New Study: Waymo is reducing serious crashes and making streets safer

Totally fair to be concerned about pervasive surveillance for the _potential_ of privacy violation. Not sure what to do about that.

That being said, just speaking with some knowledge of current state: the scans don't live forever. At this point, all the data they collect is way too big to store even for a short period. They'll only keep data in scenarios that are helpful for improving driving performance, which is a tiny subset.

Personally identifiable information is also redacted.

You should probably be more worried about what gmail knows about you than Waymo.

Traffic isn't the right place to be if you demand not to be seen. If you do not want your data to be stored that's a different matter, but I'm still gonna look at you while driving to not crash, I have to.

Human drivers have dash cams, too. Maybe without as sophisticated a data ingestion system as google, but they could theoretically put their dashcam footage on youtube if they wanted to.

man, the Googs already has a library of images of you. If there's anything about you that the Googs doesn't already know, I'd be shocked. the Googs probably knows you better than your therapist, because you've only shared with your therapist what you wanted. the Googs gets data about you from places you know nothing about.

being concerned that a Waymo car took your picture isn't invalid, but man is it a tear drop in the rain of everything else the Googs is doing.

Definitely a big privacy concern, especially for people like you who aren't using the technology, and haven't consented to giving your data.

But car crashes are the third highest cause of death in the US (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm). As a society, I think the benefit outweighs the cost in this case, and we can (theoretically) continue to make progress on privacy as a society. Seems like much more of a step forward than a step back to me

It's probably measuring the temperature of your bodily fluids.

Nah, insurance companies will change their coverage rates based on the feature, and / or it'll become another legally mandated feature like backup cameras.

> This would be a trivial software change in the specific case of Teslas

Tesla already has dooring prevention. If it detects a bicycle or something coming, it prevents you from opening the door the first time, and shows a warning. You can override it by trying to open it the second time, if you are sure.

https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/1gwjq4v/new_an...

Waymo already warns you if it detects road users when you open a door. They just don't actively prevent you from opening the door, but they could implement it in their next generation vehicles.

You won't hear the end of complaints about how cyclists are now making cars more expensive...

You could probably design the latch jaws to have an electronically controlled second catch. It would activate whenever a cyclist is present so if someone tries to slam the door open it would catch with the door slightly open and trigger a warning. A second pull then opens the door no matter what for safety.

That would lead to ridiculously overengineered car doors. It's already incredible how such a simple thing like a door can be so unreliable on newer cars, with handles that sink into the doorframe when not in use, or a locking system that only works with battery power. I'm not sure that adding more complexity would be a net benefit for society.

You are missing all the times where you are enough faster that you catch a green while the other person gets there on red and so they never catch up. It is easy to see/remember the times they catch up.

Interesting - I'm definitely substantially faster on a scooter than walking. Part of it is knowing the best routes, but I think even if there are crossing signals, if you're going further than a few blocks there's just no comparison to walking.

Please don't do this here.

Or just implement vastly more automated ticketing systems. They are standard in many countries. They could be implemented with limited-purview privacy preserving architectures where that aligns with expectations and values.

But people speeding, driving aggressively, driving anti-socially (by trying to speed past lines and cut in at the front), running lights and stops... this could be squashed forever, saving lives and ultimately making life more pleasant for everyone.

signaling humans for bad behaviors tend to backfire. it program us to recreate that situation in anger. we aren't smart enough to naturally learn lessons that way.

good thing drones are getting smarter

Commute time still matters, and congestion pricing will become the norm.

I can read on the subway, but while a 20 min subway ride is fine, an hour each way is still a lot, and a two hour train commute just doesn't leave much time in your life for doing social things.

Also, I think there's going to be a huge surge in in-demand AI buses. Rideshares will take people to a random spot, you'll wait 2 minutes for a predetermined seat on a specific bus, and then switch to a rideshare van for the last 5 minute drive to your office in the city.

It's just going to be so much cheaper. With economies of scale and urban congestion pricing, you'll have to choose between dropping $45 on a dedicated hour-long door-to-door car trip, or $6 for the car-bus-van version which is only 20% slower anyways.

Waymo can drive cars but it can't magick new roads into existence. If car usage goes through the roof, so will traffic jams.

well, I guess my hope is that renting a car whenever needed is cheaper than the cost of purchasing, maintaining, insuring, and storing a personal robocar. It would be quite hard to make the US more car-dependent than it already is! But I am speculating - you may very well be right

I sincerely believe this thesis and desperately want a REIT that owns real estate in a 2 hour radius of major urban downtowns.

> A better comparison could be with professional taxi drivers for the same city (not Uber or Lyft). > I wouldn’t be surprised if Waymo is either on par or poorer than this group.

If you've been in both a human drive cab and a Waymo, you'd definitely not say this. I see cabs have accidents all the time. Never seen a Waymo have one.

Also, being in a Waymo feels much safer than a human driven car, even my own when I'm driving!

I highly doubt taxicabs are safer than Waymos.

In fact, here is some data:

Over every 1 million miles driven, there are 4.6 cab crashes, 3.7 livery car crashes, and 6.7 crashes with private cars. And according to Waymo, they have 2.1 crashes per million miles.

I am very curious where waymo is at in adverse conditions. Do the cars totally lock up and become useless? Or are they at the level of your 65 year old mother driving in a thunderstorm at night? Passable, but nothing they are gonna put their name on.

Seems they intend to come to Washington D.C. next year, which does get a pretty wide gamut of weather.

Waymos drive in all weather in the cities they're deployed in; cities where people crash all the time in all types of weather.

Not sure if this is the study but this looks like a good study where they found it was 7% when the study was done.

https://economics.uchicago.edu/news/study-finds-gender-pay-g...

About half of commercial drivers is my conclusion. (though I'm not collecting statistically valid data) Just judging by the number of commercial vehicles who drive into the crosswalk I use often.

>a fairer comparison would be contrasting Waymo rides to trips conducted by the Ultra Safe Even If It's Slower Chauffeur Company.

no, comparing them to real alternatives is the fair comparison. that they've got their settings tuned in favour of safety stats is the whole point, not something that you should be trying to factor out of the comparisons.

Ultra Safe Even if it's Slower Chauffeur company doesn't exist and doesn't have data that can be compared. This is a comparison against the thing Waymo is actually replacing.

DoorDash (so food not people) will give you a report for hard braking / acceleration but it doesn't actually affect anything afaict.

A vehicle that becomes blocked in a crosswalk is unsafe for pedestrians who want to use that crosswalk if it forces the pedestrians to walk around the blocking vehicle. There are crosswalks in SoMa that provide for 45 seconds or more of crossing time. A Waymo that enters one of these crosswalks after 15 seconds into the 45 seconds allocation blocks the crosswalk for the remainder of the 30 seconds. This presents an unsafe situation for all existing and future pedestrians (e.g., a pedestrian who inadvertently steps into the intersection while trying to go around the blocking vehicle).

We also know that in North America that the municipal services skimp on grade separation for bike lanes for budget and political reasons. I did bike in San Francisco when I lived there, and these non-shared colored lanes never ever felt safe.

I can guarantee that if you leave your North American context for a couple of years and come back to it you'll find CA Vehicle Code § 21453 unsatisfactory.