[HN Gopher] Waymo Safety Impact
___________________________________________________________________
Waymo Safety Impact
Author : xnx
Score : 149 points
Date : 2026-03-19 20:13 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (waymo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (waymo.com)
| mkw5053 wrote:
| Living in SF (and dad of a toddler), this seems like a no-
| brainer. I can't wait for fewer human drivers.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I've said before that Waymo is already vastly, incredibly safer
| than some of my older relatives who refuse to give up their
| keys. Ever been around The Villages in Florida and seen a man
| leaning forward behind the wheel to squint at what they're
| driving toward, with their wife shouting at them to turn left!,
| turn left!? That's just kind of tolerated in some places where
| the cops don't want to make waves with the wealthy older
| community.
|
| A self-driving car never gets tired and sleepy after driving
| for many hours straight. A highway-bound Waymo would be safer
| than a few instances of distant past me who stayed on the road
| longer than I was safe to. They also never get drunk, and are
| safer than approximately 100% of impaired drivers.
|
| I genuinely think we'll all be safer when lots of people
| collectively realize that someone other than themselves should
| be driving.
| jedberg wrote:
| Anecdotally, both from riding in them and walking/driving next
| to/around them, this feels obvious. They never get distracted.
| Sure, they sometimes make mistakes, but the mistakes are never "I
| didn't see that". They see better than humans in all cases (where
| they operate). They react faster than humans.
|
| The one case where they hit a child, it was because the child
| jumped in front of the car. And they showed that they hit the
| child at a lower speed than a human would have because of the
| reaction time.
|
| I would rather be in an area where only Waymo's are allowed than
| an area where they are banned.
| bloppe wrote:
| Ya and they're the only ones I can count on being polite during
| rush hour
| Retric wrote:
| Waymo as a system has crossed the threshold where I trust them
| more than average driver, but all this hardware is relatively
| new, well maintained, and their software is closely tied to it.
|
| I'm way less confident of self driving in the hands of the
| general public when differed maintenance often results in
| people and even companies driving with squealing breaks and
| balding tires etc.
| mtklein wrote:
| I am also not looking forward to the system transitioning
| from "big experiment, burn money to make it good" to
| "established business unit, tweak it to death for
| incrementally more money / personal promotion." We're still
| in the honeymoon period and I very much expect to hate Waymo
| in 10 or 15 years when they reach a steady state.
| gfody wrote:
| enshitification should be a new certainty along with death
| and taxes
| kirubakaran wrote:
| The self-driving software could detect that the unmaintained
| car isn't responding correctly to the controls and refuse to
| drive.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Waymo's software has crossed multiple generations of sensors
| and vehicles over almost two decades. It does not seem to be
| tightly coupled to a particular device.
| Retric wrote:
| Not tightly coupled in obvious ways, but as I understand it
| they aren't putting it on pickup trucks, convertibles, or
| anything toeing a boat etc. Their vehicles don't have
| aftermarket suspension systems dramatically changing
| handling characteristics, or turned one into a stretched
| limo etc.
|
| Which means the software can safely assume the vehicle will
| behave within a relatively narrow operating range.
| jeffbee wrote:
| The only thing an autonomous system should do with janky
| modified cars is drive them very slowly to the state
| police barracks for destruction.
| Retric wrote:
| Perhaps, but you can do a lot to a car while it remains
| street legal.
| fellowniusmonk wrote:
| I ride my bike and rollerblade around Austin.
|
| If only Waymo's were on the road I wouldn't worry about bike
| path dividers at all.
|
| I sometimes pace them to act as a moving shield.
|
| Nothing else comes close, not even eye contact and being waved
| on by a human. The other autonomous cars that have been
| introduced are at least just as scary to be around as people.
| ajp-stl wrote:
| sounds like you enjoy the predicability of Waymo vehicles.
| humans are unpredictable.
| jjmarr wrote:
| Waymo saved my life in LA.
|
| When I visited LA, I rode in a Waymo going the speed limit in
| the right lane on a very busy street. The Waymo approached an
| intersection where it had the right of way, when suddenly a car
| ignored its stop sign and drove into the road.
