Waymo Safety Impact

by xnx • 4 months ago

351 398 4 months ago

mkw5053• 4 months ago

Living in SF (and dad of a toddler), this seems like a no-brainer. I can't wait for fewer human drivers.

kstrauser• 4 months ago

I've said before that Waymo is already vastly, incredibly safer than some of my older relatives who refuse to give up their keys. Ever been around The Villages in Florida and seen a man leaning forward behind the wheel to squint at what they're driving toward, with their wife shouting at them to turn left!, turn left!? That's just kind of tolerated in some places where the cops don't want to make waves with the wealthy older community.

A self-driving car never gets tired and sleepy after driving for many hours straight. A highway-bound Waymo would be safer than a few instances of distant past me who stayed on the road longer than I was safe to. They also never get drunk, and are safer than approximately 100% of impaired drivers.

I genuinely think we'll all be safer when lots of people collectively realize that someone other than themselves should be driving.

Schiendelman3• 4 months ago

People won't collectively realize squat.

Insurance companies will simply price people out of driving. And I welcome it SO very much.

onoesworkacct2• 4 months ago

I enjoy driving (basically) wherever I want to though.

I don't want to have the freedom to go places determined by some faceless multinational, according to my subscription. Or via some "safety" regime.

nutjob22• 4 months ago

Self driving doesn't mean forced self driving, there will always be a manual driving override. But your insurance may be more expensive.

jedberg3• 4 months ago

Anecdotally, both from riding in them and walking/driving next to/around them, this feels obvious. They never get distracted. Sure, they sometimes make mistakes, but the mistakes are never "I didn't see that". They see better than humans in all cases (where they operate). They react faster than humans.

The one case where they hit a child, it was because the child jumped in front of the car. And they showed that they hit the child at a lower speed than a human would have because of the reaction time.

I would rather be in an area where only Waymo's are allowed than an area where they are banned.

bloppe3• 4 months ago

Ya and they're the only ones I can count on being polite during rush hour

Retric3• 4 months ago

Waymo as a system has crossed the threshold where I trust them more than average driver, but all this hardware is relatively new, well maintained, and their software is closely tied to it.

I’m way less confident of self driving in the hands of the general public when differed maintenance often results in people and even companies driving with squealing breaks and balding tires etc.

mtklein• 4 months ago

I am also not looking forward to the system transitioning from "big experiment, burn money to make it good" to "established business unit, tweak it to death for incrementally more money / personal promotion." We're still in the honeymoon period and I very much expect to hate Waymo in 10 or 15 years when they reach a steady state.

kirubakaran• 4 months ago

The self-driving software could detect that the unmaintained car isn't responding correctly to the controls and refuse to drive.

jeffbee3• 4 months ago

Waymo's software has crossed multiple generations of sensors and vehicles over almost two decades. It does not seem to be tightly coupled to a particular device.

rcxdude• 4 months ago

It's not obvious that will exist in the near future, anyway. Waymo aren't planning on selling their cars, and the economics and liability structure of self-driving strongly bias towards just running a taxi service.

Clamchop• 4 months ago

The way I see it, self-driving cars have the potential to deliver us from the burden of ownership altogether--maintenance, insurance, liability, parking, and all the rest. This hinges on availability, quality of service, pricing, and a rather large shift in the culture around cars and driving but I have hope that we can get there with time.

Cars are very expensive things to buy and own.

fellowniusmonk• 4 months ago

I ride my bike and rollerblade around Austin.

If only Waymo's were on the road I wouldn't worry about bike path dividers at all.

I sometimes pace them to act as a moving shield.

Nothing else comes close, not even eye contact and being waved on by a human. The other autonomous cars that have been introduced are at least just as scary to be around as people.

ajp-stl• 4 months ago

sounds like you enjoy the predicability of Waymo vehicles. humans are unpredictable.

Mawr4• 4 months ago

I sometimes pace them to act as a moving shield.

Yep, similar concept to using pedestrians crossing the road as shields. Cars reliably yield for them, not so much for cyclists.

not even eye contact

Okay, DO NOT rely on eye contact. Look at what the vehicle and particularly its wheels, are doing.

being waved on by a human

That's a potential death trap too. Just because one vehicle is yielding to you doesn't mean every other vehicle you're supposed to yield to is.

jjmarr11• 4 months ago

Waymo saved my life in LA.

When I visited LA, I rode in a Waymo going the speed limit in the right lane on a very busy street. The Waymo approached an intersection where it had the right of way, when suddenly a car ignored its stop sign and drove into the road.

In less than a second, the Waymo moved into the left lane and kept going. I didn't even realize what was happening until after it was over.

Most human drivers would've t-boned the car at 50+ km/h. Maybe they would've braked and reduced the impact, which would be the right move. A human swerving probably would've overshot into oncoming traffic. Only a robot could've safely swerved into another lane and avoid the crash entirely.

Unfortunately, the Waymo only supported Spotify and did not work with my YouTube Music subscription, so I was listening to an advertisement at the time of my near-death experience. 4.5 stars overall.

Taek• 4 months ago

Unfortunately, the Waymo only supported Spotify and did not work with my YouTube Music subscription, so I was listening to an advertisement at the time of my near-death experience. 4.5 stars overall.

This detail sent me, it's crazy that we can pay $25 to have a life saving robot take us across the city yet Spotify is going to blast ads at us the whole time for the sake of making an extra $0.18 (yes that's the actual number) per hour of listening time.

georgemcbay• 4 months ago

I was listening to an advertisement at the time of my near-death experience.

You'll probably never forget that advertisement, which is an exciting business opportunity for Waymo.

