Can't wait for the moment when the majority of cars on the road will be self-driving. I assume that safety will only increase as the proportion rises. The sheer amount of victims from driving is insane - we'll look back on it as we now look to infectious diseases of the past.
I'd rather wait for the self-driving transportation we have to actually be used and built: trains and subways. It makes nearly zero sense to replace single low occupancy cars with the exact same occupancy but orders of magnitude more cost and blurred responsibility.
> I assume that safety will only increase as the proportion rises.
I assume that safety will drastically decrease as self-driving cars are introduced.
I’m a huge public transit fan, but let’s not let perfect be the enemy of better.
I live at a train stop in SF. I take a bus to work. Public transit is great. I still use Waymo sometimes because coverage isn’t always amazing at all times. Sometimes I’m in a rush, sometimes I want some privacy, sometimes I’m carrying some heavy things.
Replacing low-occupancy human driven vehicles with low-occupancy robot driven vehicles is good if they’re safer. Today, they’ve proven to be safer. Today, lives are saved because a human driver chose not to drive. If a private individual wants to pay more (<2x, not a single order of magnitude), then let them. There is no reason that the private introduction of self driving cars needs to stop the investment in public transit.
Let us save lives on the road to the future, even if some stops along the way aren’t your chosen stops.
I haven't seen that data. Do these cars drive in rainy, wet, snowy weather or in cities with crazy streets such as the northeastern United States? Not that I know of. I think it's a wild leap to suggest they're safer already today.
You can unambiguously claim they are safer the moment Waymo reports parity with L5 automation criteria. Until that happens you're talking about a system that by Waymo's own admission under-performs human drivers.
What is so magical about L5 criteria? Today Waymo is performing drives on public roads, and it’s safer than a human. Today. With whatever Lx criteria it meets. The label is irrelevant, all that matters is the mile-per-mile record of being safer.
Not sure what “Waymos own admission” means, but they out perform not underperform.
Nah. The automation criteria are very well defined. Waymo's current self-reported automation level means there are things human drivers can do, situations they're capable of navigating correctly, that their equipment can't cope with.
My car is also pretty terrible at making me breakfast in the morning. So what?
Parent's point is that in the context where they do work, they save lives. You're arguing about something else entirely - whether they work in all situations. But that's irrelevant.
Is it really? Look how often comments here and elsewhere express impatience that the majority of vehicles on the road aren't fully autonomous. Since we know there are conditions under which self-driving tech loses the plot, ubiquity would necessarily involve deploying self driving equipment under those very conditions with predictable results (see also FSB early adopter shitshow).
Because as I understand it L5 is parity with human capabilities. Until you clear that you're underperforming in some measurable way with what even mediocre human operators are capable of.
If a robot taxi can drive way better than a mediocre (read: every human driver when drunk/tired/angry) human can, but is geofence limited to a single area, that is an L4 system.
As a fellow driver, I don't care that they can't drive out of that area, I care if tf they're a safer driver.
It would absolutely be the wrong bar if there wasn't a steady drum beat of calls for ubiquity. "I can't wait until the majority of vehicles..." etc etc. This kind of uncritical optimism has already lead to some pretty wild outcomes with half-baked automation.
It gets blurry towards the edges. There are certainly roads I should not be driving on that competent 4WD folks are (in the right vehicles). I;ve also driven in winter conditions that felt very sketchy to me that I may have felt the need to drive in for work or other reasons. You don't always have the option to just Nope. I'm going to stay at home.
And, of course, if you otherwise basically never drive, you're probably a hazard in those marginal conditions.
They systematically get in less accidents, the accidents they do get in are not their fault, and they tend to be less dangerous when they occur. As I understand it, that unambiguously means outperforming.
We don’t need to remove every manual car in the world overnight, but this seems like a clear win, at least in the regions they operate. They don’t need to cure cancer and drive in every road condition at all times in all places and also not ever make any mistakes at all to be an improvement. “L5” is just a label, which I guess doesn’t apply, while “safer”, “less accident prone” are different labels, which do apply.
Self-driving vehicles can be symbiotic with mass transit. Autonomous taxis can make rail work better at low to moderate densities by shuttling people to stations. They can also ease the path to higher density development in car-centric suburbs by dropping people off at their destinations and then going to serve other riders or park out of the way, eliminating the need for density-killing parking lots immediately adjacent to businesses. As density rises in these areas, building mass transit will become more viable.