|
| In less than a second, the Waymo moved into the left lane and
| kept going. I didn't even realize what was happening until
| after it was over.
|
| Most human drivers would've t-boned the car at 50+ km/h. Maybe
| they would've braked and reduced the impact, which would be the
| right move. A human swerving probably would've overshot into
| oncoming traffic. Only a robot could've safely swerved into
| another lane and avoid the crash entirely.
|
| Unfortunately, the Waymo only supported Spotify and did not
| work with my YouTube Music subscription, so I was listening to
| an advertisement at the time of my near-death experience. 4.5
| stars overall.
| Taek wrote:
| > Unfortunately, the Waymo only supported Spotify and did not
| work with my YouTube Music subscription, so I was listening
| to an advertisement at the time of my near-death experience.
| 4.5 stars overall.
|
| This detail sent me, it's crazy that we can pay $25 to have a
| life saving robot take us across the city yet Spotify is
| going to blast ads at us the whole time for the sake of
| making an extra $0.18 (yes that's the actual number) per hour
| of listening time.
| himata4113 wrote:
| That's around 44.64 (0.18 _8_ 31) per month, no wonder ads
| are preferrable to companies over subscriptions! That's
| actually a lot for people that listen to music all day
| every day at work.
| whatever1 wrote:
| Imagine your last thing in your mind being an ad about
| mongoDB.
| 0x3f wrote:
| I actually find those amusing because they just make me
| remember the 'web scale' meme.
| IshKebab wrote:
| It's kind of wild how you have so many ads targeted at
| devs in SF.
| georgemcbay wrote:
| > I was listening to an advertisement at the time of my near-
| death experience.
|
| You'll probably never forget that advertisement, which is an
| exciting business opportunity for Waymo.
|
| They could partner with Spotify and other media content
| partners so that the Waymo can generate an adrenaline-rush
| near crash experience when a premium advertiser's ad is
| playing. /s (hopefully)
| Analemma_ wrote:
| This is one of those comments that made me laugh nervously.
| It's straight out of Ubik or another PKD novel, which
| probably means it's less than 5 years away from being real.
| AgentME wrote:
| Waymos have since added support for YouTube Music thankfully.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| How ironic that an Alphabet company, Waymo, only works with a
| competitor streaming music service, Spotify, and not their
| own, YouTube Music. I guess that shows how separate they are.
| whyenot wrote:
| There is also a different kind of increased safety. There is no
| driver. No weird conversations about slaughtering goats, no
| sexual advances. No worrying that your driver is going to
| assault you or attempt to kidnap you. I know, it's all very far
| fetched, and Uber/Lyft drivers are almost always nice,
| courteous and professional, but I have experienced a few times
| when that hasn't been the case. With Waymo, it's not even an
| issue.
| 0x3f wrote:
| There are second order effects though. Once Waymo kills the
| Uber driver/taxi jobs, what are the chances your Waymo is
| attacked by a roving band of jobless drivers? It's surely
| nonzero.
| dbt00 wrote:
| This is like keeping your kids inside in case something bad
| happens to them.
|
| If your kids never leave the house, something bad definitely
| happens to them, they stay kids.
| 0x3f wrote:
| Is there some benefit to talking to weird Uber drivers I've
| yet to discover that's comparable with 'going outside at
| all'?
| krashidov wrote:
| Blaming the kid here is absurd. The kid lives in a system where
| pedestrians are second class citizens in a world dictated by
| the auto-petro industrial complex. An industry that has co-
| opted unelected traffic "engineer" in the US and completely
| changed the way we live for the last 70 years and have made
| Americans fatter and less connected.
|
| If the child lived in a neighborhood where cars went slower (it
| was a 25mph zone) he wouldn't have gotten hit in the first
| place. Praising Waymo here is like praising a priest for not
| molesting a child. Yes it's good that the waymo slowed down
| more than the average car, but really the whole system should
| be completely rethought. Instead, we're pouring billions into
| single occupancy vehicles, when we should've been pouring
| billions into high speed rail, subways, etc.
