Anecdotally, both from riding in them and walking/driving next to/around them, this feels obvious. They never get distracted. Sure, they sometimes make mistakes, but the mistakes are never "I didn't see that". They see better than humans in all cases (where they operate). They react faster than humans.

The one case where they hit a child, it was because the child jumped in front of the car. And they showed that they hit the child at a lower speed than a human would have because of the reaction time.

I would rather be in an area where only Waymo's are allowed than an area where they are banned.

I've been observing their behavior in Atlanta for about the past year. Our roads here are fairly curvy, hilly, and lacking of expected markings, yet I haven't seen a driverless Waymo vehicle make a single odd move. One thing that brought a smile to my face was when I came to a 4-way stop at the same time as a Waymo vehicle at night & I flash my brights to tell the other vehicle to go ahead (southern hospitality) and I see the Waymo immediately begin its course through the intersection. I was so jolted that I began to tail it in order to pull up next to it to see if there was a human behind the wheel. Watching it drive down this slowly descending hilly road with intermittent speed humps and cars parked alongside the main right lane gave me a close up view of its slightly curving trajectory and braking behavior with regard to the humps. My thought on human or not was inconclusive until we reached a red light, and as I shot my eyes over and saw an empty driver seat, I smiled widely knowing that the software responds to brights flashed at 4-way stops (please don't tell me it doesn't and it just saw me indecisively not initiate at the stop). Thanks for reading

Anecdote from 1000s of miles biking: I bike a lot in the Bay, for fun, exercise, commute, all of the above (I'm a friendly one, I promise!) and the comfort I feel when I see a Waymo alongside me or at a stop sign is immediately apparent. I have been hit 5-10x riding in NYC and SF (nothing serious, gratefully, mostly just people turning right not knowing/caring I was there), and the Waymo's awareness that I exist is immediately obvious and so different from a large percentage of human drivers. I hope the meaningful improvement in safety continues to convince people this should be a part of the future.

I was recently in a Waymo in SF. It was turning right from a busy street onto a narrow street. Mid-turn, the car slammed on the brakes. I sat there for a couple seconds like “???” wondering if we'd hit something. Then a dude on an e-bike _flies_ past the car in the bike lane.

The car saw this dude coming from way down the street, flying, and was like “yeah, better stop.” Probably saved the biker from serious injury, or worse. I wouldn't have seen him if I was driving.

I live in LA and Waymos are the only cars I don't have to play chicken with when crossing the street. Even the drivers that see you will just give you a "sorry, I'm in a rush" wave as they nearly run you over.

13X is way more impressive than it seems at first glance.

Let's take a simplistic model of accidents: that the average driver is at fault in an accident 50% of the time. So a perfect driver would only halve the number of accidents -- they only eliminate the accidents where they would otherwise have been at fault.

But Waymo's numbers are better than the "perfect" driver above. How is that possible? Because in most accidents the blame is not split 0%/100%. You can avoid a lot of accidents with defensive and safe driving.

I'd love to cycle more outdoors, but I'm always wary of the risks. How cool would it be if you could hire a waymo as a "team car" and have it follow you around? It could also carry extra equipment...and act as a ride home in case of emergencies.

Living in SF (and dad of a toddler), this seems like a no-brainer. I can't wait for fewer human drivers.

"For example, the current cities Waymo operates in do not have appreciable snow fall, and as a result neither the Waymo nor the human benchmark data include this type of inclement weather."

I'm happy to see this acknowledged, and hope it's a sign that they appreciate the difficulties of winter driving.

I was sold on Waymo when in San Francisco I saw it treat a human holding a Stop sign in a construction zone just like a human driver did.

For anyone who doesn't know this, in a construction zone if a human is holding a stop sign, it means stay stopped until they flip the sign and suggest you to move slowly. Waymo just handled this as a human would

Can they just report directly how many human lives they have saved since beginning operation? (of course, within some error bars)

Maybe that's too much of a statistical stretch.

But would be a good to-the-point number to have on hand for some waymo debates.

"yes they caused some disruption in an intersection in so-and-so scenario, but on the other hand they saved X number of human lives last year"

Wow. >40% of their accidents have a speed delta-V of less than 1mph. They should just sell this thing as a kit to pop onto your existing car, with a major discount on car insurance. I’d buy it in a heartbeat if they can get it under $30k.

My question is: is safer than average human good enough?

When I drive I have the option to choose to be safe or not. When a computer drives I lose that option. So for 49% of the people, safer than the average human is less safe than before.

I think we need to reach "Safer than the safest 10% of humans".

Also these reports should be done by a government agency.

A city with driverless cars is still a city dominated by cars. Bikes, trains, busses, and walking support the human soul and a city worth living in so much more than a robot car that requires car infrastructure and mentality.

as a motorcyclist I often feel more comfortable riding near waymos

at this point I trust that they have seen me, know that I'm there, and won't behave unpredictably

https://people.com/waymo-exec-reveals-company-uses-operators... might be relevant content as well

Is this an independent study?

The cynic in me says this is a moral hazard waiting to happen, perhaps we'll raise speed limits and reduce traffic regulations until the stats match the pre-robo-taxi days.

I give up. I’m not even going to try to read “fade in” pages anymore. We had an article about that just the other day.

It’s horrible and makes reading harder.

I wanted to see this, but I give up.

This page is old, but they just refreshed the data shows Waymo is 13x safer than human drivers (in the cities it operates in).

there was a startup I saw once here on HN selling driverless kits that could be added to general cars.

if Waymo can do the same - then partner with insurance companies - they can easily be a $1 trillion dollar company even if they just reduce accidents by 5X.

