1 lane
| streets they literally set the platoon pace to the legal speed
| limit.
|
| The effect of this is hard to study and quantify but it's a real
| and positive impact of self driving cars on city streets. Haven't
| seen research on this topic yet.
| wffurr wrote:
| This also came up recently in a thread about speed governors:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43812856 Just a few
| governor-equipped vehicles (e.g. from public fleets or prior
| speeding offenders) can reduce speeding on the whole road.
| sneak wrote:
| On most roads, speeding isn't a safety issue and shouldn't be
| discouraged, as road throughput is important. Speed limits
| are usually set too low due to standardized inflexible
| policies or desire for revenue.
|
| On some roads, however, it is a massive safety issue, and
| everyone is driving unsafely because the road is designed
| badly for its intended purpose. (So-called "stroads" are the
| canonical example.)
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| Anecdotally, as someone who bikes a lot in SF, Waymo's are a lot
| safer than human drivers simply because they follow the letter of
| traffic laws. Stopping at stop signs, waiting for pedestrians to
| clear the box, following the posted speed limits, etc.
| matttproud wrote:
| I was just on a business trip to San Francisco for a few days,
| and I observed the near opposite of this from the Waymo fleet
| in SoMa:
|
| * Waymo vehicle creeping into the pedestrian crosswalk (while
| the pedestrians had right of way to cross), which caused
| someone to have to walk around the car into the intersection
| ahead of the Waymo.
|
| * Waymo vehicle entering a dedicated bike lane and practically
| tailgating the bicyclist that was ahead of it.
|
| These might be safer than human drivers in aggregate and
| normalized by kilometer driven, but they drive like humans --
| greedily and non-defensively. I wouldn't want one these
| anywhere near a high-pedestrian traffic area ever, and I feel
| the same about human-driven cars, too.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Neither of the examples you cite strike me as particularly
| dangerous nor even illegal. The pedestrians were given the
| right of way. And entering bike lanes is fine for crossing or
| short distances where merited unless grade separated.
| matttproud wrote:
| A vehicle that becomes blocked in a crosswalk is unsafe for
| pedestrians who want to use that crosswalk if it forces the
| pedestrians to walk around the blocking vehicle. There are
| crosswalks in SoMa that provide for 45 seconds or more of
| crossing time. A Waymo that enters one of these crosswalks
| after 15 seconds into the 45 seconds allocation blocks the
| crosswalk for the remainder of the 30 seconds. This
| presents an unsafe situation for all existing and future
| pedestrians (e.g., a pedestrian who inadvertently steps
| into the intersection while trying to go around the
| blocking vehicle).
|
| We also know that in North America that the municipal
| services skimp on grade separation for bike lanes for
| budget and political reasons. I did bike in San Francisco
| when I lived there, and these non-shared colored lanes
| never ever felt safe.
|
| I can guarantee that if you leave your North American
| context for a couple of years and come back to it you'll
| find CA Vehicle Code SS 21453 unsatisfactory.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| I totally agree that grade-separated bike and pedestrian
| lanes would be better. What I'm arguing against is that
| this behaviour by Waymo is less safe than San Francisco's
| human drivers given the rules as they are.
| matttproud wrote:
| Don't think for a minute I want human drivers anywhere
| near bicyclists or pedestrians or assume they are
| anywhere better for general-purpose driving. Human
| drivers are awful, but I'd posit the behavior of these
| automated vehicles isn't much better toward making a
| welcoming road environment as they are programmed. The
| laws -- particularly for California and what is treated
| as standard in North America -- don't help matters at
| all.
| standardUser wrote:
| > I wouldn't want one these anywhere near a high-pedestrian
| traffic area ever, and I feel the same about human-driven
| cars, too.
|
| Much of San Francisco _is_ a "a high-pedestrian traffic
| area" and Waymos operate in those areas constantly and more
| or less flawlessly. As someone who lived carless in SF for
| nearly 15 years, I see nothing but upside from more Waymos
| and less human drivers on those busy streets.
| johnmcd3 wrote:
| > * Waymo vehicle entering a dedicated bike lane.
|
| In California, California Vehicle Code SS 21209(a)(3)
| expressly permits a motor vehicle to enter a bicycle lane "to
| prepare for a turn within a distance of 200 feet from the
| intersection" -- among other cases. (The vehicle must yield
| to cyclists in the lane.)
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Note that you have to enter a painted bike lane before
| turning, because it's safer to do it that way rather than
| crossing the bike lane right at the turn.
|
| I know it can _seem_ discourteous to cyclists, but it really
| is the smarter way.
| MattGrommes wrote:
| Just following the letter of the law is so huge. Even people
| who think they're being nice by doing something out of the
| ordinary make the situation so much more dangerous because now
| you don't know what's going to happen. Even if they weren't
| great drivers, the consistency makes so much of a difference.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| In Holland we have this saying (based on an old commercial): "We
| from WC Duck recommend... WC Duck". (Which is a toilet cleaning
| product)
|
| It was a funny ad at the time. Unfortunately based in reality
| more and more these days.
| standardUser wrote:
| I'm quick to discount reports that are "by the industry for the
| industry", but few industries are as transparent as self-
| driving taxis due to the strict operating laws in most
| jurisdictions.
| OJFord wrote:
| This is almost all research though. (Medical) doctors aren't in
| the habit of doing longitudinal studies on procedures they
| don't do because they don't believe in them. (I mean, for one
| thing, where would they get the data!)