|
| I'm hopeful that waymos converge on a more efficient design and
| improve cities in general. As it stands, they are a way for the
| rich to commute without having to exchange pleasantries with
| the underclass.
| spankalee wrote:
| Good thing no one blamed the kid.
| krashidov wrote:
| I was probably a bit too harsh on the OP. The OP was
| probably not blaming the kid. But if Waymo isn't being sued
| and the city isn't being sued, then society has
| collectively placed blame on the kid and their parents.
| 0x3f wrote:
| Blame isn't really zero sum is it. Like you can be
| criticized for leaving your laptop unatended and your
| doors unlocked, but it doesn't really reduce blame for
| the thief.
| fainpul wrote:
| > They see better than humans in all cases (where they
| operate). They react faster than humans.
|
| You're absolutely right!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp0W5v8GOPc&t=520s
| bogardon wrote:
| I'd love to cycle more outdoors, but I'm always wary of the
| risks. How cool would it be if you could hire a waymo as a "team
| car" and have it follow you around? It could also carry extra
| equipment...and act as a ride home in case of emergencies.
| sonofhans wrote:
| I get your idea, but it does rather sound like asking a 4,000lb
| death robot to follow you around closely and hope that it
| doesn't screw up ...
| amarant wrote:
| To turn the colourful phrasing against you, I too would like
| a death robot to protect me from all the murder monkeys
| having a death race around me if I was out biking on the
| road/death race track.
| vel0city wrote:
| Wouldn't the better solution be to prevent those murder
| monkeys from doing the death races around where people
| would want to cycle? Some kind of grade-separated trail?
| More regulations on those murder monkey death races?
|
| Crazy thought, I know.
| amarant wrote:
| The grade separated trail sounds great in theory, but in
| practice it's surprisingly ineffective for some unknown
| reason. In Sweden we have a ton of those and for some
| reason bikers insist on participating in the death race
| with the other murder monkeys. Which is annoying because
| it can really slow the race down! But I guess once they
| have a good alternative, at least their death race
| participation is voluntary, and so I guess they're fair
| game like the rest of us
| wffurr wrote:
| If you ride conservatively (use lights at night, use good
| judgement at intersections) and stay away from buses and
| trucks, the exercise vastly outweighs any risk.
| loeg wrote:
| Personally I avoid riding at night entirely, and use at least
| a tail light during the day.
| Detrytus wrote:
| Someone once said that this is because Waymos are novelty, and
| they still behave a bit weird, like being slow and undecisive.
| Which leads to humans being super-careful around them. So the
| Waymo safety record is actually not their own achievement.
|
| I guess we'll have to wait to one of the two things to happen to
| really assess Waymo's performance:
|
| 1. They need to lose their markings and easily distinguishable
| features (like a big lidar on top), so they don't get any special
| treatment from other drivers.
|
| 2. They need to be majority of vehicles on the road.
| bt1a wrote:
| I'm only a little weirded out when they're right next to me
| stopped at a light and that thang is spinnin and making note of
| me
| Analemma_ wrote:
| That info is pretty outdated: they were slow and indecisive in
| 2024, but now they behave pretty much like any top-decile human
| driver. I don't think they get special treatment from other
| drivers either, I can't read anyone else's mind but I treat
| them like just another car and it seems like everyone else does
| as well.
| linkjuice4all wrote:
| Ugh - either the commons is an unregulated 3D space or we
| actually tag and separate moving bodies regulated by
| size/weight, purpose, owner, occupant type, etc. I don't
| necessarily hate commercial vehicles utilizing the various
| rights-of-way but clearly there is a difference in momentum,
| agency, and general "value" between some human wandering around
| and a heavy robot.
| doubled112 wrote:
| How slow and indecisive?
|
| The other day a human driver in front of me was doing 30 km/h
| under the speed limit down the middle of two lanes.
|
| On that same drive, another driver doing around 15 under
| clipped a roundabout on the way in and on the way out. Guess
| they couldn't decide to turn the wheel fast enough.