Nor does autonomy have to be limited to car-sized vehicles. It could be used for larger vehicles, perhaps intermediate between car and bus size — once you don't have to pay for a driver, operating a larger number of smaller vehicles is much more viable. These could be dynamically dispatched and routed, eliminating many drawbacks of existing bus service.
How many billions of both private and public funding has been put into public transportation solutions and technology instead of self-driving cars? The answer is basically 0. Self-driving cars is the most expensive Hot Wheels experiment ever. It's been well over a decade with barely anything to show except that they've replaced cars with more expensive cars that have muddy responsibility.
That's why you have to build and live more densely. The US absolutely refuses to do that, outside of Manhattan and a few select other places. It won't be a place where local trains make any economic sense until this changes.
However, for your "door to door" point, that's not desirable anyway. Even here in Tokyo, you have to walk a lot to get between your home and work or wherever you're going. That's a big, big part of why people here are so much thinner than Americans. Having transport that takes you door-to-door without any significant walking is terrible for your health.
Tokyo has taxis and Ubers. I take them quite frequently when there, even though the public transit is amazing. The fact it's blatantly obvious that robotaxis make a ton of sense in even one of the most transit-friendly cities in the world shows how wrong the OP is.
If your neighbourhood is pleasant and walkable, you don't need to be dropped off at the door. In most cases, the key barrier to walkability is removing the cars.
> majority of cars on the road will be self-driving
Surveillance state would love that! Hundreds of thousands of cars with 360 degree cameras and sensors capturing everything inside and outside the vehicle. Forget installing CC cameras. just claim “nAtIoNaL sEcUrItY”, get a rubber stamped warrant from FISA court, and go to town.
A problem created by cars (pedestrian vs car, MVA accidents) may be solved by self driving cars. But we introduced a perfect system to allow a foreign or domestic state to perform over reaching surveillance. Ripe for abuse as well.
All of this nonsense could have been avoided if cities were just built with alternative transportation methods in mind. But nope, we have to use cars for every stupid little activity.
Alternative transportation like light rail or subway are centrally managed. Government is totally legit in monitoring that infra and can shut it down at will to disrupt protest.
You don’t even need self driving cars for cabin surveillance. Modern cars are already being equipped with data harvesting suites and selling your data. What’s one step further for 24/7 audio video surveillance?
I’m looking forward to it but it’s sad in a way too. The self driving cars are going to be heavily regulated. In a really dystopian setup, you would be restricted from leaving your zone.
1. If you judge new technology by the absolute worst way that it can be used, you are going to spend your life worrying about a million things that will never happen. Focus on stuff that's happening instead of hypotheticals.
2. In a really dystopian setup, you can be restricted from leaving "your zone" regardless of autonomous vehicles. There's plenty of existing technology that can help with that. (number plates, cellular networks, facial recognition, etc.)
Like cameras and AI used to enforce the “not allowed to sing while driving” policy for Amazon drivers?
The only way to make sure things never happen is by worrying about the worst possible misuse of the technology. Because someone will misuse it that way if it gets him money or power.
People worried about surveillance but it didn't stop surveillance from happening.
I'm not saying to be naive to possibilities, especially as they begin to move from the "possibilities" bucket to the "realities" bucket, but isn't it better to focus on making progress against stuff that's already happening? If Amazon are preventing drivers from singing, I think those drivers might be able to change that.
> Focus on stuff that's happening instead of hypotheticals.
How do you prevent "hypotheticals" from becoming "stuff that's happening" if you never pay any attention to them in the first place and let them happen?
The problem is that for many things once something starts happening it is very hard or even impossible to stop it. It is way better to prevent something from happening than try to stop it after the fact - especially if someone with power can benefit from that something happening.
Comparing to all drivers is one thing, but comparing to ride shares is another and yeah, Uber and Lyft are done.
The market is definitely going to choose Waymo.
The new reservations of a driverless car arent going to be big enough to trump the distrust and negative experience of other humans, given the option. The pricing is comparable, and the rest of the experience is better. The driverless part also seems trained on the driving customs of the area, here in LA it was assertive when it needed to be and overall impressive. LA has some sketchy left turn customs and the car did it fine.
I'd definitely feel better in a self-driving car where I wouldn't feel any awkwardness about changing the music or just watching a loud video on my phone.
As I understand it, a lot of women in the areas where Waymo's currently deployed feel safer without having a driver as well.
This reminds me of the hysteria over the idea that people will randomly start fucking with road signs to put self-driving cars and their occupants in danger, and that this would be widespread and something that will impede SDC adoption.