|
| But that's why you have peer review, further studies from
| different authors perhaps on competing methods that point out
| some flaws in your approach, etc.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Obviously the study should be taken with a grain of salt, given
| the source, but at least it _is_ a study with actual data, that
| 's been peer reviewed.
| indigodaddy wrote:
| How do AI cars fare with those instinctual "decide which way to
| swerve in a split-second" scenarios that come up maybe once every
| 10-20 years over the course of a driver's history?? It's happened
| to me about 2-3 times and I've always made the "(assumedly)
| correct" split second swerve decision. Wondering if that is a
| "human/instinctual" skill and if AI cars do just as well or
| better, or perhaps not as good? I don't have any evidence backing
| this but my gut tells me these scenarios are something that a
| human driver would handle better than AI.
| OJFord wrote:
| Probably better? 'Who' can process more data faster is likely
| impossible to answer, but (e.g.) Waymo can train on those
| scenarios and have way more 'experience' than any individual
| driver who's seen it once every 10-20 years of their driving
| career.
| indigodaddy wrote:
| Yeah it's interesting, these scenarios are generally at high
| speeds on an interstate highway, and generally involve some
| level of predicting what the villain driver is going to do
| (split second prediction though mind you, it all happens in
| the blink of an eye), and sometimes the right thing to do is
| to swerve (if no one is adjacent in surrounding lanes) whilst
| either not using the brake at all or almost no braking.
| Basically avoid the brake and do your quick swerve after
| you've confirmed there is no one in the left/right adjacent
| lane or close enough behind you. Once again this all happens
| in the blink of an eye. Perhaps AI would be better? I'm not
| complete sold though..
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _those instinctual "decide which way to swerve in a split-
| second" scenarios that come up maybe once every 10-20 years_
|
| The correct answer is almost always to hit the brakes. _Not_ to
| swerve. And Waymo will hit the brakes earlier than you or me.
| ecshafer wrote:
| I would be interested to see waymo adapt to the snow and ice,
| where "hit the breaks" Is the wrong answer, and the correct
| is to drop the car into neutral. I believe waymo will figure
| this out in time, nut SF and Phoenix are idealized driving
| conditions.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _snow and ice, where "hit the breaks" Is the wrong
| answer, and the correct is to drop the car into neutral_
|
| This is only true with 2WD and no automatic stability
| control, and if you're going down a slope. For every other
| case, ABs will out perform in snow and gentle braking will
| evenly distribute traction force with stability control
| doing microsecond evaluations.
| jeffbee wrote:
| It is also the case that Waymo will be dramatically
| better than all humans in ice because it is going to take
| the aviation approach and stay in the depot, rather than
| fooling itself into believing it is competent at driving
| on ice.
| bluGill wrote:
| You still need to be in neutral as the ABS/stability
| control doesn't control the engine. 2wd makes no real
| difference other than rear wheel drive tends to be the
| most susceptible to this issue, but any wheel can lose
| traction.
| jeffbee wrote:
| > stability control doesn't control the engine
|
| Stability control is tied to power in all modern systems.
| 83 wrote:
| I spend about 5 months every year driving in snow and ice -
| this is the first I'm hearing about dropping it into
| neutral. Can you elaborate on when that would be
| appropriate? Obviously you shouldn't be slamming on the
| brakes, but they do work fine in snow and ice. I don't see
| how rolling into things while not in gear is an
| improvement?
| indigodaddy wrote:
| I think it's often about when you're on rural single lane
| roads and perfectly bad ice/snow/slush conditions where
| you need to keep your speed very low, and sometimes even
| very moderate braking can cause your vehicle to veer off
| the road and into a snow bank, not necessarily the need
| to avoid something in front of you
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| They mean go into neutral and lightly brake. In a 2WD
| car, the braking force applies more strongly to the non-
| powered wheels. Since those were traditionally the back
| wheels, this meant when going down a hill the front
| wheels would have more traction. Those are also your
| steering wheels, which means them locking up is bad.
| Again, this is the sort of advice that is germane in
| highly restricted environments which become folk
| knowledge and later mis applied by humans in ways that
| reduce safety.
|
| (You also only get into this scenario when your stopping
| distance is shorter than your reaction time and
| perception length. Something automated drivers can manage
| better than humans.)
| creaturemachine wrote:
| I remember being taught the neutral trick for emergency
| braking back in the 90's, and it had nothing to do with
| traction in poor conditions. It was simply to remove any
| engine power that might extend your braking distance.
| It's definitely bad advice in any modern car.
| bluGill wrote:
| When you let off the throttle your wheels start driving
| the engine and slowing you down. In snow/ice that engine
| breaking alone can be more braking force than is safe and
| so you go into a skid. Shifting to neutral removes engine
| braking and allows for more controlled slowing down.
| Aloisius wrote:
| The correct answer is to not drive so fast (or at all) in
| conditions where braking might lead to a skid. I'd expect
| an autonomous vehicle to be rather better at this given
| they can hook directly into the electronic stability
| control system in a vehicle and constantly monitor
| temperature (and ideally measure upcoming road
| temperature).
|
| Also, shifting into neutral is really only a thing for old
| vehicles without ABS/ESC. In modern vehicles, you let your
| foot off the gas slowly.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| If hit the brakes is the wrong answer, you are driving too
| fast.
