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I've just got to say I'm so impressed with both Waymo and Cruise. Last year they did 4.5 million miles put together in California with zero fatalities. This i

I've just got to say I'm so impressed with both Waymo and Cruise. Last year they did 4.5 million miles put together in California with zero fatalities. This is an incredible achievement.

saalweachter 3y ago
The US rate is 0.57 fatalities per 100 million passenger miles.
- talldatethrow 3y ago
  While OPs statement did make me laugh a bit (I've personally driven almost a million miles myself and I don't think my odds of killing someone were 1 in 4), we do have to realize that MOST miles that make up the 100 million mile stats are done at highway speeds far away from pedestrians. If I had to do 4 million miles in SF, I just might have hit someone by now.
  - 93po 3y ago
    What if you only drove at night and in very narrow corridors?
- dekhn 3y ago
  Americans drove 3.2 trillion miles in 2021 and 42,795 people died in traffic fatalities (both values are estimates, and likely do not include every single mile driven or fatality that occurred, depending on how you prefer to count). So humans drive average of 74 million miles before a person gets killed, and Waymo's driven somewhere above 20M miles but probably fewer than 74M. At this point, I'd expect no self-driving car traffic fatalities, statistically, if the SDC fleet is an average driver. In some sense Waymo and Cruise are basically waiting around for a fatality (not that they want one) so they start having a denominator that isn't zero.
  - saalweachter 3y ago
    Your statistic (vehicle miles versus passenger miles) is probably more relevant, but now I'm curious whether the passenger miles of driverless vehicles are more or less than the vehicle miles, in aggregate. (Although maybe passenger miles is the correct metric -- a driverless, passengerless vehicle could hypothetically plow into an overpass at a speed that would result in a fatality, if anyone were inside; since the passengers of a vehicle are a large chunk of the people who die if that vehicle has an accident, should we car how many people don't die when vehicles are empty?)
    - dekhn 3y ago
      I think the latter number is all traffic-related fatalities (passengers, drivers, and peds/cyclists), not just passengers.
  - askafriend 3y ago
    Most of those miles are highway miles though.
    - saalweachter 3y ago
      The breakdown seems to be, 25% interstate, 47% arterial, 14% collector, and 14% local. The fatalities for driving on local urban streets is 0.94 per 100 million vehicle miles, compared to 0.87 for rural interstates. https://www.bts.gov/content/roadway-vehicle-miles-traveled-vmt-and-vmt-lane-mile-functional-class https://www.bts.gov/content/roadway-vehicle-miles-traveled-v...
- cameldrv 3y ago
  Regardless of whatever the current fatal accident statistics are in the U.S., being able to build a robot that drives that far in traffic without killing anyone is an incredible technical accomplishment. The progress over the past ten years is simply astounding.
- jeffbee 3y ago
  The national average rate has a denominator that is bloated up with easy freeway miles. Cruise and Waymo never leave SF city streets.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - saalweachter 3y ago
    > Although 20 percent of people in the U.S. live in rural areas and 32 percent of the vehicle miles traveled occur in rural areas, 40 percent of crash deaths occur there. https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/urban-rural-comparison https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/urban...
    - jeffbee 3y ago
      Continue: > Compared with urban areas, crash deaths in rural areas in 2021 were less likely to occur on interstates and freeways (14 percent compared with 21 percent) and on other arterial roads (23 percent compared with 58 percent) and more likely to occur on collector roads (44 percent compared with 11 percent) and local roads (19 percent compared with 11 percent). In other words, majority of rural traffic deaths are not on freeways.
      - saalweachter 3y ago
        Yes, but I still reject the idea that San Francisco is an especially fatal city to drive in. Looking for statistics on San Francisco in particular, in 2016 the city averaged an estimated 5.6 million vehicle miles per day, and an average of 29 traffic fatalities per year. That puts it at about 1.4 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles, smack dab in between the national averages for urban (1.2) and rural (1.7) traffic fatalities. So 5 million vehicle miles continues to be a small sample size, with an estimated 0.07 deaths for San Francisco. (I'm also not sure the drill down that urban fatalities happen on freeway & arterial roads and rural fatalities happen on local & collector roads helps the self-driving cars in SF; it seems like the speed-limited self-driving cars should be spending most of their time on the absurdly safe local roads in the city.)

