6 ms·

Aren't they operating under a lot of constraints? The comparison should be with human drivers operating under similar conditions and on similar roads, similar c

Aren't they operating under a lot of constraints? The comparison should be with human drivers operating under similar conditions and on similar roads, similar cars(eg. new ones), weather conditions etc. Plus they have a fleet of support folks and standby remote and dispatchable operators which cannot be cheap, we get no insight into the financials except that they're losing several billion dollars a year. If at the end you end up paying more than for a Uber for the service to be sustainable then what's the point.

freetime2 3y ago
> Plus they have a fleet of support folks and standby remote and dispatchable operators which cannot be cheap, we get no insight into the financials except that they're losing several billion dollars a year. If at the end you end up paying more than for a Uber for the service to be sustainable then what's the point. I think they are banking on the technology continuing to improve, the number of manual interventions decreasing, and costs coming down.
- afavour 3y ago
  Great to hear someone is still pursuing the Uber model long after Uber themselves gave up on it!
  - fshbbdssbbgdd 3y ago
    I thought the problem with Uber’s self-driving initiative was that they didn’t know what they were doing, except for the main guy who stole the IP from Google.
    - tsimionescu 3y ago
      I think the Uber model they mean is the more general "sell your service at a loss today to increase market share, hoping it will become cheaper for you tomorrow".
      - Dylan16807 3y ago
        If we're talking about Uber without self-driving, then the vast majority of costs are outside of Uber's hands. Even if they get their servers, payment processing, and customer support down to $0, it only helps the business model a mild amount. On the other hand Waymo is paying enormous amounts to design systems and outfit their cars, and when that gets significantly cheaper the entire service gets significantly cheaper to provide. If they get those costs down then they're simply buying and running cars, which is much better than needing cars and drivers.
        thfuran 3y ago
        But probably not better than just needing drivers who you can trick into providing cars.
        fshbbdssbbgdd 3y ago
        If you start driving for Uber with some vehicle that’s extremely expensive to operate, like a Land Rover or something, maybe you’d lose money, but that’s not the norm. It’s common for Uber drivers to finance their vehicles by driving for Uber. This obviously only works if there is a surplus of value created by driving that vehicle for Uber. It’s not like independently wealthy people are subsidizing Uber by donating the equity of their cars. The cost of cars used by drivers is ultimately paid by customers, there is not some magic trick here.
      - fshbbdssbbgdd 3y ago
        People heard the news Uber is profitable these days, right? The plan worked. Turns out, the fixed cost of technology has less of an impact on your margin when amortized across a larger business. So growing by losing money can make you more profitable later.
        robertlagrant 3y ago
        I don't know the details, but I heard Uber Eats is what tipped them into profitability.
cwillu 3y ago
Part of being a safe driver is knowing when it's not safe to drive and resisting pressure to drive anyway.
- bluGill 3y ago
  Maybe, but I do drive on ice and snow all the time, I just slow down.
  - gorbachev 3y ago
    So do I, but other drivers don't.
- hyperhopper 3y ago
  If you live in an environment with inclement weather and awkward roads, everybody can't just choose to not drive there, but wayno can. It's a question of their dataset not being comparable, not their individual driving decisions being better on a day to day basis
  - gruez 3y ago
    > If you live in an environment with inclement weather and awkward roads, everybody can't just choose to not drive there, but wayno can. they accounted for that with zip code data.
- avereveard 3y ago
  but if waimo is opting out of difficult days, leaving the human to pick up that part, it will severely bias the safety comparisons because then of course humans will have more crash per mile then any 'same period comparison' are destined to just measure this first-pick bias. they are going to need to compare with the driver data from the period before waymo introduction (while accounting for other constraints, so excluding rides on freeway, etc)
- Broken_Hippo 3y ago
  Sure. But honestly, you have to have enough money to be able to lose your job to do that. It isn't always possible for you to miss work. All it takes to have bad attendance is a strict policy and a child that needs numerous doctor appointments. Or low pay and no paid time off when you can't get to work. It is easy to resist pressure when you are talking a fun night out, but not so easy when the outcome could be utilities shutting off, less food, and so on.
skybrian 3y ago
It’s a comparison between real-world transportation systems, not a sporting event. The systems are different, and that includes operating under different safety rules. It’s true that they haven’t reached sustainability yet.
- romwell 3y ago
  >It’s a comparison between real-world transportation systems ...which have very different comparable characteristics.
  - skybrian 3y ago
    Yes, but this is also true of a question like “is it safer to fly or drive.” Doing the comparison makes the most sense when there’s a flight you could take and also a way to drive there. In this case, a practical comparison would be between taking a taxi versus a driverless car service in the same region. Maybe the driverless car avoids highways and takes longer, but you can still ask which one is safer.
skepticATX 3y ago
I’d like to see AVs compared to the average good driver. I’d bet it’s a lot closer in that case.
- smileysteve 3y ago