| indigodaddy wrote:
| I disagree. High percentage of these scenarios are at speeds
| and scenarios where hitting the brake would not prevent a
| collision and a quick swerve is the only option to not
| collide. Obviously your quick swerve could cause another
| collision so I guess it's which decision on average causes
| the least harm/death? I agree though that most people's
| extinct would be to brake. Mine never has been though.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _quick swerve could cause another collision so I guess it
| 's which decision on average causes the least harm/death? I
| agree though that most people's extinct would be to brake_
|
| If it's 1989 and you don't have ABS, yes. Otherwise,
| swerving is a gamble [1]. If you don't have time to stop,
| you physically don't have time to evaluate and choose a
| right or left swerve. You're trading the certainty of a
| head-on collision with whatever is in front of you against
| the uncertainty of what's to the right or left, compounded
| with all the fun that comes with a side/tumbling collision
| and increased risk of not hitting a car.
|
| [1] https://peterhancock.ucf.edu/wp-
| content/uploads/sites/12/201...
| bluGill wrote:
| If you cannot brake you are following too close. I know
| everyone else does it (except 3/4ths of semis!), but you
| can be the one who maintains a long following distance and
| thus can stop in time. Every time setup the long following
| distance 5 cars jump into the gap - but then the gap
| remains as no more do.
| umbra07 wrote:
| what about when there's an idiot slightly ahead and in
| the next lane who decides to randomly swerve into my
| lane?
|
| do you also maintain a long following distance when
| there's a car right next to you in the next lane? I try
| to, because I don't want to stay in someone's blind spot,
| but sometimes it's not really possible to fall back.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _what about when there 's an idiot slightly ahead and
| in the next lane who decides to randomly swerve into my
| lane?_
|
| You're safer hitting them head on while aggressively
| braking than attempting a microsecond swerve.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| There was a notable case recently where the Waymo _did_
| swerve, to avoid someone who had fallen off a scooter into
| their lane (video here): https://www.reddit.com/r/waymo/comme
| nts/1hfvb5o/waymo_visual...
|
| Hard to say for certain, but it looks like just braking
| probably wouldn't have avoided the collision.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| I'd argue that's more straightforward collision avoidance
| than a swerve since the rider was to the side when Waymo
| turned. As such, there wasn't a choice between braking and
| swerving. One _had_ to do both, and there was no real
| optionality as to whether to swerve right or left.
| jeffbee wrote:
| It's just ape hubris that makes you think these were the right
| swerves instead of just dumb luck that you did not flip over
| the center barrier head-on into a school bus.
|
| The Waymo doesn't have to swerve as much as a human because it
| can see a mile away and never blinks, and it knows that the
| right thing to do in every swerve-worthy situation is to slam
| on the brakes to take the energy out of the event. It also
| drives around with the brakes pre-pressurized because it isn't
| trying to compensate for the fact that its control system is
| partially made of meat. Anyway you can go to r/waymo or
| r/selfdrivingcars for lots of videos of Waymos avoiding
| objects.
| bwy wrote:
| They test extensively on those types of scenarios. See:
| https://waymo.com/research/collision-avoidance-testing-of-th...
|
| Blog post for the paper: https://waymo.com/blog/2022/12/waymos-
| collision-avoidance-te...
| warkdarrior wrote:
| I'm ok if the AI car makes an incorrect decision once every 10
| years.
| johnfn wrote:
| As someone who is often on SF city streets without a car - I bike
| and run a lot - I absolutely love Waymo. I am continuously seeing
| human drivers cut me off, perform illegal maneuvers (i.e. run red
| lights when I'm going through a crosswalk), and break various
| other traffic laws. All these things genuinely put people in
| danger. Just the other day, a guy started running a "no right
| turn on red" lane in SF, and when I pointed it out to him he
| floored his car - through the red - right in front of me and
| laughed at me as he sped away. To say nothing of all the times
| when cars will honk or give me the finger for doing normal things
| on a street, like walking on a crosswalk.
|
| Waymo is like the most courteous, respectful driver you can
| possibly imagine. They have infinite patience and will always
| take the option which is the safest for everyone. One thing which
| really impressed me is how patient they are at crosswalks. When
| I'm jogging, a Waymo will happily wait for me to cross - even
| when I'm 10 feet away from even entering the crosswalk! I don't
| know if _I_ even have that much patience while driving! I 've had
| a number of near misses with human drivers who don't bother
| checking or accelerate for no reason after I'm already in the
| crosswalk. Can you imagine a Waymo ever doing that?
|
| If I see a Waymo on the street near me I immediately feel safer
| because I know it is not about to commit some unhinged behavior.
| I cannot say enough good things about them.
| biophysboy wrote:
| I am also hopeful that Waymo has other positive externalities
| for bikes/pedestrians: less need for parking spots, car
| ownership, etc. At the same time, I guess you could say the
| same for rideshare, so it would depend on if robo-rideshare is
| cheaper than ownership
| VOIPThrowaway wrote:
| My prediction is that car usage will go thought the roof when
| AI cars work.
|
| People can have a stress-free commute to a nice house in the
| countryside and work in the cities. Because the car is
| electric, it will be inexpensive to run.
| biophysboy wrote:
| well, I guess my hope is that renting a car whenever needed
| is cheaper than the cost of purchasing, maintaining,
| insuring, and storing a personal robocar. It would be quite
| hard to make the US more car-dependent than it already is!