|
| I refuse to believe everybody is hammered all of the time, but
| I'm starting to wonder.
|
| It is less than 10km round trip, in the 'burbs. Driving with
| humans scares me anymore. Bring on the robots.
| djsavvy wrote:
| That would make sense a while ago, but definitely not in SF for
| locals who have lived here a while. For me as a
| pedestrian/bicyclist/motorcyclist I actually feel safer around
| them than any other car.
| probabletrain wrote:
| recently (past couple of months) they've been much more
| aggressive in the ways that make a good driver a good driver -
| confident and assertive when they should be. for me this has
| anecdotally been a massive improvement
| swasheck wrote:
| one of the things that i noticed in a recent trip to austin is
| that the waymo vehicles were far more assertive and quick than
| the human drivers so maybe that has been addressed.
| sbuttgereit wrote:
| "Someone once said ..."
|
| Someone also once said that the Azores are the remains of
| Atlantis. I simply didn't put any credence in it.
|
| While behavioral changes around a self-driving car are
| plausible; they're common enough now that, at least where I
| live in San Francisco, regular human drivers should be pretty
| well acclimated to them.
| zardo wrote:
| Is this an independent study?
| bt1a wrote:
| I've been observing their behavior in Atlanta for about the past
| year. Our roads here are fairly curvy, hilly, and lacking of
| expected markings, yet I haven't seen a driverless Waymo vehicle
| make a single odd move. One thing that brought a smile to my face
| was when I came to a 4-way stop at the same time as a Waymo
| vehicle at night & I flash my brights to tell the other vehicle
| to go ahead (southern hospitality) and I see the Waymo
| immediately begin its course through the intersection. I was so
| jolted that I began to tail it in order to pull up next to it to
| see if there was a human behind the wheel. Watching it drive down
| this slowly descending hilly road with intermittent speed humps
| and cars parked alongside the main right lane gave me a close up
| view of its slightly curving trajectory and braking behavior with
| regard to the humps. My thought on human or not was inconclusive
| until we reached a red light, and as I shot my eyes over and saw
| an empty driver seat, I smiled widely knowing that the software
| responds to brights flashed at 4-way stops (please don't tell me
| it doesn't and it just saw me indecisively not initiate at the
| stop). Thanks for reading
| kfarr wrote:
| It definitely does not respond to flashing headlights in that
| manner. You're observing its default behavior when at a 4 way
| stop with other vehicles not moving.
| djsavvy wrote:
| How are you saying that so confidently? Waymos respond to
| traffic cops directing traffic manually
| jmalicki wrote:
| Unlike the traffic cops directing traffic that would likely
| require special programming, "proceed if the other car
| flashes its lights at you" is completely the kind of thing
| that could just accidentally fall out of a neural network
| learning to imitate humans.
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| Hopefully if they ever go to Sri Lanka they get localised
| tuning because I was surprised to find out flashing your
| lights over there doesn't mean "go ahead", it means "if
| you don't get out of my way I will ram you"
| j0e1 wrote:
| This is true for India too though traffic there isn't
| known for its rules.
| 0x3f wrote:
| I hate the countries that do this because it doesn't even
| make sense as a signal. We already have a horn. They are
| wasting a channel!
| gowld wrote:
| That's not how Waymo works, though. Waymo doesn't imitate
| humans. Waymo is trained to obey traffic laws and avoid
| collisions.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Waymo immitates humans insofar as its neural net trained
| on avoiding collisions after millions of miles of video
| footage and LIDAR data on roads shared with humans causes
| it to immitate humans.
|
| It's likely manually programmed not to (incorrectly) turn
| the wheel to the left while stopped and waiting for an
| opportunity to turn. If you get rear-ended, you'll end up
| in the lane of oncoming traffic. It's certainly
| programmed to use its turn signals to indicate when it is
| going to turn. But after driving around thousands of cars
| without turn signals on but with their wheels pointed
| left, it "knows" to predict that they're about to turn,
| and might immitate humans by anticipating that action and
| moving to pass the stopped car on the right.
