←back to thread

Waymos crash less than human drivers

(www.understandingai.org)
345 points rbanffy | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
wnissen ◴[] No.43487648[source]
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.

replies(10): >>43487761 #>>43487829 #>>43487883 #>>43490189 #>>43490833 #>>43490896 #>>43491630 #>>43493210 #>>43493897 #>>43497042 #
Terr_ ◴[] No.43490189[source]
Hmmm, perhaps a more-valuable representation would be how the average Waymo vehicle would place as a percentile ranking among human drivers, in accidents-per-mile.

Ex: "X% of humans do better than Waymo does in accidents per mile."

That would give us an intuition for what portion of humans ought to let the machine do the work.

P.S.: On the flip-side, it would not tell us how often those people drove. For example, if the Y% of worse-drivers happen to be people who barely ever drive in the first place, then helping automate that away wouldn't be as valuable. In contrast, if they were the ones who did the most driving...

replies(3): >>43490415 #>>43490599 #>>43494893 #
1. asielen ◴[] No.43494893[source]
It may be more fair to compare them to Uber drivers and taxis and at least on that comparison haven't ridden in thousands of Uber and taxis and a couple dozen waymos, it is better than 100%.

Anecdotal of course but within my circle people are becoming Waymo first over other options almost entirely because of the better experience and perceived better driving. And parents in my circle also trust that a waymo won't mow them down in a crosswalk. Which is more than you can say for many drivers in SF.