| But I am speculating - you may very well be right
| bluGill wrote:
| It will only be cheaper if you don't drive much anyway,
| and you are the type who would never be seen in a car
| more than 3 years old.
|
| If you drive a lot (like the person in the countryside)
| the car that is there when you want to is worth owning vs
| a shared car that you might have to wait for. Plus by
| owning the car you can just leave your golf clubs in the
| trunk.
|
| If you can stand being in a used car you will discover
| that shared cars are all more expensive just because at
| the first sign of cosmetic wear they get rid of it while
| seats that have been sat in a few times are still good
| enough for many more years. (unless you almost never
| drive anyway)
|
| Because of the above I don't see much growth in the
| shared car market. There will be some because there are
| people who don't have parking, people who don't drive
| much, and people who demand a new car that they don't
| otherwise care about. However the vast majority of people
| will still own their own car.
| akavi wrote:
| I sincerely believe this thesis and desperately want a REIT
| that owns real estate in a 2 hour radius of major urban
| downtowns.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Commute time still matters, and congestion pricing will
| become the norm.
|
| I can read on the subway, but while a 20 min subway ride is
| fine, an hour each way is still a _lot_ , and a two hour
| train commute just doesn't leave much time in your life for
| doing social things.
|
| Also, I think there's going to be a huge surge in in-demand
| AI buses. Rideshares will take people to a random spot,
| you'll wait 2 minutes for a predetermined seat on a
| specific bus, and then switch to a rideshare van for the
| last 5 minute drive to your office in the city.
|
| It's just going to be so much cheaper. With economies of
| scale and urban congestion pricing, you'll have to choose
| between dropping $45 on a dedicated hour-long door-to-door
| car trip, or $6 for the car-bus-van version which is only
| 20% slower anyways.
| hn_acc1 wrote:
| You've clearly never been to the US.. Late-stage
| capitalism will find ways to make it cost exactly as much
| as driving your own car.
|
| OTOH, if I'm in a decent-sized car (minivan?) for 45
| minutes+, I can get work done. I can then stay less time
| at work.
| decimalenough wrote:
| Waymo can drive cars but it can't magick new roads into
| existence. If car usage goes through the roof, so will
| traffic jams.
| netsharc wrote:
| Probably not, if they're all computer-controlled, and can
| communicate with each other. I posit traffic jams is
| mostly caused by idiot and reckless drivers...
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Yup, and if every car is computer controlled and in
| communication with nearby cars you can safely reduce
| spacing. Most of that space between cars is due to human
| reaction time. (And even then that's not always enough.
| 40 years ago, I'm going along, geezer is being awfully
| slow about their left turn so I lightly apply the brakes.
| Geezer then proceeds to completely stop, utterly unaware
| that I'm heading right towards his door. I slam on my
| brakes. I was able to stop for said geezer but the woman
| behind me didn't have the usual warning of brake lights
| flaring and came up a couple of inches short in stopping.
| Geezer proceeds off, apparently completely unaware of the
| accident he caused.
|
| (And that was not the only close call I had with that
| geezer at that corner.)
| decimalenough wrote:
| The future where _all_ cars are computer controlled is
| even further away than the future where fully self-
| driving cars are available for purchase.
| philomath_mn wrote:
| Best part is that they probably have data to show that all that
| patience costs the typical passenger mere seconds to a minute
| on 99% of rides.
|
| This has always bothered me about aggressive or impatient human
| drivers: they are probably shaving like 30 seconds off of their
| daily commute while greatly increasing the odds of an incident.
| dheera wrote:
| [flagged]
| asadm wrote:
| good thing drones are getting smarter
| dheera wrote:
| Well sure but drones won't shit, that's why we need the
| organic piece. I guess they could drop rotten fruit in
| lieu of shit, but then we need a supply chain to restock
| the rotten fruit in the drones.
| elefanten wrote:
| Or just implement vastly more automated ticketing systems.
| They are standard in many countries. They could be
| implemented with limited-purview privacy preserving
| architectures where that aligns with expectations and
| values.
|
| But people speeding, driving aggressively, driving anti-
| socially (by trying to speed past lines and cut in at the
| front), running lights and stops... this could be squashed
| forever, saving lives and ultimately making life more
| pleasant for everyone.
| johnfn wrote:
| It's so frustrating. These things are trivially solved.
| There's basically a 50/50 shot, every time the light
| cycles, that someone will illegally take a right on red
| on the street outside my house. All you need is a single
| cop sitting there and watching. Or just one camera! Argh.
| pnw wrote:
| But they won't be implemented with a privacy preserving
| architecture. They'll be outsourced to a third party with
| unknown privacy and security, and eventually be treated
| as a revenue generator, leading cities to implement rule
| changes that enhance revenue at the cost of privacy and
| safety.
| numpad0 wrote:
| signaling humans for bad behaviors tend to backfire. it
| program us to recreate that situation in anger. we aren't
| smart enough to naturally learn lessons that way.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't do this here.
| kiba wrote:
| I experienced this phenomena on my electric scooter. I could
| always scoot faster than someone walking but ultimately it
| makes little difference because I just spent more time for
| the crossing signal to turn green. So they end up catching up
| to me.
|
| Now, when there's long stretch or when you have to go up
| hill, that's where the electric scooter begins to shine and
| makes the largest difference.