They could partner with Spotify and other media content partners so that the Waymo can generate an adrenaline-rush near crash experience when a premium advertiser's ad is playing. /s (hopefully)

AgentME• 4 months ago

Waymos have since added support for YouTube Music thankfully.

ElijahLynn• 4 months ago

How ironic that an Alphabet company, Waymo, only works with a competitor streaming music service, Spotify, and not their own, YouTube Music. I guess that shows how separate they are.

cucumber37328425• 4 months ago

I think you're over-playing how decisively a Waymo will move and under-playing how decent the average human is.

I've ridden in Waymos. They don't exactly slap on the blinker and move at the limit of traction like someone about to miss their exit. If cut off they absolutely will go full brake rather than perform any sort of spicy lane change or turn.

rootusrootus11• 4 months ago

I hope you are misremembering. Swerving is most often the wrong choice, and I would be disappointed if Waymo were opting for that. By far the best option is to panic stop. Human or robot, physics is a harsh mistress and swerving is more likely to make you lose control and end up in a much more unforgiving wreck.

cco• 4 months ago

Thankfully they've now shipped their own product, YouTube Music.

And Google Pay, imagine my surprise back in 2021 when I signed up for Waymo and realized I had to manually type in my credit card. No Google Pay??? C'mon y'all, you're Alphabet!

cush• 4 months ago

Waymo saved my life... Unfortunately the Waymo only supported Spotify

I chuckled

zx80802• 4 months ago

Waymo saved my life in LA. When I visited LA, I rode in a Waymo going the speed limit in the right lane on a very busy street. The Waymo approached an intersection where it had the right of way, when suddenly a car ignored its stop sign and drove into the road.
...
Unfortunately, the Waymo only supported Spotify and did not work with my YouTube Music subscription, so I was listening to an advertisement at the time of my near-death experience. 4.5 stars overall.

What?! Is this a generated comment?

int0x292• 4 months ago

Nearly got T-boned in a Lyft in LA. I am lucky to still be alive as the driver was not aware and should not have been driving. Where available I've stopped using human driven rideshare.

hattmall• 4 months ago

Only a robot could've safely swerved into another lane and avoid the crash entirely.

Do you drive a lot? I feel like humans take evasive actions like this all the time.

refulgentis• 4 months ago

They support YouTube Music now, thank god

kqr• 4 months ago

when suddenly a car ignored its stop sign and drove into the road.

I vaguely recall reading at some point that this is something human drivers learn to do around robot cars because the robots are so timid. Is that still the case, was it never the case, or has it stopped being the case?

If it's still the case, one could argue that if you were not in a robot, the situation would never have occurred in the first place! (On the other hand, if you were both in robots, maybe it also wouldn't have...)

socalgal24• 4 months ago

I can almost guarantee, given the way no traffic laws are enforced anymore in LA and so many cars are breaking them that cutting off a waymo car in dangerous ways, because you know it has the attention and reflexes to yeild, will be a new thing.

socalgal24• 4 months ago

Waymo supporting music services at all is stupid to me. They should just let you bluetooth your phone and play your own music. I don't want any of those services. I want my own music.

johnbarron• 4 months ago

Great reaction time from the Waymo. But a 50 km/h side impact in a 5 star crash-rated Jaguar with curtain airbags is not "saved my life" territory, more like an insurance claim. The fact that you instinctively framed it as a near-death experience is Waymo most impressive engineering achievement.

whyenot3• 4 months ago

There is also a different kind of increased safety. There is no driver. No weird conversations about slaughtering goats, no sexual advances. No worrying that your driver is going to assault you or attempt to kidnap you. I know, it's all very far fetched, and Uber/Lyft drivers are almost always nice, courteous and professional, but I have experienced a few times when that hasn't been the case. With Waymo, it's not even an issue.

0x3f10• 4 months ago

There are second order effects though. Once Waymo kills the Uber driver/taxi jobs, what are the chances your Waymo is attacked by a roving band of jobless drivers? It's surely nonzero.

dbt002• 4 months ago

This is like keeping your kids inside in case something bad happens to them.

If your kids never leave the house, something bad definitely happens to them, they stay kids.

autoexec• 4 months ago

There is also a different kind of increased safety. There is no driver. No weird conversations about slaughtering goats, no sexual advances. No worrying that your driver is going to assault you or attempt to kidnap you.

There are also new risks that weren't possible before. A software error can send you into oncoming traffic. Hackers can gain control of your vehicle either directly/remotely or by cleverly designed signage placed on the roadside. A disgruntled waymo contractor in the Philippines can remote drive you into a crowd of people. A flashing stoplight can leave you stranded at an intersection. The car may not see or react appropriately any number of uncommon hazards that human drivers would recognize and avoid. Only a relatively small number of these cars have been on the road, in limited conditions, and only for a small number years. There will be failures and risks we haven't even imagined yet.

MagicMoonlight3• 4 months ago

Until the Chinese or Mossad tell your car to drive into traffic.

fainpul• 4 months ago

They see better than humans in all cases (where they operate). They react faster than humans.

You're absolutely right!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp0W5v8GOPc&t=520s

motbus33• 4 months ago

When it happens, who will go to jail?

jedberg3• 4 months ago

When a piece of construction equipment falls over and kills someone, the person or company who owns the equipment is liable. I image it would be the same thing here.

Sometimes that person then counter-sues the manufacturer of the equipment if they think it was faulty. I image that would also happen here if there were personal ownership of self driving cars.

meindnoch• 4 months ago

Nobody. But you will be offered a voucher.

bloppe3• 4 months ago

Nobody will. In fact, most car fatalities that are caused by humans involve zero criminal charges for anybody involved. In America, everybody from the courts to the media to society at large is primed to think of car accidents as normal. If you want to murder somebody in the middle of town in broad daylight, you can actually get away with it, as long as you do it with your car.