  The average "good" driver is likely the p90 though. 60% of US drivers survey to using a hand held cell phone while driving. an intersection, but not exclusively 30% of US drivers survey to driving under the influence of alcohol in the last year; and that's generally excluding "buzzed"/under the legal limit - which may be lawful - but likely take one out of the "good" category. Then you have medical conditions that go unchecked for driving in the US, peripheral vision, far-sightedness checked once a decade, reaction time, physical disabilities. Then you have following too closely, speeding, accelerating too quickly, braking too quickly, taking turns too quickly, vehicles lacking maintenance (tires with little tread, inappropriate tread for roads, brakes not bled every ~2 years, lights out, suspension unchecked, carolina raised trucks) Finally, you can add in US infrastructure, which traditionally maximizes speed and minimizes safety -- and generally gets a C-.
- 2muchcoffeeman 3y ago
  I'm not bullish on self driving cars, but that's a bit unfair. If their car performs better than 50% of the population, then that sounds like a success.
  - prmoustache 3y ago
    The thing is that 50% (even more) of the population should not be allowed to drive to begin with and we shouldn't wait for any technology to be ready to remove them from the road. That is the real elephant in the room that nobody wants to mention, especially political representatives who would be afraid to lose votes.
    - Dylan16807 3y ago
      You need to set up alternatives or you're destroying lives and they'll drive anyway.
ra7 3y ago
> Aren't they operating under a lot of constraints? The comparison should be with human drivers operating under similar conditions and on similar roads, similar cars(eg. new ones), weather conditions etc. The insurance data for the comparison is from the zip codes Waymo currently operates in, so all of that is accounted for. Here is the full study: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2309.01206.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2309.01206.pdf
- notyourwork 3y ago
  And for cars that are geofenced. Not accurate comparison.
  - ehsankia 3y ago
    If you're comparing to other accidents in the same (geofenced) zipcode, then why is it not an accurate comparison?
    - lolinder 3y ago
      The linked study even calls this out: the zip codes they controlled for are the residence zip code, which means accidents that happen on the freeway (where Waymo typically doesn't drive) or even in other zip codes are included in the human baseline.
      - notyourwork 3y ago
        Precisely.
      - mahkeiro 3y ago
        In Phoenix, the waymo drive on the freeway around the city, and given the number of crashes I see in that city I have few doubt that Waymo cars are safer.
- lolinder 3y ago
  "All of that" is not encompassed in the human driver's home zip code. OP is talking about more than just the zip code, they're also talking about restrictions on the times of day Waymo operates, the types of vehicles they use, whether Waymo shuts down in adverse weather, etc. I'm not sure what all the current and past restrictions are, but those have to be controlled for. The study you linked only discusses one uncontrolled variable (which is a bad sign given how many others there are that they don't talk about) but it's one I hadn't thought of: > A limitation of the selected human baseline is that the location of crashes that generate claims is not known, which limits the ability to filter claims based on Waymo's Operational Design Domain (ODD). As a result, whereas the Waymo ODD largely does not include freeway driving, the human database includes miles driven and claims which occur on freeways. Due to variations in collision frequency per million miles between freeways and non-freeways, this may have led to a baseline which may be more conservative than a roadway- matched baseline.
huytersd 3y ago
I’ve taken more than two dozen rides and there haven’t been any manual interventions so far.
sinuhe69 3y ago
I believe for the insurance purposes, this difference is irrelevant. The point is under the current condition, Waymo driverless cars are safer than human controlled cars, thus the question of liability and permit to operate should be cleared. The question whether humans are truly inferior to robots in term of controlling cars is rather a question of ego than a practical one.
- acchow 3y ago
  If you had insurance for a human whose vehicle could only operate between 9pm to 6am, would it still be more expensive than Waymo's?
  - aaron425 3y ago
    Probably, because Waymo runs 24/7 in San Francisco and has been for a while.
  - n2d4 3y ago
    Fatalities are significantly more likely if you're driving at night than during the day, so probably yes.
- RandomLensman 3y ago
  Not sure that can be concluded easily as you would need to synthetically create a human driver profile with the same restrictions as Waymo. It does not say that in the linked article.
  - karamanolev 3y ago
    If the accident data for humans contains information about weather, location, additional complications, then it should be possible to only filter out accidents that are within Waymo's restriction. You'll similarly need to filter the human-driven miles, but a statistical approach doesn't seem to hard. So ... possible, but TFA doesn't say, of course.
    - 3y ago
inglor_cz 3y ago
"The comparison should be with human drivers operating under similar conditions and on similar roads, similar cars(eg. new ones), weather conditions etc." It is my guess only, but a significant difference would be that robots cannot get drunk, don't drive in a sleep-deprived state and don't get distracted by texting at the wheel.
- HPsquared 3y ago
  Any they don't get road rage.
janalsncm 3y ago
The question of whether it’s financially viable is orthogonal to whether they are cheaper to insure. That said, actuaries aren’t stupid. They know whether it’s better to have an autonomous vehicle driving in the idealized subset of conditions that Waymo operates in or whether humans are better.

