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by fragmede
641 days ago
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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. https://waymo.com/safety/impact/#downloads 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. |
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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.