| johnfn wrote:
| Interesting - I'm definitely substantially faster on a
| scooter than walking. Part of it is knowing the best
| routes, but I think even if there are crossing signals, if
| you're going further than a few blocks there's just no
| comparison to walking.
| bluGill wrote:
| You are missing all the times where you are enough faster
| that you catch a green while the other person gets there on
| red and so they never catch up. It is easy to see/remember
| the times they catch up.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Driving is a cooperative game, which we all win if everyone
| arrives at their destination safely.
| sollewitt wrote:
| Fellow SF cyclist:
|
| Even setting aside the malicious SF stuff, Waymo's have
| enormous advantages over humans relying on mirrors and
| accounting for blindspots. I never have to be concerned a Waymo
| hasn't seen me.
|
| I can't wait until the technology is just standard on cars, and
| they won't let drivers side-swipe or door cyclists.
| dheera wrote:
| Dooring is so incredibly preventable with simple computer
| vision and some kind of actuator that adds an audible alarm
| and mechanical 3x resistance to the door opening when a
| cyclist is detected. The door should still be openable in
| emergency but should be hard to open until the cyclist
| passes.
|
| (For cars that have both a normally-used electronic door open
| button and a manual emergency release (e.g. Teslas), the
| electronic button can use the car's existing cameras to
| detect cyclists first before actuating the door to open. This
| would be a trivial software change in the specific case of
| Teslas. The only thing I dislike about the Tesla setup though
| is that most non-owners are unaware of where the mechanical
| emergency release is; it is not obvious and not labelled.)
| phoronixrly wrote:
| You won't hear the end of complaints about how cyclists are
| now making cars more expensive...
| dheera wrote:
| Health insurance companies should pay for it. Their costs
| would come down if they subsidize the full R&D cost of
| this system for all car manufacturers. It would work in
| their favor.
|
| They're probably too stupid to think like that, though.
| chris_va wrote:
| Health insurance generally has a fixed profit margin
| (state legislation). They have little incentive to reduce
| cost because then the entire pie shrinks. A nice example
| of where well meaning legislation can completely
| backfire.
|
| Of course, passing costs to all insurance companies is
| really the same as passing it to all people paying
| insurance premiums, at which point you can just use tax
| money to get the same effect. At which point, it's
| probably easier to regulate it and have the cost passed
| to everyone buying a car.
| ra7 wrote:
| Waymo already warns you if it detects road users when you
| open a door. They just don't actively prevent you from
| opening the door, but they could implement it in their next
| generation vehicles.
| kajecounterhack wrote:
| They won't have to if they use sliding power doors (the
| geely cars have them). They should have had them for the
| jaguar generation :)
|
| Dooring people aside, what do you do if someone just
| leaves the door open when they leave their ride?!
| ra7 wrote:
| Oh, that's already a problem for them. There are videos
| of many Waymos stranded because the previous rider didn't
| close the door fully.
| tintor wrote:
| You charge such riders additional penalty fee on their
| account.
|
| Waymo needs to have staff in SF anyway to pick up cars
| that malfunction (flat tire, or just close the door).
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| That would lead to ridiculously overengineered car doors.
| It's already incredible how such a simple thing like a door
| can be so unreliable on newer cars, with handles that sink
| into the doorframe when not in use, or a locking system
| that only works with battery power. I'm not sure that
| adding more complexity would be a net benefit for society.
| toast0 wrote:
| It's already there, my new fancy car has it. Push the
| lever to open with electronic help, pull the lever twice
| for mechanical release. The electronic help version
| checks for safety first (as long as you do it with a
| timeout from when the car was running/ready) We'll have
| to see how the fancy car does over time, but I did get
| one with handles on the outside that don't disappear.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| You could probably design the latch jaws to have an
| electronically controlled second catch. It would activate
| whenever a cyclist is present so if someone tries to slam
| the door open it would catch with the door slightly open
| and trigger a warning. A second pull then opens the door no
| matter what for safety.
| porphyra wrote:
| > This would be a trivial software change in the specific
| case of Teslas
|
| Tesla already has dooring prevention. If it detects a
| bicycle or something coming, it prevents you from opening
| the door the first time, and shows a warning. You can
| override it by trying to open it the second time, if you
| are sure.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/1gwjq4v/new_a
| n...
| Lammy wrote:
| > I never have to be concerned a Waymo hasn't seen me.
|
| Funnily enough that's exactly why I _don 't_ like them. Every
| time one rolls by me I know that tens of photos of me and
| even my 3D LIDAR scan get piled in to some fucking Google
| dataset where it will live forever :/
|
| Their site is even proud of it: https://waymo.com/waymo-
| driver/ section titled "Keeping an eye on everything, all at
| once"
|
| "The Waymo Driver's perception system takes complex data
| gathered from its advanced suite of car sensors, and
| deciphers what's around it using AI - from pedestrians to
| cyclists, vehicles to construction, and more. The Waymo
| Driver also responds to signs and signals, like traffic light
| colors and temporary stop signs."
| leothetechguy wrote:
| Traffic isn't the right place to be if you demand not to be
| seen. If you do not want your data to be stored that's a
| different matter, but I'm still gonna look at you while
| driving to not crash, I have to.
| dylan604 wrote:
| man, the Googs already has a library of images of you. If
| there's anything about you that the Googs doesn't already
| know, I'd be shocked. the Googs probably knows you better
| than your therapist, because you've only shared with your
| therapist what you wanted. the Googs gets data about you
| from places you know nothing about.