At least with Waymo, it's much less frequent.

ranger207• 4 months ago

The one major mistake I've seen is where they recently repainted a road from 2 lanes to 1 with some somewhat nonstandard markings indicating a merge, and the Waymo just drove through the merge as if the 2nd lane was still there

jasonfarnon• 4 months ago

"The one case where they hit a child, it was because the child jumped in front of the car. And they showed that they hit the child at a lower speed than a human would have because of the reaction time."

Was this the case that was featured on here a few months ago? Where they voluntarily "disclosed" it? I seem to remember noticing at the time that they never said this was the only time they hit a child/someone. Which made me wonder how representative this case was. I might be mis-remembering though.

rao-v• 4 months ago

Riding a motorcycle or even a bicycle around Waymos feels surprisingly safer. You can reliably predict so many things about how it will behave and to an extent even its traffic calming effect on other cars.

konschubert• 4 months ago

Yea. Cycling around self-driving cars is obviously much safer and many more people will be encouraged to do it.

Fire-Dragon-DoL4• 4 months ago

There was however a detail that explained the car was in a school area during pickup time and should have been on high alert exactly for that

mitthrowaway2• 4 months ago

The one case where they hit a kid, they should have been driving slower to begin with. Their stopping distance exceeded their visibility in a school zone during pickup time. They might have done better than a bad human driver, and had good reflexes on the brakes, but a good human driver would have evaluated the conditions and not have been going that fast.

bogardon• 4 months ago

I'd love to cycle more outdoors, but I'm always wary of the risks. How cool would it be if you could hire a waymo as a "team car" and have it follow you around? It could also carry extra equipment...and act as a ride home in case of emergencies.

sonofhans3• 4 months ago

I get your idea, but it does rather sound like asking a 4,000lb death robot to follow you around closely and hope that it doesn’t screw up …

amarant2• 4 months ago

To turn the colourful phrasing against you, I too would like a death robot to protect me from all the murder monkeys having a death race around me if I was out biking on the road/death race track.

wffurr2• 4 months ago

If you ride conservatively (use lights at night, use good judgement at intersections) and stay away from buses and trucks, the exercise vastly outweighs any risk.

loeg• 4 months ago

Personally I avoid riding at night entirely, and use at least a tail light during the day.

Mawr4• 4 months ago

This is very dependent on the environment. I would not be so confident saying this about the USA in particular.

If you can stick to at least half-decent dedicated cycling infrastructure separated from cars, sure. If riding alongside traffic, I wouldn't be surprised that, depending on the exact route, the gains wouldn't outweigh the risks.

Generally speaking, operating a bike safely is considerably more difficult than a car and the margins of error are tiny.

onoesworkacct2• 4 months ago

that's a lot of energy consumption.

For a more ecologically conscious alternative, I recommend carrying a handful of sparkplugs.

Detrytus• 4 months ago

Someone once said that this is because Waymos are novelty, and they still behave a bit weird, like being slow and undecisive. Which leads to humans being super-careful around them. So the Waymo safety record is actually not their own achievement.

I guess we'll have to wait to one of the two things to happen to really assess Waymo's performance:

1. They need to lose their markings and easily distinguishable features (like a big lidar on top), so they don't get any special treatment from other drivers.

2. They need to be majority of vehicles on the road.

bt1a2• 4 months ago

I'm only a little weirded out when they're right next to me stopped at a light and that thang is spinnin and making note of me

Analemma_2• 4 months ago

That info is pretty outdated: they were slow and indecisive in 2024, but now they behave pretty much like any top-decile human driver. I don’t think they get special treatment from other drivers either, I can’t read anyone else’s mind but I treat them like just another car and it seems like everyone else does as well.

linkjuice4all• 4 months ago

Ugh - either the commons is an unregulated 3D space or we actually tag and separate moving bodies regulated by size/weight, purpose, owner, occupant type, etc. I don't necessarily hate commercial vehicles utilizing the various rights-of-way but clearly there is a difference in momentum, agency, and general "value" between some human wandering around and a heavy robot.

doubled112• 4 months ago

How slow and indecisive?

The other day a human driver in front of me was doing 30 km/h under the speed limit down the middle of two lanes.

On that same drive, another driver doing around 15 under clipped a roundabout on the way in and on the way out. Guess they couldn’t decide to turn the wheel fast enough.

I refuse to believe everybody is hammered all of the time, but I’m starting to wonder.

It is less than 10km round trip, in the ‘burbs. Driving with humans scares me anymore. Bring on the robots.

djsavvy2• 4 months ago

That would make sense a while ago, but definitely not in SF for locals who have lived here a while. For me as a pedestrian/bicyclist/motorcyclist I actually feel safer around them than any other car.

necovek13• 4 months ago

You seem to confirm the point that you adapt your behavior in presence of Waymos, even if you believe it is in the other direction.

probabletrain3• 4 months ago

recently (past couple of months) they've been much more aggressive in the ways that make a good driver a good driver - confident and assertive when they should be. for me this has anecdotally been a massive improvement

swasheck• 4 months ago

one of the things that i noticed in a recent trip to austin is that the waymo vehicles were far more assertive and quick than the human drivers so maybe that has been addressed.

sbuttgereit• 4 months ago

"Someone once said ..."

Someone also once said that the Azores are the remains of Atlantis. I simply didn't put any credence in it.