| jmalicki wrote:
| Waymo has published a ton about the imitation learning
| they've been using since 2018. They're not imitating
| random cars but their drivers who are paid to drive
| around and follow traffic laws.
|
| It's not enough so they use heavy reinforcement learning
| etc. but it's still a huge foundation to build on.
| HaZeust wrote:
| A quaint, positive anecdotal comment?? On MY internet?!?!
| t1234s wrote:
| why does HN still use links to twitter.com and not x.com?
| wffurr wrote:
| Presumably that was the submitter's choice.
| rhet0rica wrote:
| Optimism. Someday the blue bird will be free.
| oblio wrote:
| Imagine creating a brand that became renowned world wide and
| even created its own verb.
|
| And then throwing all that away for the genius brand name
| of... "x". Brought to you from the same 50 year old that
| decided that having car models that spell S3XY is cool.
| sonofhans wrote:
| "Safer" == "Safer than all other human drivers in the same city."
| By their own admission, this is not a straightforward comparison.
| If they could do the math for the same routes, times of day, and
| conditions ... maybe I'd believe it. Otherwise, this data is
| trivial to cherrypick, and they have every reason to present it
| as well as possible.
|
| I believe Waymos are pretty safe, and that's a great thing.
| "Safer than humans (for selected rides inside this area)" is
| still very good, but it's not at all "Safer than humans
| (period)."
| jstummbillig wrote:
| > By their own admission, this is not a straightforward
| comparison.
|
| If they _wanted_ to cherry pick, would they not omit that
| admission?
|
| In any case, it seems plausible to me that the routes that
| Waymo drives are above average in human incidents, given that
| Waymo is probably overrepresented in high stress/traffic, inner
| city scenarios.
| lich_king wrote:
| The comparison gets picked up as the headline; the admission
| does not. This is exploited quite often, e.g. in science
| reporting. I'm not saying this is what Waymo did - they don't
| seem to be bad actors - but absolutely, the pattern does
| occur.
| lemoncucumber wrote:
| I've heard that Waymo relies on having very accurate map data
| for the areas where they operate, so perhaps they could perform
| worse than human drivers in areas where they don't have good
| map data.
|
| But I also trust that the company wouldn't deploy them in those
| areas until the quality data they need is available. So perhaps
| "safer in the environments where they are actually deployed"
| would be more accurate, but that's also the only thing that
| matters.
|
| Speculating about what would happen if they were used in ways
| they are neither intended to be used nor are actually used
| feels a little silly. Most machines can be unsafe if you use
| them in ways they're not intended to be used.
| snewman wrote:
| In essentially all cases where a Waymo and a human-driven car
| have collided, the human driver has clearly been at fault. This
| seems definitive and not susceptible to cherry picking.
| tjoff wrote:
| That could just be, and seems to be in some cases at least,
| because Waymo doesn't behave like a human would, and people
| gets tripped up.
|
| I don't doubt Waymos are very safe, but I always irk at these
| comparisons. Majority of human accidents are due to gross
| negligence and/or driving under some influence or serious
| fatigue. A system incapable of alcohol etc. is better than
| that? Well that is a substantially lower bar than you can
| possibly imagine. Add to that that all systems have
| constraints on how and where they are able to go. Combined
| even Tesla can be made to look good.
|
| Depending on the context and question it might still be the
| question to pose. But people often make the leap to assume
| that a typical Waymo is x better than a typical human driver
| which is an entirely different question entirely.
|
| Waymo is for sure one of the (if not the only) good players
| out there though, gives me some hope.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _could just be, and seems to be in some cases at least,
| because Waymo doesn 't behave like a human would, and
| people gets tripped up_
|
| Driving conventions vary wildly across states and even
| within them. And foreign drivers are a thing. A human who
| gets tripped up by a Waymo acting unusually will also get
| confused by someone getting used to no turns on right in
| Manhattan, driving on the right side of the road if coming
| in from the Commonwealth or adapting from California's
| protected left turners can turn into any lane, not just the
| leftmost. They'll also get confused by children and pets,
| who aren't bound by social custom, and deer, who aren't
| bound by physics.