|
| being concerned that a Waymo car took your picture isn't
| invalid, but man is it a tear drop in the rain of
| everything else the Googs is doing.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| If "the Googs" knows so much about me, why do they keep
| showing me ads for products I not only have zero interest
| in, I'm also not even the target demographic for?
| kajecounterhack wrote:
| Totally fair to be concerned about pervasive surveillance
| for the _potential_ of privacy violation. Not sure what to
| do about that.
|
| That being said, just speaking with some knowledge of
| current state: the scans don't live forever. At this point,
| all the data they collect is way too big to store even for
| a short period. They'll only keep data in scenarios that
| are helpful for improving driving performance, which is a
| tiny subset.
|
| Personally identifiable information is also redacted.
|
| You should probably be more worried about what gmail knows
| about you than Waymo.
| Lammy wrote:
| True; I should have said metadata and not just data since
| you're right that the volume of raw images would be too
| big to store indefinitely. It's way more feasible to
| process the raw images and store the inferences, like
| number of persons visible in last 5 seconds, or dates and
| times a person who looks like me has been seen by a Waymo
| while my particular Android phone is nearby, or dates and
| times they have seen [my OCRed car number plate].
|
| Flock is the same way. For example here's the Flock
| privacy policy from one of SF's fine local shopping
| centers: https://www.stonestowngalleria.com/en/visit/lpr-
| privacy-poli...
|
| > Video Clips captured by the LPR system will
| automatically be deleted after 30 days; although Images
| are deleted when no longer needed, the data obtained from
| the Images may be retained indefinitely. Should any
| information from the LPR Dashboard be needed to assist
| with a security or law enforcement matter, it may be
| retained indefinitely, in paper and electronic form, as
| part of the security file until it is determined it is no
| longer needed; in addition, it may be shared with local
| law enforcement who may retain it in accordance with
| their own retention policy.
|
| If anyone can share a link to a similar IRL privacy
| policy for Waymo I would love to read it. The one on
| their website is conspicuously labeled Waymo _Web_
| Privacy Policy lol
| 6510 wrote:
| It's probably measuring the temperature of your bodily
| fluids.
| hackncheese wrote:
| Definitely a big privacy concern, especially for people
| like you who aren't using the technology, and haven't
| consented to giving your data.
|
| But car crashes are the third highest cause of death in the
| US (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-
| death.htm). As a society, I think the benefit outweighs the
| cost in this case, and we can (theoretically) continue to
| make progress on privacy as a society. Seems like much more
| of a step forward than a step back to me
| Lammy wrote:
| > But car crashes are the third highest cause of death in
| the US (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-
| of-death.htm).
|
| No, that says "Accidents (unintentional injuries)" as a
| category are collectively the third leading cause of
| death, and that category contains a lot of things.
|
| CDC "Underlying Cause of Death" dataset sez...
| https://wonder.cdc.gov/ucd-icd10-expanded.html
| https://i.imgur.com/4PB0xyC.jpeg
|
| - "Person injured in unspecified motor-vehicle accident,
| traffic" is the 50th leading cause of death at 0.4% of
| deaths.
|
| - "Person injured in collision between other specified
| motor vehicles (traffic)" is the 108th leading cause of
| death at 0.2% of deaths.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Human drivers have dash cams, too. Maybe without as
| sophisticated a data ingestion system as google, but they
| could theoretically put their dashcam footage on youtube if
| they wanted to.
| Lammy wrote:
| I will be sure to think of that the next time I see a
| human driver whose car has 29 dash cams, 5 lidars, 4
| radars, and is using four H100s to process all of its
| realtime images of me: https://thelastdriverlicenseholder
| .com/2024/10/27/waymos-5-6...
| XorNot wrote:
| What is someone doing with all that which they can't do
| with front and back dashcams?
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > Funnily enough that's exactly why I don't like them.
| Every time one rolls by me I know that tens of photos of me
| and even my 3D LIDAR scan get piled in to some fucking
| Google dataset where it will live forever :/
|
| It's not going to be stored forever.
|
| That would be incredibly expensive.
|
| Those cars are taking in TB of information each daily.
| Scale that to 10s of millions of cars.
|
| It's just not going to happen.
|
| Maybe an ultra compressed representation of you that shares
| maybe 1 bit in 1 weight somewhere in a NN will live
| forever.
|
| Maybe.
| Lammy wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43863276
| bamboozled wrote:
| Good point
| vladgur wrote:
| See non-Waymo, human driven car?
|
| Fear not, your images and recordings will get piled on
| somebody's dashcam to do as their heart desires.
|
| I got a dashcam in my Camry recording front and back
| everytime i drive. I have no interest in preserving those
| images outside of an accident, but who knows what sommebody
| else will.
|
| We have no expectations of privacy in public spaces and
| ultimately I would trust Googles IT security more than some
| dude with a dashcam
| twiceaday wrote:
| I bet that when this tech is in normal cars some will have it
| tuned to drive much more aggressively and/or simply have that
| be a setting. I suspect that would be a big selling point /
| driving tacitly would be an anti-selling point.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Nah, insurance companies will change their coverage rates
| based on the feature, and / or it'll become another legally
| mandated feature like backup cameras.
| mdeeks wrote:
| My favorite thing from my first Waymo ride was watching a lady
| walk up to the middle of the street to cross. The Waymo saw
| her, slowed, and waited to let her cross. She smiled and waved
| and immediately felt dumb because who is she waving to? Do I
| wave back? We laughed at each other as it drove away.
