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I think at the very least we can interpret the situation as car hits cyclist in a blind spot and the cyclist was not seriously injured. Sources say there were 4

by wyre 3y ago

I think at the very least we can interpret the situation as car hits cyclist in a blind spot and the cyclist was not seriously injured. Sources say there were 49,000 vehicle-cyclist injuries and 846 fatalities [1] and there were 3.2 trillion vehicle miles traveled [2] in 2019. So my math comes to around .015 injuries and .00003 fatalities per 1 million vehicle miles traveled. Waymo’s traveled 20 millions miles by 2020, so more by now but Im not finding a more recent number. This is the first time I’ve heard of a Waymo-cyclist injury (maybe it’s not; I’m not able to google around this new headline) and would put their injury rate at .05 per million miles significantly higher than the other statistic but to get away with minor scratches is nonnegligible since it’s easy for injuries to be worse. At 20 million miles Waymos this rate doesn’t make them look good. I want to be optimistic about their injury rate getting better as they program around blind spots safer. [1]https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/813060 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/... [2]https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/813183 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...

slg 3y ago
This is the same type of math that Tesla uses to suggest that their Autopilot is safer than humans, but the problem with this approach is that not all miles driven are equal. I guarantee that the injury rate per mile is much higher on the road in which this collision took place than the 0.015 national average. There are obviously roads in which collisions with cyclists are incredibly rare like interstate highways in which a cyclist even using the road is rare. That means there needs to be roads which greatly exceed the national average and those are often city streets with heavy cyclist traffic like this one where the collision occurred.

by wyre 3y ago

slg 3y ago

This is the same type of math that Tesla uses to suggest that their Autopilot is safer than humans, but the problem with this approach is that not all miles driven are equal. I guarantee that the injury rate per mile is much higher on the road in which this collision took place than the 0.015 national average. There are obviously roads in which collisions with cyclists are incredibly rare like interstate highways in which a cyclist even using the road is rare. That means there needs to be roads which greatly exceed the national average and those are often city streets with heavy cyclist traffic like this one where the collision occurred.