| hiddencost wrote:
| https://waymo.com/safety/impact/#methodology
|
| Worth reviewing the methodology, rather than making stuff up.
| probabletrain wrote:
| If you were choosing between getting into a Waymo or a car
| driven by a human driver (where Waymo operates, for a route
| that Waymo would do), the data shows that the Waymo is safer.
| sonofhans wrote:
| No, it does not. For one thing, we don't have access to all
| the data, just what's being told us. For another, it at best
| shows that Waymo is safer than average. Safer than an
| attentive London Cabby? I bet not.
| probabletrain wrote:
| I know that anecdotal experience is definitionally just
| that, anecdotal. But I've had a handful of attentive London
| cabby experiences (and enough in-Waymo experiences) that
| give me conviction that Waymos are far safer than them.
| They're out there driving all day every day, it's obvious
| to me that a Waymo driver is going to be safer than even a
| professional.
|
| One cabby pulled out of a t junction to end up alongside me
| on a motorbike - a Waymo would never do that.
| jonas21 wrote:
| > _For one thing, we don't have access to all the data_
|
| In the US, we _do_ have access to all the data [1]. They
| 're required to report every incident with an injury or any
| amount of property damage, and it's all available for
| download as CSV.
|
| > _For another, it at best shows that Waymo is safer than
| average._
|
| No, it shows that Waymo is 6 to 12x safer than average.
|
| [1] https://www.nhtsa.gov/laws-regulations/standing-
| general-orde...
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Perhaps the comparison should only be to other taxis. Since I
| cannot buy a Waymo, it is not really relevant whether it is
| better than an _average_ driver (including all the drunk ones,
| and the speed racers, etc).
| skissane wrote:
| There are other safety differences with human-driven
| vehicles... interpersonal violence does happen with taxis
| (e.g. drivers sexually harassing/assaulting passengers,
| passengers robbing drivers) - by definition those things
| cannot happen with a Waymo
| skippyboxedhero wrote:
| accidents are not equally distributed across humans. more
| serious accidents will be caused by people who are habitually
| doing things that are unsafe but, for various reasons, most
| places lack effective ways to stop these people driving so they
| keep causing accidents.
|
| the metric is not some nebulous aspect of skill but the bottom
| decile of human drivers causing accidents. it is not difficult
| to believe that an AI can drive better than this group, it is
| not a high bar, below the 10th percentile are people who should
| not be driving but cause most of the accidents.
| 0x59 wrote:
| I appreciate the skepticism. While I suspect motor vehicles
| that cannot be distracted would be safer than motor vehicles
| that can be, it shouldn't be claimed without real evidence.
|
| If I were Google, I'd partner with some insurance carriers to
| compare the number of claim events normalized to the number of
| drivers on the road (approximated with Android data) in a city
| (same time of year, etc) before and after introducing Waymo. If
| claims per driver decreases, then I would be more inclined to
| support the claim that they're actually safer and that they
| don't just "seem safer"
| janalsncm wrote:
| A year or two ago, would have agreed with you. I used to think
| they were cherry picking as well.
|
| But Waymos have driven so many miles by this point, if they are
| hiding some data that would tip the scales back towards human
| drivers I have yet to see it. If there is a way to slice the
| data that makes Waymo's look less safe I would welcome the
| correction.
|
| If Waymo truly has 80-90% fewer crashes in the conditions they
| drove in, then it still has policy implications for places like
| Phoenix that do have good conditions.
| butlike wrote:
| More boring, too. Can't meet cool people if it's yet again just
| me left to throw a proverbial tennis ball against the proverbial
| wall.
| stebalien wrote:
| I live in LA and Waymos are the only cars I don't have to play
| chicken with when crossing the street. Even the drivers that see
| you will just give you a "sorry, I'm in a rush" wave as they
| nearly run you over.
| leovander wrote:
| Make sure to never be in a hurry to get anywhere because you
| might then get stuck behind a fleet of them going exactly the
| speed limit, grid locking you in.
| flipbrad wrote:
| Isn't the correct answer to this, lobbying for higher speed
| limits? Rather than chastizing obedience to current rules.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| Yes, agreed. Though speed limits higher than 75 are not
| something I will ever support.*
|
| * Unless we're talking about removing a speed limit
| altogether and regulating unsafe driving using other
| criteria.
| jjav wrote:
| What happens at 76mph?
