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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
by 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 agoYour 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 agoI think the latter number is all traffic-related fatalities (passengers, drivers, and peds/cyclists), not just passengers.
- askafriend 3y agoMost of those miles are highway miles though.
- saalweachter 3y agoThe 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...