While behavioral changes around a self-driving car are plausible; they're common enough now that, at least where I live in San Francisco, regular human drivers should be pretty well acclimated to them.

zardo• 4 months ago

Is this an independent study?

brunoTbear• 4 months ago

They make the data available on that page for you to do your own research.

bt1a2• 4 months ago

I've been observing their behavior in Atlanta for about the past year. Our roads here are fairly curvy, hilly, and lacking of expected markings, yet I haven't seen a driverless Waymo vehicle make a single odd move. One thing that brought a smile to my face was when I came to a 4-way stop at the same time as a Waymo vehicle at night & I flash my brights to tell the other vehicle to go ahead (southern hospitality) and I see the Waymo immediately begin its course through the intersection. I was so jolted that I began to tail it in order to pull up next to it to see if there was a human behind the wheel. Watching it drive down this slowly descending hilly road with intermittent speed humps and cars parked alongside the main right lane gave me a close up view of its slightly curving trajectory and braking behavior with regard to the humps. My thought on human or not was inconclusive until we reached a red light, and as I shot my eyes over and saw an empty driver seat, I smiled widely knowing that the software responds to brights flashed at 4-way stops (please don't tell me it doesn't and it just saw me indecisively not initiate at the stop). Thanks for reading

kfarr2• 4 months ago

It definitely does not respond to flashing headlights in that manner. You’re observing its default behavior when at a 4 way stop with other vehicles not moving.

djsavvy2• 4 months ago

How are you saying that so confidently? Waymos respond to traffic cops directing traffic manually

HaZeust• 4 months ago

A quaint, positive anecdotal comment?? On MY internet?!?!

dyauspitr• 4 months ago

How do you know? It’s trained on videos where it might see that happen often.

elil17• 4 months ago

Why wouldn't it be trained to do that? You can easily include that in the training data.

It's not like the people building Waymo have never heard of flashing your brights before.

t1234s• 4 months ago

why does HN still use links to twitter.com and not x.com?

wffurr2• 4 months ago

Presumably that was the submitter's choice.

rhet0rica• 4 months ago

Optimism. Someday the blue bird will be free.

oblio• 4 months ago

Imagine creating a brand that became renowned world wide and even created its own verb.

And then throwing all that away for the genius brand name of... "x". Brought to you from the same 50 year old that decided that having car models that spell S3XY is cool.

sonofhans3• 4 months ago

“Safer” == “Safer than all other human drivers in the same city.” By their own admission, this is not a straightforward comparison. If they could do the math for the same routes, times of day, and conditions … maybe I’d believe it. Otherwise, this data is trivial to cherrypick, and they have every reason to present it as well as possible.

I believe Waymos are pretty safe, and that’s a great thing. “Safer than humans (for selected rides inside this area)” is still very good, but it’s not at all “Safer than humans (period).”

jstummbillig• 4 months ago

By their own admission, this is not a straightforward comparison.

If they wanted to cherry pick, would they not omit that admission?

In any case, it seems plausible to me that the routes that Waymo drives are above average in human incidents, given that Waymo is probably overrepresented in high stress/traffic, inner city scenarios.

lich_king• 4 months ago

The comparison gets picked up as the headline; the admission does not. This is exploited quite often, e.g. in science reporting. I'm not saying this is what Waymo did - they don't seem to be bad actors - but absolutely, the pattern does occur.

lemoncucumber• 4 months ago

I've heard that Waymo relies on having very accurate map data for the areas where they operate, so perhaps they could perform worse than human drivers in areas where they don't have good map data.

But I also trust that the company wouldn't deploy them in those areas until the quality data they need is available. So perhaps "safer in the environments where they are actually deployed" would be more accurate, but that's also the only thing that matters.

Speculating about what would happen if they were used in ways they are neither intended to be used nor are actually used feels a little silly. Most machines can be unsafe if you use them in ways they're not intended to be used.

mmmlinux2• 4 months ago

I, and I expect most human drivers, also probably drive measurably worse if I'm in a city I'm not familiar with.

snewman• 4 months ago

In essentially all cases where a Waymo and a human-driven car have collided, the human driver has clearly been at fault. This seems definitive and not susceptible to cherry picking.

tjoff3• 4 months ago

That could just be, and seems to be in some cases at least, because Waymo doesn't behave like a human would, and people gets tripped up.

I don't doubt Waymos are very safe, but I always irk at these comparisons. Majority of human accidents are due to gross negligence and/or driving under some influence or serious fatigue. A system incapable of alcohol etc. is better than that? Well that is a substantially lower bar than you can possibly imagine. Add to that that all systems have constraints on how and where they are able to go. Combined even Tesla can be made to look good.

Depending on the context and question it might still be the question to pose. But people often make the leap to assume that a typical Waymo is x better than a typical human driver which is an entirely different question entirely.

Waymo is for sure one of the (if not the only) good players out there though, gives me some hope.

hiddencost• 4 months ago

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

Worth reviewing the methodology, rather than making stuff up.

probabletrain3• 4 months ago

If you were choosing between getting into a Waymo or a car driven by a human driver (where Waymo operates, for a route that Waymo would do), the data shows that the Waymo is safer.

sonofhans3• 4 months ago

No, it does not. For one thing, we don’t have access to all the data, just what’s being told us. For another, it at best shows that Waymo is safer than average. Safer than an attentive London Cabby? I bet not.

rootusrootus11• 4 months ago

Perhaps the comparison should only be to other taxis. Since I cannot buy a Waymo, it is not really relevant whether it is better than an average driver (including all the drunk ones, and the speed racers, etc).

skissane• 4 months ago

There are other safety differences with human-driven vehicles… interpersonal violence does happen with taxis (e.g. drivers sexually harassing/assaulting passengers, passengers robbing drivers) - by definition those things cannot happen with a Waymo

skippyboxedhero• 4 months ago

accidents are not equally distributed across humans. more serious accidents will be caused by people who are habitually doing things that are unsafe but, for various reasons, most places lack effective ways to stop these people driving so they keep causing accidents.

the metric is not some nebulous aspect of skill but the bottom decile of human drivers causing accidents. it is not difficult to believe that an AI can drive better than this group, it is not a high bar, below the 10th percentile are people who should not be driving but cause most of the accidents.