|
| Ever since then my fear melted away. They see every direction,
| never blink, and are courteous and careful with pedestrians.
| werrett wrote:
| I'm a fellow cyclist in SF and can only wholeheartedly second
| this. To add some extra anxiety, I'm usually riding a cargo
| bike, ferrying a child to or from daycare.
|
| I still remember the first time I went through a four-way stop
| intersection and saw a driverless car idling, waiting for its
| turn. It was weird and nerve-wracking. Now... I'd much prefer
| that to almost any other interaction at the same spot.
| kion wrote:
| The thing I dislike about Waymo is other drivers.
|
| I've now had it happen twice that a car will fully blow through
| an intersection because they know a Waymo will slam on the
| breaks to avoid a collision. They basically abuse the car's
| reflexes.
|
| Also in any sort of situation where the Waymo is being very
| cautious the biggest danger is the impatient people behind the
| Waymo who will break the law to go out and around it.
| XorNot wrote:
| This probably bizarrely justifies the pulp scifi trope of the
| automated car having an human-like android driver.
| bamboozled wrote:
| As a cyclist, this is the dream IMO, letting everyone be in
| cars while safely being able to ride my bike without fear of
| death or road rage.
|
| Looking forward to this future.
| starik36 wrote:
| They operate in Los Angeles on the city streets in a square
| between Marina Del Ray and West Hollywood.
|
| They can definitely do better when taking left turns. I've seen
| situations where Waymo depends on the oncoming drivers to slow
| down.
| shreezus wrote:
| It's a bit further than that, the service area now extends to
| DTLA / Arts District and south toward Inglewood (likely to
| support LAX soon).
| renewiltord wrote:
| For cycling and walking in SF, the Waymos are optimal. If there's
| one at the front of the line at the red light I know I won't be
| right hooked as I go straight in the bike lane. Very well-
| behaved. I am so glad they're here. Some concentration of them
| actually ruin crazy drivers' ability to do damage because they
| set the speed limit and won't go through reds.
| Flatcircle wrote:
| reminder that if waymo type cars replaced human driven cars and
| cut the deaths to zero. (perhaps a big if)
|
| Then it'd be like finding a cure for cancer, for people aged 0 -
| 40, who die as much in auto accidents as they do of cancer
| bluGill wrote:
| Even if they don't cut deaths to zero, they can still make a
| big difference. Humans are terrible drivers.
| davidczech wrote:
| For what it's worth, I have exclusively used Waymo in SF ever
| since my last Uber driver was smoking weed while driving. I just
| don't want to deal with the human variable anymore.
| robmsmt wrote:
| Waymo is part of my investment thesis as to why Google is
| undervalued
| condiment wrote:
| So, what's it gonna take for Waymo to start selling retrofit kits
| for existing cars?
|
| If a $10,000 investment reduces the chances of a serious accident
| by 90%, the corresponding reduction in insurance rates might have
| a payoff within a few years. Especially if adoption starts to
| push rates up for customers who don't automate. I can't take a
| taxi everywhere, but I'd sure like it if my car drove me
| everywhere and did a better job than me at it too.
| bluGill wrote:
| They need to work everywhere. How do they do in snow/ice
| (humans do really bad here - but where I live it happens often
| enough that we often cannot stay home or we would spend weeks
| in the house)
|
| Don't get my wrong, I'm hoping it is soon. However they have a
| lot of work left.
| porphyra wrote:
| It honestly feels like they spend years validating each new
| platform, e.g. the Zeekr was announced years ago and only
| recently are they very rarely seen on the streets but only as
| Waymo Engineering mules. Likewise the transition from the
| Chrysler Pacifica to the I-Pace took a while. Hopefully they
| figure something out to scale up to more platforms soon. They
| announced a partnership with Hyundai a few years ago, also with
| nothing to show for it.
|
| Of course, safety first, so they should take their time and not
| rush things...
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| They did just sign a deal with Toyota[1]. Probably no
| retorfitting, but looks like they at least intend to license
| the tech.
|
| [1]https://waymo.com/blog/2025/04/waymo-and-toyota-outline-
| stra...
| ordinaryradical wrote:
| Literally riding in a Waymo right now in Los Angeles.
|
| IMO they already won. The amount of stupid things you see people
| do here while driving is astonishing, so many people are not
| paying attention and looking at their phones.
|
| I used an Uber on the way here and the car was dirtier while the
| service was identical (silent ride, got me where I needed to go.)
|
| I've also been stuck in a Waymo that couldn't figure out its way
| around parked buses, so they have edge cases to improve. But man
| does it feel like I'm living in the future...
| jessriedel wrote:
| > I used an Uber on the way here and the car was dirtier
|
| To be fair, the fact that Waymos are fancy clean Jaguars is
| kind of ancillary to the main technology. The tech is currently
| expensive, so they are targeting the luxury market, which you
| can also get on Uber if you select a black car or whatever. The
| people willing to pay for that are less likely to make messes,
| and the drivers put more effort into frequent cleanings.
|
| Once the tech becomes cheap, expect the car quality and
| cleanliness to go down. Robocars do have some intrinsic
| advantages in that it's easier to set up a standard daily
| cleaning process, but they will still accumulate more garbage
| and stains when they are used by a broader cross section of the
| population and only cleaned during charging to reduce costs.
| (Of course, cheaper and more widely accessible tech is good for
| everyone; if you want a immaculate leather seats cleaned three
| times a day, you'll generally be able to pay for it.)
| kajecounterhack wrote:
| I don't think the Jaguars are particularly spacious or nice.
| They just got a good deal on the platform. If anything, given
| the commodity nature of vehicles I'd expect car quality to
| improve.
|
| Cleanliness doesn't seem that related to how expensive the
| tech is either - if anything it would only go down if it
| ceased to affect willingness to pay. As it stands, clean cars
| are important to their customers. If usage increases,
| cleaning can ostensibly increase too, no?
