> I assume that safety will only increase as the proportion rises.

I assume that safety will drastically decrease as self-driving cars are introduced.

i wonder how much of a different technical problem that is from what they do today...

Surveillance state would love that! Hundreds of thousands of cars with 360 degree cameras and sensors capturing everything inside and outside the vehicle. Forget installing CC cameras. just claim “nAtIoNaL sEcUrItY”, get a rubber stamped warrant from FISA court, and go to town.

A problem created by cars (pedestrian vs car, MVA accidents) may be solved by self driving cars. But we introduced a perfect system to allow a foreign or domestic state to perform over reaching surveillance. Ripe for abuse as well.

All of this nonsense could have been avoided if cities were just built with alternative transportation methods in mind. But nope, we have to use cars for every stupid little activity.

Wasteful. Polluting.

As a computer, i find your trust in technology amusing. /s

As I understand it, a lot of women in the areas where Waymo's currently deployed feel safer without having a driver as well.

Given the tendency for premature HN opinions that are absolute to often swing the other way in practice, I'll be curious to see how this actually goes.

Another important thing to think about is that Uber and Lyft are operated by people. Often these working people need the meager salary to live - wouldn't you rather support your local economy instead of being a research subject?

Do you do the same in LA for left turns, and did Waymo find a replacing clue?

https://waymo.com/safety/impact/#downloads

There isn't much to the data available for download, but it looks like 0.00001207261588 accidents per mile, or ~1.2 accidents per 100,000 miles (268/22199000). Figuring your father drives 15k miles per year, times 30 years and rounding up to 500k miles, Waymo has a recorded 6 accidents to your father's 0.

Not sure why that's an interesting comparison, however.

Assuming your dad is good at not driving when he shouldn't (tired/drunk/angry), he's not on the road when it's worrisome. I don't worry about getting into accidents with drivers who aren't on the road, I worry about the tired/drunk/angry drivers I do have to share the road with. Waymo at 2:15am after the bars let out is much less worrisome than any other car at that time, because I have no idea who's in that other car. Your father could be the safest driver ever, but I have no idea if it's him in the other car, or if that driver is totally blacked out and shouldn't be driving.

I wouldn’t be surprised if a top x% of drivers would outperform Waymo at this current juncture. (Especially perhaps in things like heavy rain).

However, I’ll use myself as an example. I’ve driven over 1.2 million miles over the last 17 years. (It may be closer to 1.5 million but I’m only counting miles on vehicles I’ve owned as that’s easier for me to calculate quickly ). Without an accident.

I know that I get tired and my driving skills drop[1]. I have to sneeze or cough and they drop. I’m on a long continuously straight road, stressed about xyz and they drop.

Self driving cars won’t necessarily have the same short comings.

Even the self driving features that my car has (very limited, 2023 Infiniti Q50 Red Sport 400) are better at times then I am. (Though it often will wait far too long to brake in my opinion when using the auto cruise even at maximum distance).

However, I do think humans have advantages too in some situations. (If you can on average track what’s around you and try to think as close as possible to 12 seconds ahead…. If you haven’t try it sometime on the highway. )

[1] perhaps luckily, I have a tendency to drive slower when fatigued. However at times I’ve pushed it, realized I’m going 15 mph below the speed limit, and realized I needed to not be driving. I also know that when not fatigued my lane assist will usually trigger 0 times on a normal 20-30 mile drive. When fatigued, it may begin to trigger once every 10 minutes. To clarify, I’m not out of my lane, but I’m moving out of center.

How the top 10% of drivers are going in amongst all that isn't really a factor as far as I can see. They'll probably end up banned from taking the wheel at some point for consistencies sake but they are ultimately not really a factor. Besides, automated cars will overtake (hehe) their skills at some point whether we track it specifically or not; in the long term humans can't compete against an engineered process.

Also, a taxi driver may not be a good baseline since what you're replacing is not exactly taxi drivers but instead you're replacing some taxi drivers but also yourself.

(2) Uber drivers have a reputation for being extremely aggressive and don’t need a special license. I’d also like to see how they compare.

(3) I do want to see the data you propose, because I think you’re fundamentally right.

This is because nhtsa's data comes from accident reports and insurance claims, and people get into fender benders everyday that never get reported because nobody wants their rates to go up.

If you look at some of the skepticism around self-driving cars in the US, it makes sense that they're going slow and careful.

Even if a spike in accidents was still lower than the equivalent for humans, that would bring a lot of political scrutiny to Waymo that would then slow their deployment.

But clearly it is not publicly available or audited.