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| Same thing that happens at 77mph :)
|
| I think 75 is memorable and roughly in the region where
| the tradeoff between increased kinetic energy and
| decreased time to arrival per additional unit of velocity
| becomes untenable.
| UltraSane wrote:
| Being forced to drive the speed limit isn't that big of a
| deal
| Toutouxc wrote:
| Is this something that I'm too European to understand? How do
| you get "stuck" behind someone doing the speed limit?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _How do you get "stuck" behind someone doing the speed
| limit?_
|
| "Only 46.5 percent of U.S. drivers consider going more than
| 15 miles per hour over the speed limit on the freeway to be
| "extremely" or "very" dangerous -- with 40.6 percent openly
| admitting to doing it at least "a few times" in the last 30
| days" [1].
|
| [1] https://usa.streetsblog.org/2023/11/30/why-so-many-u-s-
| drive...
| 1shooner wrote:
| On most US highways (i.e. multi-lane limited access roads),
| it's customary to leave a path in the left 'passing lane'
| for any traffic that wants/needs to go faster than you. If
| cars match speeds across lanes, it impedes faster traffic.
|
| The speed limit itself is a separate convention and
| regulation. In some places you can be cited for obstructing
| traffic by going the speed limit in the passing lane if you
| are matching the speed of cars to your right, effectively
| blocking the road.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Because American drivers have normalized always driving 10
| mph (16 km/h) over the speed limit.
|
| Cops won't pull you over or write tickets if you're not at
| least 15 mph over, we basically don't have speed cameras,
| everyone's trying to win the rat race and dehumanizing
| other cars around them, and it's not considered morally
| wrong (by most) to break that specific part of the law.
|
| So a single vehicle obeying the law will quickly get a long
| line of tailgaters and tailgaters of tailgaters trying to
| "push" the vehicle to go faster.
|
| They can suck it, I'm not late or in a hurry, and my
| ancient truck, steel bumper, and class 5 receiver hitch
| will not be badly harmed by your plastic grille. I get
| better gas mileage and have a longer stopping distance when
| I drive the limit, and I don't care if others are honking
| or riding my ass because they think I should drive faster.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| non-X source: https://waymo.com/blog/shorts/waymo-safety-impact-
| update-170...
| xnx wrote:
| Ah. That's the link I was looking for.
| kevwil wrote:
| https://people.com/waymo-exec-reveals-company-uses-operators...
| might be relevant content as well
| scj wrote:
| "For example, the current cities Waymo operates in do not have
| appreciable snow fall, and as a result neither the Waymo nor the
| human benchmark data include this type of inclement weather."
|
| I'm happy to see this acknowledged, and hope it's a sign that
| they appreciate the difficulties of winter driving.
| xnx wrote:
| They're definitely aware and working on it:
| https://x.com/dmitri_dolgov/status/2028863520037867820
| ellieh wrote:
| as a motorcyclist I often feel more comfortable riding near
| waymos
|
| at this point I trust that they have seen me, know that I'm
| there, and won't behave unpredictably
| cjonas wrote:
| Relevant: https://youtu.be/cJER6WtOkjk?si=pfUMpqgCL8IHewKy&t=28
| xnx wrote:
| This page is old, but they just refreshed the data shows Waymo is
| 13x safer than human drivers (in the cities it operates in).
| pokot0 wrote:
| My question is: is safer than average human good enough?
|
| When I drive I have the option to choose to be safe or not. When
| a computer drives I lose that option. So for 49% of the people,
| safer than the average human is less safe than before.
|
| I think we need to reach "Safer than the safest 10% of humans".
|
| Also these reports should be done by a government agency.