I've just got to say I'm so impressed with both Waymo and Cruise. Last year they did 4.5 million miles put together in California with zero fatalities. This is an incredible achievement.

saalweachter 3y ago

The US rate is 0.57 fatalities per 100 million passenger miles.

talldatethrow 3y ago
While OPs statement did make me laugh a bit (I've personally driven almost a million miles myself and I don't think my odds of killing someone were 1 in 4), we do have to realize that MOST miles that make up the 100 million mile stats are done at highway speeds far away from pedestrians. If I had to do 4 million miles in SF, I just might have hit someone by now.
- 93po 3y ago
  What if you only drove at night and in very narrow corridors?
dekhn 3y ago
Americans drove 3.2 trillion miles in 2021 and 42,795 people died in traffic fatalities (both values are estimates, and likely do not include every single mile driven or fatality that occurred, depending on how you prefer to count). So humans drive average of 74 million miles before a person gets killed, and Waymo's driven somewhere above 20M miles but probably fewer than 74M. At this point, I'd expect no self-driving car traffic fatalities, statistically, if the SDC fleet is an average driver. In some sense Waymo and Cruise are basically waiting around for a fatality (not that they want one) so they start having a denominator that isn't zero.
- saalweachter 3y ago
  Your statistic (vehicle miles versus passenger miles) is probably more relevant, but now I'm curious whether the passenger miles of driverless vehicles are more or less than the vehicle miles, in aggregate. (Although maybe passenger miles is the correct metric -- a driverless, passengerless vehicle could hypothetically plow into an overpass at a speed that would result in a fatality, if anyone were inside; since the passengers of a vehicle are a large chunk of the people who die if that vehicle has an accident, should we car how many people don't die when vehicles are empty?)
  - dekhn 3y ago
    I think the latter number is all traffic-related fatalities (passengers, drivers, and peds/cyclists), not just passengers.
- askafriend 3y ago
  Most of those miles are highway miles though.
  - saalweachter 3y ago
    The breakdown seems to be, 25% interstate, 47% arterial, 14% collector, and 14% local. The fatalities for driving on local urban streets is 0.94 per 100 million vehicle miles, compared to 0.87 for rural interstates. https://www.bts.gov/content/roadway-vehicle-miles-traveled-vmt-and-vmt-lane-mile-functional-class https://www.bts.gov/content/roadway-vehicle-miles-traveled-v...
cameldrv 3y ago
Regardless of whatever the current fatal accident statistics are in the U.S., being able to build a robot that drives that far in traffic without killing anyone is an incredible technical accomplishment. The progress over the past ten years is simply astounding.
jeffbee 3y ago
The national average rate has a denominator that is bloated up with easy freeway miles. Cruise and Waymo never leave SF city streets.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- saalweachter 3y ago
  > Although 20 percent of people in the U.S. live in rural areas and 32 percent of the vehicle miles traveled occur in rural areas, 40 percent of crash deaths occur there. https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/urban-rural-comparison https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/urban...
  - jeffbee 3y ago
    Continue: > Compared with urban areas, crash deaths in rural areas in 2021 were less likely to occur on interstates and freeways (14 percent compared with 21 percent) and on other arterial roads (23 percent compared with 58 percent) and more likely to occur on collector roads (44 percent compared with 11 percent) and local roads (19 percent compared with 11 percent). In other words, majority of rural traffic deaths are not on freeways.
    - saalweachter 3y ago
      Yes, but I still reject the idea that San Francisco is an especially fatal city to drive in. Looking for statistics on San Francisco in particular, in 2016 the city averaged an estimated 5.6 million vehicle miles per day, and an average of 29 traffic fatalities per year. That puts it at about 1.4 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles, smack dab in between the national averages for urban (1.2) and rural (1.7) traffic fatalities. So 5 million vehicle miles continues to be a small sample size, with an estimated 0.07 deaths for San Francisco. (I'm also not sure the drill down that urban fatalities happen on freeway & arterial roads and rural fatalities happen on local & collector roads helps the self-driving cars in SF; it seems like the speed-limited self-driving cars should be spending most of their time on the absurdly safe local roads in the city.)