I guess they’re thinking to disrupt the car’s movement and predictability in stopping, in comparison to an erratic driver, who they also wont have to deal with when breaking into the car
Given the tendency for premature HN opinions that are absolute to often swing the other way in practice, I'll be curious to see how this actually goes.
Waymo is a money hole it has never got close to making a profit. Think of all that equipment attached to a luxury SUV and the upkeep. The purpose of Waymo is research - you just get the privilege of paying to be a guinea pig. There is no market for Waymo - just Google who dumps money on it.
Another important thing to think about is that Uber and Lyft are operated by people. Often these working people need the meager salary to live - wouldn't you rather support your local economy instead of being a research subject?
In the middle east we often give way to other people by using the hands to show a “Here, please pass” gesture. It greatly accelerates the traffic because then pedestrians or cars don’t doubt your intention and can engage on the street.
Do you do the same in LA for left turns, and did Waymo find a replacing clue?
Not OP, but I would guess he is talking about completing an unprotected left by pulling out into the intersection, waiting for the opposite traffic’s light to turn red and for those cars to stop, then completing the left as the cross-traffic’s light turns green.
It’s kind of sketchy and probably legally dubious, but it’s the only way to turn left on busy intersections without a protected left. I’d feared that a Waymo would get stuck in such situations indefinitely, but they seem to be perfectly comfortable performing these left turns as a human would.
The raw data is available for download and you can compare not getting into any accidents to their number of accidents per however many hundreds of thousands of miles.
There isn't much to the data available for download, but it looks like 0.00001207261588 accidents per mile, or ~1.2 accidents per 100,000 miles (268/22199000). Figuring your father drives 15k miles per year, times 30 years and rounding up to 500k miles, Waymo has a recorded 6 accidents to your father's 0.
Not sure why that's an interesting comparison, however.
Assuming your dad is good at not driving when he shouldn't (tired/drunk/angry), he's not on the road when it's worrisome. I don't worry about getting into accidents with drivers who aren't on the road, I worry about the tired/drunk/angry drivers I do have to share the road with. Waymo at 2:15am after the bars let out is much less worrisome than any other car at that time, because I have no idea who's in that other car. Your father could be the safest driver ever, but I have no idea if it's him in the other car, or if that driver is totally blacked out and shouldn't be driving.
Thanks for doing the math and making this concrete!
I think it’s interesting because:
1) it gives Waymo a higher target to shoot for - it hasn’t “solved” self-driving because its safer than the average driver. I am so impressed by Waymo, but I feel like some of this article smacked of premature “mission accomplished” vibes. The fact that it just accepted the comparison to average without caveat is an example of that.
2) As a matter of policy, everyone can agree that a Waymo ride home for the tipsy is good, but where policy will have issues is convincing good drivers such as my dad to take Waymos everywhere. Not to mention most drivers irrationally think they’re way better than average - that will affect policy in a real way.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a top x% of drivers would outperform Waymo at this current juncture. (Especially perhaps in things like heavy rain).
However, I’ll use myself as an example. I’ve driven over 1.2 million miles over the last 17 years. (It may be closer to 1.5 million but I’m only counting miles on vehicles I’ve owned as that’s easier for me to calculate quickly ).
Without an accident.
I know that I get tired and my driving skills drop[1]. I have to sneeze or cough and they drop. I’m on a long continuously straight road, stressed about xyz and they drop.
Self driving cars won’t necessarily have the same short comings.
Even the self driving features that my car has (very limited, 2023 Infiniti Q50 Red Sport 400) are better at times then I am. (Though it often will wait far too long to brake in my opinion when using the auto cruise even at maximum distance).
However, I do think humans have advantages too in some situations. (If you can on average track what’s around you and try to think as close as possible to 12 seconds ahead…. If you haven’t try it sometime on the highway. )
[1] perhaps luckily, I have a tendency to drive slower when fatigued. However at times I’ve pushed it, realized I’m going 15 mph below the speed limit, and realized I needed to not be driving. I also know that when not fatigued my lane assist will usually trigger 0 times on a normal 20-30 mile drive. When fatigued, it may begin to trigger once every 10 minutes. To clarify, I’m not out of my lane, but I’m moving out of center.
Why? We have a major problem right now; cars are deathtraps and roads are murder weapons. We haven't been able to do anything about that historically without taking unacceptable economic damage, but we're right on the cusp of massive improvements to the situation.