0x59• 4 months ago

I appreciate the skepticism. While I suspect motor vehicles that cannot be distracted would be safer than motor vehicles that can be, it shouldn't be claimed without real evidence.

If I were Google, I'd partner with some insurance carriers to compare the number of claim events normalized to the number of drivers on the road (approximated with Android data) in a city (same time of year, etc) before and after introducing Waymo. If claims per driver decreases, then I would be more inclined to support the claim that they're actually safer and that they don't just "seem safer"

janalsncm• 4 months ago

A year or two ago, would have agreed with you. I used to think they were cherry picking as well.

But Waymos have driven so many miles by this point, if they are hiding some data that would tip the scales back towards human drivers I have yet to see it. If there is a way to slice the data that makes Waymo’s look less safe I would welcome the correction.

If Waymo truly has 80-90% fewer crashes in the conditions they drove in, then it still has policy implications for places like Phoenix that do have good conditions.

butlike• 4 months ago

More boring, too. Can't meet cool people if it's yet again just me left to throw a proverbial tennis ball against the proverbial wall.

stebalien• 4 months ago

I live in LA and Waymos are the only cars I don't have to play chicken with when crossing the street. Even the drivers that see you will just give you a "sorry, I'm in a rush" wave as they nearly run you over.

leovander• 4 months ago

Make sure to never be in a hurry to get anywhere because you might then get stuck behind a fleet of them going exactly the speed limit, grid locking you in.

flipbrad• 4 months ago

Isn't the correct answer to this, lobbying for higher speed limits? Rather than chastizing obedience to current rules.

UltraSane• 4 months ago

Being forced to drive the speed limit isn't that big of a deal

Toutouxc2• 4 months ago

Is this something that I’m too European to understand? How do you get “stuck” behind someone doing the speed limit?

rossjudson2• 4 months ago

You drive an ambulance? Or a fire truck?

EdwardDiego3• 4 months ago

I did find the Waymos in SF disconcerting as they approached pedestrian crossings while I was waiting - with a human driver there's many different cues that they've seen you and noticed you - whether it be looking directly at you, or slowing down in preparation for you to cross.

I'm sure if I had just started walking across the crossing it would have reacted perfectly, but I wasn't willing - based on the lack of observable "I have noticed you" cues - to test that theory.

DuckConference• 4 months ago

The lights up on top will show a walk sign when it's waiting for a pedestrian to cross before proceeding.

Ferret74464• 4 months ago

Are these at pedestrian crossings or jaywalking?

ChrisArchitect• 4 months ago

non-X source: https://waymo.com/blog/shorts/waymo-safety-impact-update-170...

xnx4• 4 months ago

Ah. That's the link I was looking for.

kevwil• 4 months ago

https://people.com/waymo-exec-reveals-company-uses-operators... might be relevant content as well

scj• 4 months ago

"For example, the current cities Waymo operates in do not have appreciable snow fall, and as a result neither the Waymo nor the human benchmark data include this type of inclement weather."

I'm happy to see this acknowledged, and hope it's a sign that they appreciate the difficulties of winter driving.

xnx4• 4 months ago

They're definitely aware and working on it: https://x.com/dmitri_dolgov/status/2028863520037867820

notatoad• 4 months ago

It’s wild to me how people are so fixated on this. Yes, obviously winter driving has challenges. And also obviously, the leading self-driving company has thought about that.

They’re preparing to launch and have already been testing in Chicago, detroit, Minneapolis, Denver, Philadelphia, Boston, NYC, and London. I think it’s safe to assume they’ve considered winter driving.

sdeiley• 4 months ago

And they're in Pittsburgh. Seen them driving while snowing.

boulos• 4 months ago

Our sixth generation sensor suite is intended for winter driving: https://waymo.com/blog/2025/10/creating-an-all-weather-drive... for some nice visuals.

eichin• 4 months ago

Ooh, that's a worthy challenge. Of course, I can imagine getting enough data on all of those cities and deciding to launch everywhere else but not Boston "because your roads are garbage and you all drive like you're impaired 24/7" :-)

bikelang• 4 months ago

They’re in Denver now (not available to the public yet) for this exact reason. Unfortunately we’ve had our least snowy winter in recorded history this year - so they only got a few days of real snow.

ellieh• 4 months ago

as a motorcyclist I often feel more comfortable riding near waymos

at this point I trust that they have seen me, know that I'm there, and won't behave unpredictably

Underphil• 4 months ago

Also a motorcyclist. I've seen perhaps 6 or 7 Waymos whilst riding. One pulled out of curbside parking space right in front me.

It wasn't life or death or anything like that, but I was close enough that it was a real "dick move" and I had to get on the anchors a lot harder than I'd have liked. Not sure what sensor or whatever it was missing for that to happen, but I can assure you it did.

(I'm not suggesting my anecdotal evidence says anything particularly worthy around autonomous vehicle safety, just sharing a surprising incident)

cjonas• 4 months ago

Relevant: https://youtu.be/cJER6WtOkjk?si=pfUMpqgCL8IHewKy&t=28

xnx4• 4 months ago

This page is old, but they just refreshed the data shows Waymo is 13x safer than human drivers (in the cities it operates in).

pokot0• 4 months ago

My question is: is safer than average human good enough?

When I drive I have the option to choose to be safe or not. When a computer drives I lose that option. So for 49% of the people, safer than the average human is less safe than before.

I think we need to reach "Safer than the safest 10% of humans".

