Waymos crash less than human drivers

Serious crash rates are a hockey stick pattern. 20% of the drivers cause 80% of the crashes, to a rough approximation. For the worst 20% of drivers, the Waymo is almost certainly better already.

Honestly, at this point I am more interested in whether they can operate their service profitably and affordably, because they are clearly nailing the technical side.

For example data from a 100 driver study, see table 2.11, p. 29. https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/37370 Roughly the same number of drivers had 0 or 1 near-crashes as had 13-50+. One of the drivers had 56 near crashes and 4 actual crashes in less than 20K miles! So the average isn't that helpful here.

> One of the drivers had 56 near crashes and 4 actual crashes in less than 20K miles!

There would be a strong argument to simply banning the worst 1% of drivers from driving, and maybe even compensating them with lifetime free taxi rides, on the taxpayers dime.

It kinda works already without outright banning them: the mandatory insurance will get more and more expensive the more accidents they have.

So they price themselves out.

Of course, they may then decide not to have insurance at all. In most countries that is illegal and doing that in a premeditated way is criminality and something else entirely.

Not sure if insurance is mandatory in the US or not - I assume instead you just get into a gunfight with the other party instead?/s

If you're having an accident costing $10k twice a year, your insurance ought to cost at least $20k/year.

But for whatever reason, it seems such people end up with far lower (yet still expensive) insurance quotes at more like $4k/year.

They can't charge $20k/yr because that costs more than buying a POS, not registering it and getting it out of impound a couple times and then abandoning it.

With numbers like that you're fundamentally running against the people's willingness to comply (which includes the cop's willingness to enforce).