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| What is 1000% better about Waymo than rideshares is the
| _liveried fleet vehicles_.
|
| Regular taxis around here are also liveried fleet vehicles.
| Especially the very large providers: if I summon a taxi cab,
| I know for sure its make and model, and its paint job will
| clearly indicate it's on-duty as a taxi cab. You don't
| understand how incredibly important this is sometimes.
|
| For the simple yet panic-inducing task of strapping on my
| seat belt: I can do it in seconds with a liveried vehicle,
| because _I know exactly what to expect_. In a rideshare like
| an Uber, every time a car arrives, it is a new make, new
| model (I swear to god what the fuck is a "Polestar"???) and
| the owner might have wrapped on some crazy aftermarket seat
| covers, and finding the seat belt and its mating latch is a
| huge drama. I've taken to leaving the passenger seat open,
| until I can get the belt safely latched, because otherwise
| the driver will promptly take off, and panic will increase 3x
| as the vehicle is moving and I can't find the seat belt.
|
| Other than that, the liveried vehicles are easier to
| maintain; they're easier to keep clean; they're much better
| for brand recognition. Hallelujah for Waymo!
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| YMMV but for me Waymo is usually significantly cheaper than
| Uber Black and more comparable to UberX (within a few bucks
| before taking tip into consideration)
| porphyra wrote:
| I considered getting a Waymo once in LA but I found that since
| it doesn't go on highways, it is incredibly slow, and cost $60
| to spend the same 1 hour as riding the E line for my trip. I
| ended up riding the E line.
| unquietwiki wrote:
| Just last week, I was able to walk to the E-line in daylight;
| E-line to downtown; E-line back; and take Waymo at night
| home. It can be useful for a "last mile" scenario.
| topherPedersen wrote:
| I saw a Waymo stop at a crosswalk last night in the dark where
| there was a person standing there waiting to cross that I don't
| think I would have seen. The person was not standing out in the
| road, they were standing there patiently waiting to make sure the
| car actually stopped since it was dark. I was really impressed! I
| don't think I'm a reckless or impatient driver, but I think the
| Waymo's are probably better at driving than I am. I know I prefer
| the Waymos to the human drivers I typically see on the road.
| paulnpace wrote:
| While driving a car, it is possible to do something, even on
| accident, that can land a person in jail. These crimes do not
| have the option of paying a fine in lieu of prison time.
|
| A "self-driving" car can cause the same accident but gain
| advantages over a human driver that the person ultimately
| responsible is no longer held to the same set of laws.
|
| This seems to undermine foundations of law, placing the owners of
| those assets into a different legal category from the rest of us.
| porphyra wrote:
| Currently, penalties for, say, killing someone while driving
| are already incredibly light.
|
| * Driver whose vehicle struck and killed girl gets $1,200 fine"
| [1]
|
| * Driver who allegedly struck and killed Staten Island baby
| charged with $750 fine and 15 days in jail [2]
|
| * Driver who hit Jets assistant coach Greg Knapp won't be
| charged following his death [3]
|
| [1] https://vancouversun.com/news/driver-whose-vehicle-struck-
| an...
|
| [2] https://nypost.com/2022/05/27/shannon-cocozza-who-
| allegedly-...
|
| [3] https://people.com/sports/driver-who-hit-jets-assistant-
| coac...
| paulnpace wrote:
| These are examples application of law, such as decisions from
| prosecutors or a judicial system.
| vzaliva wrote:
| One way to inteprent their data is that Waymo is LESS efficient
| protecting cyclists and motorcyclists compared to pedestriants.
| As a motorcycle rider I hope they will work to fix that gap.
| floxy wrote:
| What seems more likely, that Waymo is prioritizing pedestrian
| safety over cyclist safety? Or cyclists are much more likely to
| engage in risky behavior?
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Maybe it's that cyclists are more likely to be trying to use
| the road and waymo is prioritising driving on the roads
| rather than the sidewalk?
| boulos wrote:
| For those that are interested, our Safety Research team also
| makes the underlying data available for download:
|
| https://waymo.com/safety/impact/#downloads
|
| (I don't work on that team, but I've noticed a few comments that
| would be better served with their own analysis on top of the
| available data)
| m0llusk wrote:
| It's a great start, but also shows how driving is not a
| navigation challenge as much as it is a socialization challenge.
| If I drove right up to some responders dealing with an emergency
| and repeatedly refused to stop then I could be in big legal
| trouble and could end up with fines and possibly an arrest. This
| has not happened with Waymo vehicles because there is legal
| ambiguity about who is responsible in such cases. Realistic
| analysis shows these vehicles have a driving record similar to
| that of overconfident teens which is worrisome.
| oceansky wrote:
| This article has a huge conflict of interest. I would like more
| independent data.
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