Also these reports should be done by a government agency.

cgeier• 4 months ago

Yes, it's good enough. Because you cannot control who else is on the street around you. Having cars around you that are driving safer than the average is better than them driving average.

necovek13• 4 months ago

You seem to be thinking this is compared to median driver, and not average one: if most accidents are caused by small number of bad drivers, your average will be bad, but even median might still be good.

And this does not even compare the drivers, but simply miles driven.

So I think that 80% of human drivers would likely be safer than Waymo unless they are driving under the influence or extremely tired or distracted.

Note that "13x safer" already implies being in the top 10%, though.

srini7• 4 months ago

From a purely technical perspective, I would expect a Waymo to react to unexpected external stimuli much, much faster than a human. It gives the Waymo options that are unavailable to a human's slower reaction time.

jeffbee3• 4 months ago

Even the most visible academic skeptic of Waymo (Phil Koopman) had to throw in the towel and admit that they've cleared every conceivable statistical hurdle to conclusively demonstrating that they are better than humans on injuries and airbag deployments. They have moved the goalposts to aesthetic arguments, for example: if it's so safe why does it sometimes do weird stuff? But to principled systems thinkers they have already shown what needed to be shown. It's safer.

altruios• 4 months ago

Car centric design is ruining this country.

The great deal: let's redesign our cities to be car free. Consider the economic boom that amount of renovation would produce. Consider the increased economic activity from happier and more productive people. Consider the increased space for nature, parks, real estate, development.

Cars are the worst thing to have been invented. Optimizing the personal automobile leads to optimizing for a horrible living experience in the city. Let us reconsider all of this. This is bad. We can do better. We must.

JumpCrisscross5• 4 months ago

let's redesign our cities to be car free

Or, let's not spend trillions of dollars on a behavioural experiment and get pedestrian safety with now-proven kit.

uv-depression2• 4 months ago

Americans will vehemently deny this, but you're absolutely right. Decades of car industry propaganda has convinced people that the ability to drive anywhere is true freedom, and they can't see that the freedom not to need a car (all the time) is better for everyone; cities are quieter, more comfortable, and less polluted with fewer cars (no, electric cars don't fix this). It leads to other absurdities, like US cities frequently having parking minimums for bars. That's insane!

There's also the classic problem of people wildly misinterpreting statements and getting mad about it. You can say "we should design cities not centred around cars" and people will hear "I'm going to make it illegal for you to own a car". Or my favourite exchange, "Let's improve public transit" followed by "but public transit is bad for me, I can't take it".

freetime23• 4 months ago

Yes, this debate comes up every time someone mentions the word "car" on the internet, and there are crazies on both sides. But I don't think it's fair to frame either side of the debate by what the crazies are saying. Or to assume that just because someone disagrees with you they have fallen victim to propaganda.

I think most Americans just like their cars and are reasonably happy with the status quo. They can be receptive to incremental improvements to public transportation, cycling, and pedestrian infrastucture, but they bristle at the idea of turning their city into a "car free city" (which is what the parent is suggesting) or being told they are wrong for liking their car.

freetime23• 4 months ago

Optimizing the personal automobile leads to optimizing for a horrible living experience in the city. Let us reconsider all of this. This is bad. We can do better. We must.

I agree with you insofar as I am always in support of making cities more friendly for pedestrians and cyclists, and like the idea of closing off parts of cities to cars.

But to not even acknowledge the benefits to society of a technology which can reduce serious traffic accidents by 90% just feels hopelessly extreme to me.

weusedto• 4 months ago

Anecdote from 1000s of miles biking: I bike a lot in the Bay, for fun, exercise, commute, all of the above (I'm a friendly one, I promise!) and the comfort I feel when I see a Waymo alongside me or at a stop sign is immediately apparent. I have been hit 5-10x riding in NYC and SF (nothing serious, gratefully, mostly just people turning right not knowing/caring I was there), and the Waymo's awareness that I exist is immediately obvious and so different from a large percentage of human drivers. I hope the meaningful improvement in safety continues to convince people this should be a part of the future.

proudestmonkey• 4 months ago

+1. I bike in the Bay and have been hit 3 times (1 broken bike and 1 broken helmet, but thankfully okay otherwise). I can’t wait for the day when I can be confident that all vehicles see me and I don’t have to worry about being the victim of a moment’s lapse in attention.

Schiendelman3• 4 months ago

I stopped biking on Seattle streets after being hit a third time - in a bike lane. I want human drivers off the roads.

_p1l92• 4 months ago

Blaming the kid here is absurd. The kid lives in a system where pedestrians are second class citizens in a world dictated by the auto-petro industrial complex. An industry that has co-opted unelected traffic "engineer" in the US and completely changed the way we live for the last 70 years and have made Americans fatter and less connected.

If the child lived in a neighborhood where cars went slower (it was a 25mph zone) he wouldn't have gotten hit in the first place. Praising Waymo here is like praising a priest for not molesting a child. Yes it's good that the waymo slowed down more than the average car, but really the whole system should be completely rethought. Instead, we're pouring billions into single occupancy vehicles, when we should've been pouring billions into high speed rail, subways, etc.

I'm hopeful that waymos converge on a more efficient design and improve cities in general. As it stands, they are a way for the rich to commute without having to exchange pleasantries with the underclass.

spankalee• 4 months ago

Good thing no one blamed the kid.

_p1l92• 4 months ago

I was probably a bit too harsh on the OP. The OP was probably not blaming the kid. But if Waymo isn't being sued and the city isn't being sued, then society has collectively placed blame on the kid and their parents.

gambiting• 4 months ago

> it was because the child jumped in front of the car.