freetime2 3y ago

> Plus they have a fleet of support folks and standby remote and dispatchable operators which cannot be cheap, we get no insight into the financials except that they're losing several billion dollars a year. If at the end you end up paying more than for a Uber for the service to be sustainable then what's the point. I think they are banking on the technology continuing to improve, the number of manual interventions decreasing, and costs coming down.

afavour 3y ago
Great to hear someone is still pursuing the Uber model long after Uber themselves gave up on it!
- fshbbdssbbgdd 3y ago
  I thought the problem with Uber’s self-driving initiative was that they didn’t know what they were doing, except for the main guy who stole the IP from Google.
  - tsimionescu 3y ago
    I think the Uber model they mean is the more general "sell your service at a loss today to increase market share, hoping it will become cheaper for you tomorrow".
    - Dylan16807 3y ago
      If we're talking about Uber without self-driving, then the vast majority of costs are outside of Uber's hands. Even if they get their servers, payment processing, and customer support down to $0, it only helps the business model a mild amount. On the other hand Waymo is paying enormous amounts to design systems and outfit their cars, and when that gets significantly cheaper the entire service gets significantly cheaper to provide. If they get those costs down then they're simply buying and running cars, which is much better than needing cars and drivers.
      - thfuran 3y ago
        But probably not better than just needing drivers who you can trick into providing cars.
        fshbbdssbbgdd 3y ago
        If you start driving for Uber with some vehicle that’s extremely expensive to operate, like a Land Rover or something, maybe you’d lose money, but that’s not the norm. It’s common for Uber drivers to finance their vehicles by driving for Uber. This obviously only works if there is a surplus of value created by driving that vehicle for Uber. It’s not like independently wealthy people are subsidizing Uber by donating the equity of their cars. The cost of cars used by drivers is ultimately paid by customers, there is not some magic trick here.
    - fshbbdssbbgdd 3y ago
      People heard the news Uber is profitable these days, right? The plan worked. Turns out, the fixed cost of technology has less of an impact on your margin when amortized across a larger business. So growing by losing money can make you more profitable later.
      - robertlagrant 3y ago
        I don't know the details, but I heard Uber Eats is what tipped them into profitability.

cwillu 3y ago

Part of being a safe driver is knowing when it's not safe to drive and resisting pressure to drive anyway.

bluGill 3y ago
Maybe, but I do drive on ice and snow all the time, I just slow down.
- gorbachev 3y ago
  So do I, but other drivers don't.
hyperhopper 3y ago
If you live in an environment with inclement weather and awkward roads, everybody can't just choose to not drive there, but wayno can. It's a question of their dataset not being comparable, not their individual driving decisions being better on a day to day basis
- gruez 3y ago
  > If you live in an environment with inclement weather and awkward roads, everybody can't just choose to not drive there, but wayno can. they accounted for that with zip code data.
avereveard 3y ago
but if waimo is opting out of difficult days, leaving the human to pick up that part, it will severely bias the safety comparisons because then of course humans will have more crash per mile then any 'same period comparison' are destined to just measure this first-pick bias. they are going to need to compare with the driver data from the period before waymo introduction (while accounting for other constraints, so excluding rides on freeway, etc)
Broken_Hippo 3y ago
Sure. But honestly, you have to have enough money to be able to lose your job to do that. It isn't always possible for you to miss work. All it takes to have bad attendance is a strict policy and a child that needs numerous doctor appointments. Or low pay and no paid time off when you can't get to work. It is easy to resist pressure when you are talking a fun night out, but not so easy when the outcome could be utilities shutting off, less food, and so on.

skybrian 3y ago

It’s a comparison between real-world transportation systems, not a sporting event. The systems are different, and that includes operating under different safety rules. It’s true that they haven’t reached sustainability yet.

romwell 3y ago
>It’s a comparison between real-world transportation systems ...which have very different comparable characteristics.
- skybrian 3y ago
  Yes, but this is also true of a question like “is it safer to fly or drive.” Doing the comparison makes the most sense when there’s a flight you could take and also a way to drive there. In this case, a practical comparison would be between taking a taxi versus a driverless car service in the same region. Maybe the driverless car avoids highways and takes longer, but you can still ask which one is safer.

skepticATX 3y ago

I’d like to see AVs compared to the average good driver. I’d bet it’s a lot closer in that case.