The insurance market or cost thereof is their market.

Even the most visible academic skeptic of Waymo (Phil Koopman) had to throw in the towel and admit that they've cleared every conceivable statistical hurdle to conclusively demonstrating that they are better than humans on injuries and airbag deployments. They have moved the goalposts to aesthetic arguments, for example: if it's so safe why does it sometimes do weird stuff? But to principled systems thinkers they have already shown what needed to be shown. It's safer.

anecdotally from Mesa:

DoorDash has these little cute robots doing delivery. I often seen them followed by a person on a e-bike. This has been going on for more than a year. My recent Lyft driver said one reason is because the Waymo's ignore the other robot and kill them and the bike ensures they don't.

I don’t use Waymo’s because they are really slow. At least for me. I get they’re safer. What’s new is everyone I know is complaining how expensive they are. Why are they so expensive? Is it because they are trying to make a profit on the total cost of ownership of a vehicle? They’re electric so it’s not gas. Uber and Lyft definitely outsource the cost odd maintenance onto the contractor.

Pretty cool to see. But the UI of the visual animations has some weird re-re-rerender bug, at least on mobile safari.

I love Waymo. Using the word "impact" is unfortunate.

When is waymo going to be available in the north east?

I wish the executives at Waymo would go to prison until their cars stopped breaking traffic laws left and right. I get they're safer then humans. I've enjoyed my rides. But they're doing one of this "fuck the laws while we cash in things" because they know they can get away with it.

I guess more realistically, I wish the government would step in demand footage because the cars have records of every law they broke.

So how long until this is enshittified and how will it go? Will people ask for cars to be faster so they will take riskier decisions? Will a cheaper company with a worse training model capture the most market share? Pilot products are usually great, but that rarely lasts into their profitable period.

Waymo's funniest home videos:

https://x.com/xdNiBoR/status/2027296859803336869

https://x.com/TexasTSLA/status/2030400998611788226

https://x.com/barstoolsports/status/1995629394308821184

https://x.com/niccruzpatane/status/1950676793335152693

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Relevant: https://youtu.be/cJER6WtOkjk?si=pfUMpqgCL8IHewKy&t=28

non-X source: https://waymo.com/blog/shorts/waymo-safety-impact-update-170...

Great, what's more concerning than crash rates though are impeding emergency vehicles, blocking roads, stalling when traffic lights are down, rolling past school buses with stop arms out, navigating in construction zones and lots of other issues that are left out of this report.

Blaming the kid here is absurd. The kid lives in a system where pedestrians are second class citizens in a world dictated by the auto-petro industrial complex. An industry that has co-opted unelected traffic "engineer" in the US and completely changed the way we live for the last 70 years and have made Americans fatter and less connected.

If the child lived in a neighborhood where cars went slower (it was a 25mph zone) he wouldn't have gotten hit in the first place. Praising Waymo here is like praising a priest for not molesting a child. Yes it's good that the waymo slowed down more than the average car, but really the whole system should be completely rethought. Instead, we're pouring billions into single occupancy vehicles, when we should've been pouring billions into high speed rail, subways, etc.

I'm hopeful that waymos converge on a more efficient design and improve cities in general. As it stands, they are a way for the rich to commute without having to exchange pleasantries with the underclass.

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why does HN still use links to twitter.com and not x.com?

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More boring, too. Can't meet cool people if it's yet again just me left to throw a proverbial tennis ball against the proverbial wall.

Someone once said that this is because Waymos are novelty, and they still behave a bit weird, like being slow and undecisive. Which leads to humans being super-careful around them. So the Waymo safety record is actually not their own achievement.

I guess we'll have to wait to one of the two things to happen to really assess Waymo's performance:

1. They need to lose their markings and easily distinguishable features (like a big lidar on top), so they don't get any special treatment from other drivers.

2. They need to be majority of vehicles on the road.

The bar is low. I don’t want comparison with an alcoholic with multiple DUIs who still drives and crashes.

The benchmark should be the top decile of drivers.

If someone drives badly they might go to jail if they hurt or kill someone. If a machine does it who pays? I want to see waymo and other CEO for decades for each mistake.

Car centric design is ruining this country.

The great deal: let's redesign our cities to be car free. Consider the economic boom that amount of renovation would produce. Consider the increased economic activity from happier and more productive people. Consider the increased space for nature, parks, real estate, development.

Cars are the worst thing to have been invented. Optimizing the personal automobile leads to optimizing for a horrible living experience in the city. Let us reconsider all of this. This is bad. We can do better. We must.

Now do Surveillance Impact: https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2024/10/27/waymos-5-6...

“Waymo is using around four NVIDIA H100 GPUSs at a unit price of 10,000 dollars per vehicle to cover the necessary computing requirements. The number of sensors – five lidars, 29 cameras, 4 radars”

“Safer” == “Safer than all other human drivers in the same city.” By their own admission, this is not a straightforward comparison. If they could do the math for the same routes, times of day, and conditions … maybe I’d believe it. Otherwise, this data is trivial to cherrypick, and they have every reason to present it as well as possible.

I believe Waymos are pretty safe, and that’s a great thing. “Safer than humans (for selected rides inside this area)” is still very good, but it’s not at all “Safer than humans (period).”

I just watched a short that said some (all) Waymo drivers are not autonomous, but remote controlled by humans in the Phillipines.

I'm sure it's a combination of both since the latency would mean immediate reactions are impossible, but the presenter raised an interesting point, and that was that the remote drivers are not licensed to drive in the states that Waymo operated in, which would make it illegal.