5 ms·

Swiss Re study: Waymo is safer than even the most advanced human-driven vehicles

41 points by ra7 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
jqpabc123 2y ago
How to do better than humans: - Never drive on unfamiliar roads - Never exceed the speed limit or follow too closely - Slam on the brakes at the earliest sign of any trouble. If a human driver rear ends you in the process, it's their fault and will be reported as such. - Never drive on the freeway --- i.e. at high speed where reaction times are more limited. Bascially, only address a safe subset of what human drivers do and then delare victory.
- ra7 2y ago
  > - Never drive on unfamiliar roads > - Never drive on the freeway --- i.e. at high speed where reaction times are more limited. The paper says human benchmark being used is only from the zip codes Waymo operate in, so they are quite comparable. In fact, they have this bit about including freeway mileage in the human benchmark: > Waymo also almost exclusively operated on surface streets (non access-controlled freeways) with a unique distribution of driving that is representative of a ride-hailing fleet. In contrast, the benchmark represents the privately insured driver population that resides in these geographic regions. The associated benchmark mileage has more freeway driving than the Waymo ADS. There are several considerations when examining these results with respect to this limitation. First, freeway driving has a lower crash rate (Scanlon et al., 2024a). Including freeway driving makes this benchmark crash rate artificially lower, so, by including freeways in this study’s benchmark, the benchmark crash rate underestimates the true driving risk of where the Waymo ADS operates. Second, driving outside of these denser urban areas that the Waymo ADS operates would likely represent a reduction in overall relative crash risk. > - Never exceed the speed limit or follow too closely How is this a bad thing?
  - leobg 2y ago
    Who says that the people driving in that zip code are locals? Using the zip code normalizes for accidents in that location. But it doesn’t normalize for familiar vs unfamiliar roads.
    - ra7 2y ago
      They are only considering claims for vehicles registered to addresses in those zip codes. How many drive a car that's locally registered but don't reside there? Not enough to be statistically significant, I would think.
      - leobg 2y ago
        You’re right. I stand corrected. Thanks.
  - ToDougie 2y ago
    > How is this a bad thing? re: Speed limit -- Besides the obvious, it's because not every vehicle on the road is part of the lowest common denominator.
- honkycat 2y ago
  If we can get fully autonomous public transit by driving slower, but it eliminates traffic, I think that is an absolute win.
  - panick21_ 2y ago
    The idea that autonomous cars lead to no traffic is delusional.
    - xnx 2y ago
      Traffic barely matters when you don't have to drive. Most traffic is caused by human behavior: running lights, rubbernecking, shockwaves, not noticing when a light changes (too busy looking at phone) etc.
      - lobsterthief 2y ago
        Maybe that’s true where you live but not where I do. A big part of traffic around here is caused by the pure number of vehicles being routed through intersections via traffic signals. Human behavior has little impact there.
        xnx 2y ago
        Traffic signals are one of the areas where human drivers add the most delay. I've definitely been in situations where each car takes 3 additional seconds to notice that a light has changed, and cars continue to run the light (e.g. making left turns) long after it has changed. I'm too lazy to run the simulation (https://traffic-simulation.de/intersection.html https://traffic-simulation.de/intersection.html), but I'm guessing throughput is much better when every driver is obey the rules and paying total perfect attention.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
    - Cpoll 2y ago
      I wonder about this. Certainly this is true about the current state of autonomous cars, but... Hypothetically, if all the cars are synced, you eliminate certain congestion effects. E.g. traffic congestion travels backwards like a wave. But if all cars stop and start in unison, that's eliminated. Likewise, synchronized cars can drive closer to each other, merge more efficiently, and reserve alternate routes.
- itishappy 2y ago
  Is it really an apples to apples comparison when Waymo can't even hold a cell phone in one hand an a latte in the other?
- minwcnt5 2y ago
  Those points will help, but they aren't sufficient. Sometimes it's necessary to have an instant reaction time and do more than just slam the brakes, like this one: https://www.reddit.com/r/waymo/comments/1hfvb5o/waymo_visualization_of_avoiding_a_scooter_accident/ https://www.reddit.com/r/waymo/comments/1hfvb5o/waymo_visual...
- macspoofing 2y ago