Did you miss this sentence? How can you read it in any other way?

tomhow• 4 months ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47445836 and marked it off topic.

bryanlarsen3• 4 months ago

13X is way more impressive than it seems at first glance.

Let's take a simplistic model of accidents: that the average driver is at fault in an accident 50% of the time. So a perfect driver would only halve the number of accidents -- they only eliminate the accidents where they would otherwise have been at fault.

But Waymo's numbers are better than the "perfect" driver above. How is that possible? Because in most accidents the blame is not split 0%/100%. You can avoid a lot of accidents with defensive and safe driving.

rafaelmn3• 4 months ago

13x compared to what ? The average driver is such a bullshit statistic - accidents are highly correlated with stuff like alcohol/drugs/lack of sleep/lack of experience/physical issues, then the other huge behavioral factor distraction and driving style, and on top of that car performance matters a lot too. I don't see any attempt to correct for that in their "human benchmark". Heck the least they could have done is compare to human taxi drivers which would be apples to apples. If it's 13x compared to that I'm sold for using it as a taxi service !

But individual driving - you can eliminate all those factors assuming you're a healthy, expericed driver with a new car. Nothing against self driving in principle but the failure cases I've seen look so bizarre - I'm way more comfortable with my limitations.

gozucito• 4 months ago

Is it a bullshit stat though? it's not like you or I can go to a different dimension where all drivers are healthy, fully awake, undistracted, sober, competent, etc.

gnopgnip• 4 months ago

This perspective makes the statistic even more impressive. Every day driving they interact with probably thousands of people who are impaired in some way and manage to drive safely far more often

themafia• 4 months ago

You can avoid a lot of accidents

More than 1/2 of roadway fatalities involve alcohol or drugs. An oversized fraction of fatalities are represented by young men under 24. 1/6 of all fatalities are motorcycles. 1/6 of all fatalities are pedestrians being struck by a vehicle.

srini7• 4 months ago

Do you have a solution for preventing humans from driving while under the influence of alcohol or drugs? Or even preventing humans from driving while texting?

jojobas2• 4 months ago

Most accidents are caused by drunk drivers, distracted drivers, jackass drivers and others, who together still constitute a minority, and there are plenty single-vehicle crashes. 13x improvement over average may still constitute diminished safety for a diligent sober driver.

ericpauley• 4 months ago

Yes, but Waymo also has to drive on the road with those drivers, and these stats include crashes that are their fault. Diligent drivers get hit by drunk/distracted drivers all the time.

bryanlarsen3• 4 months ago

13x better than an average that includes drunk, fatigued and distracted drivers would not be very impressive on a closed course.

On a real world course where the only way to achieve those kind of numbers is to avoid getting hit by those drunk, fatigued and distracted drivers? Very impressive.

jaesonaras• 4 months ago

I just watched a short that said some (all) Waymo drivers are not autonomous, but remote controlled by humans in the Phillipines.

I'm sure it's a combination of both since the latency would mean immediate reactions are impossible, but the presenter raised an interesting point, and that was that the remote drivers are not licensed to drive in the states that Waymo operated in, which would make it illegal.

keeganpoppen• 4 months ago

except for the overwhelming evidence from video we already have that waymos are reacting than a human in the driver’s seat would, much less someone 200ms away.

dbt002• 4 months ago

Waymo uses remote contractors to hint the Waymo driver when it can't figure out a path forward. They're not being remote piloted.

They are however, very cagy about how often this is necessary.

astrange• 4 months ago

They don't necessarily even hint them. I think the car mainly asks them yes/no questions and they respond.

koinedad• 4 months ago

Pretty cool to see. But the UI of the visual animations has some weird re-re-rerender bug, at least on mobile safari.

Lammy• 4 months ago

Now do Surveillance Impact: https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2024/10/27/waymos-5-6...

“Waymo is using around four NVIDIA H100 GPUSs at a unit price of 10,000 dollars per vehicle to cover the necessary computing requirements. The number of sensors – five lidars, 29 cameras, 4 radars”

paulnpace• 4 months ago

My understandig is that in private settings, third-party consent has a very difficult legal bar to meet.

whatever14• 4 months ago

The bar is low. I don’t want comparison with an alcoholic with multiple DUIs who still drives and crashes.

The benchmark should be the top decile of drivers.

rossjudson2• 4 months ago

The number of people who think they're top tier drivers never ceases to amaze me.

whatever14• 4 months ago

Yes statistics are full of drivers with more than one accidents at fault. 15% of the drivers are causing more than 70% of the accidents.

I don’t care about the average driver. I care about the median.

It is not a high bar to expect an autonomous system to be better than 90% of the American drivers.

motbus33• 4 months ago

If someone drives badly they might go to jail if they hurt or kill someone. If a machine does it who pays? I want to see waymo and other CEO for decades for each mistake.

thebigman433• 4 months ago

I feel like an important thing here is that we are very much not good at imprisoning bad drivers at all, even if they injure or kill multiple people. We rarely even take away their licenses!

The only type of car crash that consistently gets some level of enforcement is drunk driving, basically everything else is written off as an accident

motbus33• 4 months ago

Maybe at your country. Not at mine. Driving irresponsibly might have consequences. If you race, advance red light on don't stop for pedestrians, if there is not enough evidence you couldn't do anything about it, you might go to jail.

Filligree• 4 months ago

I want whatever causes fewer deaths and injuries total.

thumbsup-_-• 4 months ago

I was sold on Waymo when in San Francisco I saw it treat a human holding a Stop sign in a construction zone just like a human driver did.

For anyone who doesn't know this, in a construction zone if a human is holding a stop sign, it means stay stopped until they flip the sign and suggest you to move slowly. Waymo just handled this as a human would

plopz• 4 months ago

When is waymo going to be available in the north east?

valley_guy_12• 4 months ago

Hard to predict.

