2 ms·

> Waymo could make a bus too anyway Oh hell no. Cars are bad enough from the damage they can cause by kinetic energy, but a bus? Especially a bus where people

> Waymo could make a bus too anyway Oh hell no. Cars are bad enough from the damage they can cause by kinetic energy, but a bus? Especially a bus where people don't wear seatbelts or, worse, are standing?

DiscourseFan 2mo ago
It would probably be safer than most bus drivers currently, so I don't see the issue. The discomfort around damage being caused by statistical anomalies vs individual error is not a rational one if the former is, in the aggregate, smaller than the latter. Individuals have stories, but societies operate more closely in line with the laws of physics: probabilistic at the small scale, deterministic more broadly. From that view, we are just replacing one statistical possibility with another, one which will result in less people dying; or, more importantly, less likelihood you or your loved ones will die because of a bus accident.
ButlerianJihad 2mo ago
> don't wear seatbelts I just want to point out that the safety record of public transit drivers is typically impeccable. There is no safer vehicle out on the roads except buses and trains. I have been a rider of public transit for 50 years, minus about a decade when I owned a car, and in 3 different major cities, and literally I've never been aboard a bus that hit another vehicle, hit any obstacle, or had a reportable accident. Literally never happened. (I was aboard a light rail train that collided with an SUV, but that's a whole other ballgame.) I've never felt unsafe without a seat belt on board a bus. Seat belts in cars may be a bit of a panacea, but I challenge you to find any metropolitan area where the buses have accidents, much less injury accidents, on a weekly basis.
fragmede 2mo ago
Well, you'd need to crash for that too be an issue. We have to wait for the data to prove it out, but I much prefer a Waymo driver than a human one, especially if I'm walking home right after the bars close.

DiscourseFan 2mo ago

It would probably be safer than most bus drivers currently, so I don't see the issue. The discomfort around damage being caused by statistical anomalies vs individual error is not a rational one if the former is, in the aggregate, smaller than the latter. Individuals have stories, but societies operate more closely in line with the laws of physics: probabilistic at the small scale, deterministic more broadly. From that view, we are just replacing one statistical possibility with another, one which will result in less people dying; or, more importantly, less likelihood you or your loved ones will die because of a bus accident.

ButlerianJihad 2mo ago

> don't wear seatbelts I just want to point out that the safety record of public transit drivers is typically impeccable. There is no safer vehicle out on the roads except buses and trains. I have been a rider of public transit for 50 years, minus about a decade when I owned a car, and in 3 different major cities, and literally I've never been aboard a bus that hit another vehicle, hit any obstacle, or had a reportable accident. Literally never happened. (I was aboard a light rail train that collided with an SUV, but that's a whole other ballgame.) I've never felt unsafe without a seat belt on board a bus. Seat belts in cars may be a bit of a panacea, but I challenge you to find any metropolitan area where the buses have accidents, much less injury accidents, on a weekly basis.

fragmede 2mo ago

Well, you'd need to crash for that too be an issue. We have to wait for the data to prove it out, but I much prefer a Waymo driver than a human one, especially if I'm walking home right after the bars close.