  You nailed the source of my skepticism as well. I'm sure Waymo has a good self-driving system, but it operates in highly constrained environments. I'm very skeptical that if you controlled for all variables, that self-driving today would show a significant safety improvement. But so far, so good. >- Never exceed the speed limit or follow too closely I would give credit to Waymo and Self-Driving systems for this. The promise of self-driving is that it won't do stupid things that humans may do that increase chance of accident.
  - jfengel 2y ago
    Those highly-constrained environments are actually the ones that scare me most. There are people and everywhere -- crossing the street, coming out of parking spaces, changing lanes, stopping suddenly. There are signs everywhere, and I'm terrified of missing one, especially since I'm having to keep an eye on all of those other things. Highways are so much easier. Everybody just wants to go straight. They do change lanes, but they usually know it's coming well before.
aanet 2y ago
Direct link to the Waymo paper (PDF) [1] TLDR: Waymo claims its autonomy is safer than the "best human drivers with latest cars with latest safety features" and way safer than the "average human driving population" I'm still digesting the paper, but a few quotes below: QUOTE: When examining claims filed under third party liability policies, the Waymo ADS yielded 9 property damage and 2 bodily injury claims, arising from 10 unique collisions, over 25.3 million miles. Two of the property damage claims and both bodily injury claims are still open (unresolved) and could close without any liability payment. In comparison, the overall driving population benchmark was expected to have 78 property damage and 26 bodily injury claims for an equivalent amount of driving exposure in the deployed driving regions. The latest-generation HDV benchmark would be expected to result in 63 property damage and 21 bodily injury claims. When compared to the overall driving population benchmark, the Waymo ADS saw an 88% reduction in third-party property damage claims (ADSPDL: 0.36 [0.163, 0.675] vs OverallPDL: 3.08 [3.063, 3.088] claims per million miles), and a 92% reduction in third-party bodily injury claims (ADSBI: 0.08 [0.010, 0.285] vs OverallBI: 1.04 [1.035, 1.047] claims per million miles), respectively. ... When compared to the latest-generation HDV benchmark, the Waymo ADS recorded an 86% reduction in third-party property damage claims (ADSPDL: 0.36 [0.163, 0.675] vs Latest-GenerationPDL: 2.49 [2.461, 2.515] claims per million miles) and a 90% reduction in third-party bodily injury claims (ADSBI: 0.08 [0.010, 0.285] vs Latest-GenerationBI: 0.82 [0.809, 0.839] claims per million miles) were observed /QUOTE [1] https://storage.googleapis.com/waymo-uploads/files/documents/safety/Comparison%20of%20Waymo%20and%20Human-Driven%20Vehicles%20at%2025M%20miles.pdf https://storage.googleapis.com/waymo-uploads/files/documents...
- xnx 2y ago
  It's probably even better than that. Currently, Waymo vehicles would be displacing rideshare drivers who are more dangerous than average.
hindsightbias 2y ago
Is there evidence human drivers are safe? I’d think this would be obvious.
someotherperson 2y ago
Anecdata, but I've been in a Waymo that avoided an accident that I wouldn't have been able to. It would have been a head on collision around a tight, two-way bend with parked cars on either side. That alone gave me a fair bit of comfort, given that it's 1-0 in Waymo's favor so far.
- tharmas 2y ago
  If all the cars on the road were driven by machines I speculate their would be fewer accidents than there are today. Human drivers can be unpredictable, making it hard for a machine to anticipate. There are also unpredictable events not propagated by humans or human drivers which would possibly result in an increase in these sorts accidents if all the cars were driven by machines.
- veidr 2y ago
  What were the circumstances here? A human driver speeding he wrong way down a one-way street with tight curved?
ribadeo 2y ago
[dead]
metalman 2y ago
this is a completely false statement "waymo" is infinitly more dangerous than any human driver, and has failure modes that are impossible for humans,as it could be hijacked or go out of control, and kill every rider at once. ..,.beep.....beep....click.....whirrrrr....new unlimited speed mode enabled,...beep...,.beeep......zoooooooooom...... kersmashafuckingboom.,..beep..,.
- rogerrogerr 2y ago
  I have very bad news for you about modern cars that don’t drive themselves under regular circumstances. https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-highway/ https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-hig...
hulitu 2y ago
> Swiss Re study: Waymo is safer than even the most advanced human-driven vehicles on Waymo.com. No conflict of interest, whatsoever. /s (Intel is also better than AMD on benchmarks on intel.com)