| cgeier wrote:
| Yes, it's good enough. Because you cannot control who else is
| on the street around you. Having cars around you that are
| driving safer than the average is better than them driving
| average.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Even the most visible academic skeptic of Waymo (Phil Koopman)
| had to throw in the towel and admit that they've cleared every
| conceivable statistical hurdle to conclusively demonstrating that
| they are better than humans on injuries and airbag deployments.
| They have moved the goalposts to aesthetic arguments, for
| example: if it's so safe why does it sometimes do weird stuff?
| But to principled systems thinkers they have already shown what
| needed to be shown. It's safer.
| altruios wrote:
| Car centric design is ruining this country.
|
| The great deal: let's redesign our cities to be car free.
| Consider the economic boom that amount of renovation would
| produce. Consider the increased economic activity from happier
| and more productive people. Consider the increased space for
| nature, parks, real estate, development.
|
| Cars are the worst thing to have been invented. Optimizing the
| personal automobile leads to optimizing for a horrible living
| experience in the city. Let us reconsider all of this. This is
| bad. We can do better. We must.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _let 's redesign our cities to be car free_
|
| Or, let's not spend trillions of dollars on a behavioural
| experiment and get pedestrian safety with now-proven kit.
| weusedto wrote:
| Anecdote from 1000s of miles biking: I bike a lot in the Bay, for
| fun, exercise, commute, all of the above (I'm a friendly one, I
| promise!) and the comfort I feel when I see a Waymo alongside me
| or at a stop sign is immediately apparent. I have been hit 5-10x
| riding in NYC and SF (nothing serious, gratefully, mostly just
| people turning right not knowing/caring I was there), and the
| Waymo's awareness that I exist is immediately obvious and so
| different from a large percentage of human drivers. I hope the
| meaningful improvement in safety continues to convince people
| this should be a part of the future.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| 13X is way more impressive than it seems at first glance.
|
| Let's take a simplistic model of accidents: that the average
| driver is at fault in an accident 50% of the time. So a perfect
| driver would only halve the number of accidents -- they only
| eliminate the accidents where they would otherwise have been at
| fault.
|
| But Waymo's numbers are better than the "perfect" driver above.
| How is that possible? Because in most accidents the blame is not
| split 0%/100%. You can avoid a lot of accidents with defensive
| and safe driving.
| small_model wrote:
| Hmm this happen a week or two ago, doesn't sound too safe to me.
|
| "Waymo car blocked ambulance trying to get to scene of Austin
| mass shooting"
|
| https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/waym...
| philip1209 wrote:
| > doesn't sound too safe to me.
|
| Compared to what?
| small_model wrote:
| Humans or more intelligent full self driving systems.
| jaesonaras wrote:
| I just watched a short that said some (all) Waymo drivers are not
| autonomous, but remote controlled by humans in the Phillipines.
|
| I'm sure it's a combination of both since the latency would mean
| immediate reactions are impossible, but the presenter raised an
| interesting point, and that was that the remote drivers are not
| licensed to drive in the states that Waymo operated in, which
| would make it illegal.
| keeganpoppen wrote:
| except for the overwhelming evidence from video we already have
| that waymos are reacting than a human in the driver's seat
| would, much less someone 200ms away.
| koinedad wrote:
| Pretty cool to see. But the UI of the visual animations has some
| weird re-re-rerender bug, at least on mobile safari.
| Lammy wrote:
| Now do Surveillance Impact:
| https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2024/10/27/waymos-5-6...
|
| "Waymo is using around four NVIDIA H100 GPUSs at a unit price of
| 10,000 dollars per vehicle to cover the necessary computing
| requirements. The number of sensors - five lidars, 29 cameras, 4
| radars"
| whatever1 wrote:
| The bar is low. I don't want comparison with an alcoholic with
| multiple DUIs who still drives and crashes.
|
| The benchmark should be the top decile of drivers.
| motbus3 wrote:
| If someone drives badly they might go to jail if they hurt or
| kill someone. If a machine does it who pays? I want to see waymo
| and other CEO for decades for each mistake.
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(page generated 2026-03-19 23:00 UTC)