smileysteve 3y ago
The average "good" driver is likely the p90 though. 60% of US drivers survey to using a hand held cell phone while driving. an intersection, but not exclusively 30% of US drivers survey to driving under the influence of alcohol in the last year; and that's generally excluding "buzzed"/under the legal limit - which may be lawful - but likely take one out of the "good" category. Then you have medical conditions that go unchecked for driving in the US, peripheral vision, far-sightedness checked once a decade, reaction time, physical disabilities. Then you have following too closely, speeding, accelerating too quickly, braking too quickly, taking turns too quickly, vehicles lacking maintenance (tires with little tread, inappropriate tread for roads, brakes not bled every ~2 years, lights out, suspension unchecked, carolina raised trucks) Finally, you can add in US infrastructure, which traditionally maximizes speed and minimizes safety -- and generally gets a C-.
2muchcoffeeman 3y ago
I'm not bullish on self driving cars, but that's a bit unfair. If their car performs better than 50% of the population, then that sounds like a success.
- prmoustache 3y ago
  The thing is that 50% (even more) of the population should not be allowed to drive to begin with and we shouldn't wait for any technology to be ready to remove them from the road. That is the real elephant in the room that nobody wants to mention, especially political representatives who would be afraid to lose votes.
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    You need to set up alternatives or you're destroying lives and they'll drive anyway.

ra7 3y ago

> Aren't they operating under a lot of constraints? The comparison should be with human drivers operating under similar conditions and on similar roads, similar cars(eg. new ones), weather conditions etc. The insurance data for the comparison is from the zip codes Waymo currently operates in, so all of that is accounted for. Here is the full study: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2309.01206.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2309.01206.pdf

notyourwork 3y ago
And for cars that are geofenced. Not accurate comparison.
- ehsankia 3y ago
  If you're comparing to other accidents in the same (geofenced) zipcode, then why is it not an accurate comparison?
  - lolinder 3y ago
    The linked study even calls this out: the zip codes they controlled for are the residence zip code, which means accidents that happen on the freeway (where Waymo typically doesn't drive) or even in other zip codes are included in the human baseline.
    - notyourwork 3y ago
      Precisely.
    - mahkeiro 3y ago
      In Phoenix, the waymo drive on the freeway around the city, and given the number of crashes I see in that city I have few doubt that Waymo cars are safer.
lolinder 3y ago
"All of that" is not encompassed in the human driver's home zip code. OP is talking about more than just the zip code, they're also talking about restrictions on the times of day Waymo operates, the types of vehicles they use, whether Waymo shuts down in adverse weather, etc. I'm not sure what all the current and past restrictions are, but those have to be controlled for. The study you linked only discusses one uncontrolled variable (which is a bad sign given how many others there are that they don't talk about) but it's one I hadn't thought of: > A limitation of the selected human baseline is that the location of crashes that generate claims is not known, which limits the ability to filter claims based on Waymo's Operational Design Domain (ODD). As a result, whereas the Waymo ODD largely does not include freeway driving, the human database includes miles driven and claims which occur on freeways. Due to variations in collision frequency per million miles between freeways and non-freeways, this may have led to a baseline which may be more conservative than a roadway- matched baseline.

huytersd 3y ago

I’ve taken more than two dozen rides and there haven’t been any manual interventions so far.

sinuhe69 3y ago

I believe for the insurance purposes, this difference is irrelevant. The point is under the current condition, Waymo driverless cars are safer than human controlled cars, thus the question of liability and permit to operate should be cleared. The question whether humans are truly inferior to robots in term of controlling cars is rather a question of ego than a practical one.

acchow 3y ago
If you had insurance for a human whose vehicle could only operate between 9pm to 6am, would it still be more expensive than Waymo's?
- aaron425 3y ago
  Probably, because Waymo runs 24/7 in San Francisco and has been for a while.
- n2d4 3y ago
  Fatalities are significantly more likely if you're driving at night than during the day, so probably yes.
RandomLensman 3y ago
Not sure that can be concluded easily as you would need to synthetically create a human driver profile with the same restrictions as Waymo. It does not say that in the linked article.
- karamanolev 3y ago
  If the accident data for humans contains information about weather, location, additional complications, then it should be possible to only filter out accidents that are within Waymo's restriction. You'll similarly need to filter the human-driven miles, but a statistical approach doesn't seem to hard. So ... possible, but TFA doesn't say, of course.
  - 3y ago

inglor_cz 3y ago

"The comparison should be with human drivers operating under similar conditions and on similar roads, similar cars(eg. new ones), weather conditions etc." It is my guess only, but a significant difference would be that robots cannot get drunk, don't drive in a sleep-deprived state and don't get distracted by texting at the wheel.

HPsquared 3y ago
Any they don't get road rage.

janalsncm 3y ago

The question of whether it’s financially viable is orthogonal to whether they are cheaper to insure. That said, actuaries aren’t stupid. They know whether it’s better to have an autonomous vehicle driving in the idealized subset of conditions that Waymo operates in or whether humans are better.