41 points by ra7 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

How to do better than humans: - Never drive on unfamiliar roads - Never exceed the speed limit or follow too closely - Slam on the brakes at the earliest sign of any trouble. If a human driver rear ends you in the process, it's their fault and will be reported as such. - Never drive on the freeway --- i.e. at high speed where reaction times are more limited. Bascially, only address a safe subset of what human drivers do and then delare victory.

ra7 2y ago
> - Never drive on unfamiliar roads > - Never drive on the freeway --- i.e. at high speed where reaction times are more limited. The paper says human benchmark being used is only from the zip codes Waymo operate in, so they are quite comparable. In fact, they have this bit about including freeway mileage in the human benchmark: > Waymo also almost exclusively operated on surface streets (non access-controlled freeways) with a unique distribution of driving that is representative of a ride-hailing fleet. In contrast, the benchmark represents the privately insured driver population that resides in these geographic regions. The associated benchmark mileage has more freeway driving than the Waymo ADS. There are several considerations when examining these results with respect to this limitation. First, freeway driving has a lower crash rate (Scanlon et al., 2024a). Including freeway driving makes this benchmark crash rate artificially lower, so, by including freeways in this study’s benchmark, the benchmark crash rate underestimates the true driving risk of where the Waymo ADS operates. Second, driving outside of these denser urban areas that the Waymo ADS operates would likely represent a reduction in overall relative crash risk. > - Never exceed the speed limit or follow too closely How is this a bad thing?
- leobg 2y ago
  Who says that the people driving in that zip code are locals? Using the zip code normalizes for accidents in that location. But it doesn’t normalize for familiar vs unfamiliar roads.
  - ra7 2y ago
    They are only considering claims for vehicles registered to addresses in those zip codes. How many drive a car that's locally registered but don't reside there? Not enough to be statistically significant, I would think.
    - leobg 2y ago
      You’re right. I stand corrected. Thanks.
- ToDougie 2y ago
  > How is this a bad thing? re: Speed limit -- Besides the obvious, it's because not every vehicle on the road is part of the lowest common denominator.
honkycat 2y ago
If we can get fully autonomous public transit by driving slower, but it eliminates traffic, I think that is an absolute win.
- panick21_ 2y ago
  The idea that autonomous cars lead to no traffic is delusional.
  - xnx 2y ago
    Traffic barely matters when you don't have to drive. Most traffic is caused by human behavior: running lights, rubbernecking, shockwaves, not noticing when a light changes (too busy looking at phone) etc.
    - lobsterthief 2y ago
      Maybe that’s true where you live but not where I do. A big part of traffic around here is caused by the pure number of vehicles being routed through intersections via traffic signals. Human behavior has little impact there.
      - xnx 2y ago
        Traffic signals are one of the areas where human drivers add the most delay. I've definitely been in situations where each car takes 3 additional seconds to notice that a light has changed, and cars continue to run the light (e.g. making left turns) long after it has changed. I'm too lazy to run the simulation (https://traffic-simulation.de/intersection.html https://traffic-simulation.de/intersection.html), but I'm guessing throughput is much better when every driver is obey the rules and paying total perfect attention.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - Cpoll 2y ago
    I wonder about this. Certainly this is true about the current state of autonomous cars, but... Hypothetically, if all the cars are synced, you eliminate certain congestion effects. E.g. traffic congestion travels backwards like a wave. But if all cars stop and start in unison, that's eliminated. Likewise, synchronized cars can drive closer to each other, merge more efficiently, and reserve alternate routes.
itishappy 2y ago
Is it really an apples to apples comparison when Waymo can't even hold a cell phone in one hand an a latte in the other?
minwcnt5 2y ago
Those points will help, but they aren't sufficient. Sometimes it's necessary to have an instant reaction time and do more than just slam the brakes, like this one: https://www.reddit.com/r/waymo/comments/1hfvb5o/waymo_visualization_of_avoiding_a_scooter_accident/ https://www.reddit.com/r/waymo/comments/1hfvb5o/waymo_visual...
macspoofing 2y ago
You nailed the source of my skepticism as well. I'm sure Waymo has a good self-driving system, but it operates in highly constrained environments. I'm very skeptical that if you controlled for all variables, that self-driving today would show a significant safety improvement. But so far, so good. >- Never exceed the speed limit or follow too closely I would give credit to Waymo and Self-Driving systems for this. The promise of self-driving is that it won't do stupid things that humans may do that increase chance of accident.
- jfengel 2y ago
  Those highly-constrained environments are actually the ones that scare me most. There are people and everywhere -- crossing the street, coming out of parking spaces, changing lanes, stopping suddenly. There are signs everywhere, and I'm terrified of missing one, especially since I'm having to keep an eye on all of those other things. Highways are so much easier. Everybody just wants to go straight. They do change lanes, but they usually know it's coming well before.