How the top 10% of drivers are going in amongst all that isn't really a factor as far as I can see. They'll probably end up banned from taking the wheel at some point for consistencies sake but they are ultimately not really a factor. Besides, automated cars will overtake (hehe) their skills at some point whether we track it specifically or not; in the long term humans can't compete against an engineered process.
I think the statistics they use to compare to human drivers are slightly misleading. They compare to the average human driver. I'm not sure I would entrust my life to a random driver, who could be a teenager who just got their driver's license, a 90-year-old grandma, or someone with prior reckless driving citations. For comparison, here are the requirements to become a taxi driver in San Francisco: [San Francisco Taxi Driver Requirements](https://www.sfmta.com/getting-around/taxi/become-taxi-driver).
In conclusion, Waymo, being a taxi service, should compare their safety record to that of human taxi drivers.
Exactly, the scenario of everybody using a robotaxi should be compared to the scenario of everybody using taxis but not because of the requirements for obtaining a license. Instead I expect taxi drivers to drive safely because 1) their customers would report them if they drive dangerously and 2) crashes would prevent them from working and cost them the income of several days or worse.
If they crash they don't make money. I don't live in the USA and I remember that taxi drivers were very fast when I was young. They are among the slowest drivers now.
Just a nitpick: average != random. The average driver is not a student teenager or a 90 year old.
Also, a taxi driver may not be a good baseline since what you're replacing is not exactly taxi drivers but instead you're replacing some taxi drivers but also yourself.
(1) But the goal is also to get “random drivers” to stop driving. In theory, you may one day be able to own a private self-driving car, with the same safety record.
(2) Uber drivers have a reputation for being extremely aggressive and don’t need a special license. I’d also like to see how they compare.
(3) I do want to see the data you propose, because I think you’re fundamentally right.
Humans are bad at driving and in the last 5 years the behavior of the most extreme drivers way out on the tail of the bad driver bell curve has become much worse. Waymo is just acting as a recording device to quantify how bad these bozos are.
One of the more fascinating consequences of the waymo project starting (back when it was still inside Google, not a bet) was the discovery from the telemetry Waymo collected that actual collisions are underreported by a factor of probably three.
This is because nhtsa's data comes from accident reports and insurance claims, and people get into fender benders everyday that never get reported because nobody wants their rates to go up.
This is great news for people who want to buckle themselves into an uncontrollable 70 mph thin-metaled panopticon : P
I remember reading that these Waymo cars haven't been allowed onto highways until now. If thats true I wonder how that will change these statistics since that dramatically increases the need for the vehicle to think and perform...
how so? driving around sf is way harder. its rainy foggy weird blind turns and alleys and steep gradients, cars and pedestrians coming from all directions, stop lights, unusual parking demands...
If only they would deploy faster. I really doubt their crash rate would spike up to human levels if they expanded 2x or 10x faster.
Living in Silicon Valley I've been passing those cars for a decade without the opportunity to ride. Now they even have regulatory approval for this area, but still no service and no timeline for service.
> I really doubt their crash rate would spike up to human levels if they expanded 2x or 10x faster.
If you look at some of the skepticism around self-driving cars in the US, it makes sense that they're going slow and careful.
Even if a spike in accidents was still lower than the equivalent for humans, that would bring a lot of political scrutiny to Waymo that would then slow their deployment.
It would be even more tragic if they went too quickly, there was some high-profile incident, and the backlash slowed rollout even more, resulting in even more lives lost in the long run.
They weren't forced to dissolve the project. They gave up. Uber had already lost their founder at that point. The new management wasn't serious about self driving and they were likely already looking for an excuse to get rid of it. If Waymo had a single fatality today after years of safe operation and with determination to continue it would be a completely different story.
> It’s tragic that many lives will be lost due to the fear-driven slow rollout.
Sam Peltzman showed with statistics that the FDA's mandate of "safe and effective" slowed down the development of new pharmaceuticals past the point that there were more deaths.
He took it to Congress, who simply latched on to "safe and effective" as an obviously good idea, statistics be damned.
AI systems should be able to do better. I don't think saying "yeah, we're done here" is acceptable.
The next step is to start building models of human minds (as is modeling human behavior, not literal mind uploads), as well as models of every self driving car model, and do full on global (-ish, limited to the general area) optimization of outcomes according to a publicly available and audited decision theory and utility function.
It's the only way to enable superhuman avoidance actions without making things worse by confusing others. This is why the models of humans and other robotic cars are needed.
It's in general sentiment I've seen in some places, not a literal quote. The article exhibits it somewhat, not explicitly explaining how the human average is dragged down by drivers that are partially incapacitated.