Waymo is trialing in several northeast cities. Search for "waymo trial boston" or "waymo trial nyc".

But beyond the technical issues, there are also political issues. Search for "new york bans waymo".

wayeq• 4 months ago

The cynic in me says this is a moral hazard waiting to happen, perhaps we'll raise speed limits and reduce traffic regulations until the stats match the pre-robo-taxi days.

MBCook• 4 months ago

I give up. I’m not even going to try to read “fade in” pages anymore. We had an article about that just the other day.

It’s horrible and makes reading harder.

I wanted to see this, but I give up.

tim-fan2• 4 months ago

Can they just report directly how many human lives they have saved since beginning operation? (of course, within some error bars)

Maybe that's too much of a statistical stretch.

But would be a good to-the-point number to have on hand for some waymo debates.

"yes they caused some disruption in an intersection in so-and-so scenario, but on the other hand they saved X number of human lives last year"

carbocation• 4 months ago

I think the average is ballpark 1 per 100 million miles, so my guess is that someday they might show this, but they probably want to wait til they have more miles driven.

tim-fan2• 4 months ago

OK right, so they're at 170 million now, maybe ~1 life saved. I see it might be a bit early to be making claims about that.

Also in comparison the cases of disruption/blocking intersections/emergency-services do seem significant - seems plausible in the right circumstances you could lose lives.

Seems they need to 10x their miles before they can start making confident claims about lives saved.

bitfilped2• 4 months ago

Great, what's more concerning than crash rates though are impeding emergency vehicles, blocking roads, stalling when traffic lights are down, rolling past school buses with stop arms out, navigating in construction zones and lots of other issues that are left out of this report.

Dylan168078• 4 months ago

No, I think those are solidly less concerning than crash and injury rates.

Like, could you imagine yourself seeing a self driving car that's perfect in all the ways like that, no dumb quirks, but it crashes twice as often as a human, and saying "well it got the important stuff right"

bitfilped2• 4 months ago

Autonomous vehicles need to be safer than human drivers, not trading one set of safety concerns for different ones.

cjk2• 4 months ago

I was recently in a Waymo in SF. It was turning right from a busy street onto a narrow street. Mid-turn, the car slammed on the brakes. I sat there for a couple seconds like “???” wondering if we'd hit something. Then a dude on an e-bike _flies_ past the car in the bike lane.

The car saw this dude coming from way down the street, flying, and was like “yeah, better stop.” Probably saved the biker from serious injury, or worse. I wouldn't have seen him if I was driving.

efavdb• 4 months ago

The tldr for me from the report was Waymo is great and SF is a dangerous place to drive.

cjk2• 4 months ago

I would largely agree with that assessment, yeah. Dangerous place to bike, too. I've even seen pedestrians get clobbered by bikers because they stepped into the bike lane not realizing a bike was barreling toward them at 20mph+. This is part of why Waymo and Uber warn you when the dropoff is next to a bike lane.

qwerty_clicks3• 4 months ago

A city with driverless cars is still a city dominated by cars. Bikes, trains, busses, and walking support the human soul and a city worth living in so much more than a robot car that requires car infrastructure and mentality.

tsycho• 4 months ago

I would love 24 hour Waymo buses, running at a high frequency.

If taking a bus becomes easy, reliable and fast, more people will do it, and there will be less cars on the road.

aag• 4 months ago

I love Waymo. Using the word "impact" is unfortunate.

gboss• 4 months ago

I don’t use Waymo’s because they are really slow. At least for me. I get they’re safer. What’s new is everyone I know is complaining how expensive they are. Why are they so expensive? Is it because they are trying to make a profit on the total cost of ownership of a vehicle? They’re electric so it’s not gas. Uber and Lyft definitely outsource the cost odd maintenance onto the contractor.

gorfian_robot• 4 months ago

anecdotally from Mesa:

DoorDash has these little cute robots doing delivery. I often seen them followed by a person on a e-bike. This has been going on for more than a year. My recent Lyft driver said one reason is because the Waymo's ignore the other robot and kill them and the bike ensures they don't.

kulahan3• 4 months ago

Wow. >40% of their accidents have a speed delta-V of less than 1mph. They should just sell this thing as a kit to pop onto your existing car, with a major discount on car insurance. I’d buy it in a heartbeat if they can get it under $30k.

theultdev• 4 months ago

Waymo's funniest home videos:

https://x.com/xdNiBoR/status/2027296859803336869

https://x.com/TexasTSLA/status/2030400998611788226

https://x.com/barstoolsports/status/1995629394308821184

https://x.com/niccruzpatane/status/1950676793335152693

socalgal24• 4 months ago

I wish the executives at Waymo would go to prison until their cars stopped breaking traffic laws left and right. I get they're safer then humans. I've enjoyed my rides. But they're doing one of this "fuck the laws while we cash in things" because they know they can get away with it.

I guess more realistically, I wish the government would step in demand footage because the cars have records of every law they broke.

mapleoin• 4 months ago

So how long until this is enshittified and how will it go? Will people ask for cars to be faster so they will take riskier decisions? Will a cheaper company with a worse training model capture the most market share? Pilot products are usually great, but that rarely lasts into their profitable period.

dzonga• 4 months ago

there was a startup I saw once here on HN selling driverless kits that could be added to general cars.

if Waymo can do the same - then partner with insurance companies - they can easily be a $1 trillion dollar company even if they just reduce accidents by 5X.

The insurance market or cost thereof is their market.

PostOnce• 4 months ago

"More Doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette."

I'll take my information from a neutral third party, thanks.

Waymo Safety Impact

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