aanet 2y ago

Direct link to the Waymo paper (PDF) [1] TLDR: Waymo claims its autonomy is safer than the "best human drivers with latest cars with latest safety features" and way safer than the "average human driving population" I'm still digesting the paper, but a few quotes below: QUOTE: When examining claims filed under third party liability policies, the Waymo ADS yielded 9 property damage and 2 bodily injury claims, arising from 10 unique collisions, over 25.3 million miles. Two of the property damage claims and both bodily injury claims are still open (unresolved) and could close without any liability payment. In comparison, the overall driving population benchmark was expected to have 78 property damage and 26 bodily injury claims for an equivalent amount of driving exposure in the deployed driving regions. The latest-generation HDV benchmark would be expected to result in 63 property damage and 21 bodily injury claims. When compared to the overall driving population benchmark, the Waymo ADS saw an 88% reduction in third-party property damage claims (ADSPDL: 0.36 [0.163, 0.675] vs OverallPDL: 3.08 [3.063, 3.088] claims per million miles), and a 92% reduction in third-party bodily injury claims (ADSBI: 0.08 [0.010, 0.285] vs OverallBI: 1.04 [1.035, 1.047] claims per million miles), respectively. ... When compared to the latest-generation HDV benchmark, the Waymo ADS recorded an 86% reduction in third-party property damage claims (ADSPDL: 0.36 [0.163, 0.675] vs Latest-GenerationPDL: 2.49 [2.461, 2.515] claims per million miles) and a 90% reduction in third-party bodily injury claims (ADSBI: 0.08 [0.010, 0.285] vs Latest-GenerationBI: 0.82 [0.809, 0.839] claims per million miles) were observed /QUOTE [1] https://storage.googleapis.com/waymo-uploads/files/documents/safety/Comparison%20of%20Waymo%20and%20Human-Driven%20Vehicles%20at%2025M%20miles.pdf https://storage.googleapis.com/waymo-uploads/files/documents...

xnx 2y ago
It's probably even better than that. Currently, Waymo vehicles would be displacing rideshare drivers who are more dangerous than average.

hindsightbias 2y ago

Is there evidence human drivers are safe? I’d think this would be obvious.

someotherperson 2y ago

Anecdata, but I've been in a Waymo that avoided an accident that I wouldn't have been able to. It would have been a head on collision around a tight, two-way bend with parked cars on either side. That alone gave me a fair bit of comfort, given that it's 1-0 in Waymo's favor so far.

tharmas 2y ago
If all the cars on the road were driven by machines I speculate their would be fewer accidents than there are today. Human drivers can be unpredictable, making it hard for a machine to anticipate. There are also unpredictable events not propagated by humans or human drivers which would possibly result in an increase in these sorts accidents if all the cars were driven by machines.
veidr 2y ago
What were the circumstances here? A human driver speeding he wrong way down a one-way street with tight curved?

ribadeo 2y ago

[dead]

metalman 2y ago

this is a completely false statement "waymo" is infinitly more dangerous than any human driver, and has failure modes that are impossible for humans,as it could be hijacked or go out of control, and kill every rider at once. ..,.beep.....beep....click.....whirrrrr....new unlimited speed mode enabled,...beep...,.beeep......zoooooooooom...... kersmashafuckingboom.,..beep..,.

rogerrogerr 2y ago
I have very bad news for you about modern cars that don’t drive themselves under regular circumstances. https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-highway/ https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-hig...

hulitu 2y ago

> Swiss Re study: Waymo is safer than even the most advanced human-driven vehicles on Waymo.com. No conflict of interest, whatsoever. /s (Intel is also better than AMD on benchmarks on intel.com)