Waymos crash less than human drivers

Worth repeating the same comment I've left on every variant of this article for the last 10 years.

Being better than "average" is a laughably low bar for self-driving cars. Average drivers include people who drive while drunk and on drugs. It includes teenagers and those who otherwise have very little experience on the road. It includes people who are too old to be driving safely. It includes people who are habitually speed and are reckless. It includes cars that are mechanically faulty or otherwise cannot be driven safely. If you compile accident statistics the vast majority will fall into one of these categories.

For self driving to be widely adopted the bare minimum bar needs to be – is it better than the average sensible and experienced driver?

Otherwise if you replace all 80% of the good drivers with waymos and the remaining 20% stay behind the wheel, accident rates are going to go up not down.

Waymo (at this time) is an alternative to taxis and ride hailing services. I've lived in SF for 30+ years and used all modes of transit here. Some of my most frightening moments on the road have been in taxis with drivers who are reckless, in badly maintained vehicles, sometimes smelling of booze. There are certainly other ways that taxis could have been improved, but given the way things have evolved (or devolved with taxis), I feel much safer in a Waymo.

Any comparison of Waymo's safety should be done against taxis/Uber/Lyft/etc. A comparison with the general driving public could also be interesting, or other commercial drivers, but those are not the most relevant cohorts. I don't know the numbers, but I wouldn't be surprised if taxis/Uber/Lyft are worse per mile than general drivers since they are likely under more stress, and often work for long hours. A Waymo is no less safe at 4am, but a Lyft driver who's been up all night is a lot less safe. I would also guess that they are less likely than the general (auto) driving population to own their vehicle. Depending on who owns a vehicle, how long they've been driving (years), there's going to be a lot of interesting correlations.