Discussion
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sonofhans: “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).”
t1234s: why does HN still use links to twitter.com and not x.com?
Detrytus: 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.
Analemma_: That info is pretty outdated: they were slow and indecisive in 2024, but now they behave pretty much like any top-decile human driver.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.
bogardon: 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.
sonofhans: 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 …
webdood90: This is exactly the kind of insight I would expect from this forum.Instead of solving the root issue of roads being unsafe for cyclists, let's add a million dollar autonomous car to the equation - brilliant!
ChrisArchitect: non-X source: https://waymo.com/blog/shorts/waymo-safety-impact-update-170...
hiddencost: https://waymo.com/safety/impact/#methodologyWorth reviewing the methodology, rather than making stuff up.
rhet0rica: Optimism. Someday the blue bird will be free.
bt1a: 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
kfarr: 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.
rootusrootus: 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).
wffurr: 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: Personally I avoid riding at night entirely, and use at least a tail light during the day.
oblio: Imagine creating a brand that became renowned world wide and even creating your 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.
stebalien: 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: 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: Isn't the correct answer to this, lobbying for higher speed limits? Rather than chastizing obedience to current rules.
HaZeust: A quaint, positive anecdotal comment?? On MY internet?!?!
UltraSane: Being forced to drive the speed limit isn't that big of a deal
pokot0: 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.
djsavvy: How are you saying that so confidently? Waymos respond to traffic cops directing traffic manually
jmalicki: Unlike the traffic cops directing traffic that would likely require special programming, "proceed if the other car flashes its lights at you" is completely the kind of thing that could just accidentally fall out of a neural network learning to imitate humans.
shawabawa3: Hopefully if they ever go to Sri Lanka they get localised tuning because I was surprised to find out flashing your lights over there doesn't mean "go ahead", it means "if you don't get out of my way I will ram you"
xnx: This page is old, but they just refreshed the data shows Waymo is 13x safer than human drivers (in the cities it operates in).
perching_aix: Right on cue when it's also revealed that their cars are sometimes remote controlled by foreign workers located in the Philippines: https://youtube.com/shorts/0_t3WhPAveo
j0e1: This is true for India too though traffic there isn't known for its rules.
xnx: Ah. That's the link I was looking for.
weusedto: 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.
cgeier: 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.
scj: "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.
xnx: They're definitely aware and working on it: https://x.com/dmitri_dolgov/status/2028863520037867820
altruios: 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.
jedberg: 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.
Retric: 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.
jeffbee: 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.
Retric: Not tightly coupled in obvious ways, but as I understand it they aren’t putting it on pickup trucks, convertibles, or anything toeing a boat etc. Their vehicles don’t have aftermarket suspension systems dramatically changing handling characteristics, or turned one into a stretched limo etc.Which means the software can safely assume the vehicle with behave within a relatively narrow operating range.
jeffbee: The only thing an autonomous system should do with janky modified cars is drive them very slowly to the state police barracks for destruction.
krashidov: 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: Good thing no one blamed the kid.
small_model: Hmm this happen a week or two ago, doesn't sound too safe to me."Waymo car blocked ambulance trying to get to scene of Austin mass shooting"https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/waym...
Toutouxc: Is this something that I’m too European to understand? How do you get “stuck” behind someone doing the speed limit?
1shooner: On most US highways (i.e. multi-lane limited access roads), it's customary to leave a path in the left 'passing lane' for any traffic that wants/needs to go faster than you. If cars match speeds across lanes, it impedes faster traffic.The speed limit itself is a separate convention and regulation. In some places you can be cited for obstructing traffic by going the speed limit in the passing lane if you are matching the speed of cars to your right, effectively blocking the road.
krashidov: 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.
probabletrain: 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.
sonofhans: 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.
jonas21: In the US, we do have access to all the data:https://www.nhtsa.gov/laws-regulations/standing-general-orde...They're required to report every incident with an injury or any amount of property damage, and it's all available for download as CSV.
TimTheTinker: Yes, agreed. Though speed limits higher than 75 are not something I will ever support.** Unless we're talking about removing a speed limit altogether and regulating unsafe driving using other criteria.
jjav: What happens at 76mph?
jjmarr: 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.
georgemcbay: > 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)
Analemma_: This is one of those comments that made me laugh nervously. It's straight out of Ubik or another PKD novel, which probably means it's less than 5 years away from being real.
philip1209: > doesn't sound too safe to me.Compared to what?
LeifCarrotson: Because American drivers have normalized always driving 10 mph (16 km/h) over the speed limit.Cops won't pull you over or write tickets if you're not at least 15 mph over, we basically don't have speed cameras, everyone's trying to win the rat race and dehumanizing other cars around them, and it's not considered morally wrong (by most) to break that specific part of the law.So a single vehicle obeying the law will quickly get a long line of tailgaters and tailgaters of tailgaters trying to "push" the vehicle to go faster.They can suck it, I'm not late or in a hurry, and my ancient truck, steel bumper, and class 5 receiver hitch will not be badly harmed by your plastic grille. I get better gas mileage and have a longer stopping distance when I drive the limit, and I don't care if others are honking or riding my ass because they think I should drive faster.
Lammy: 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”
Taek: > 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.
whatever1: Imagine your last thing in your mind being an ad about mongoDB.
gowld: That's not how Waymo works, though. Waymo doesn't imitate humans. Waymo is trained to obey traffic laws and avoid collisions.
jmalicki: Waymo has published a ton about the imitation learning they've been using since 2018. They're not imitating random cars but their drivers who are paid to drive around and follow traffic laws.It's not enough so they use heavy reinforcement learning etc. but it's still a huge foundation to build on.
AgentME: Waymos have since added support for YouTube Music thankfully.
whyenot: 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.
dbt00: 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.
0x3f: I hate the countries that do this because it doesn't even make sense as a signal. We already have a horn. They are wasting a channel!
IshKebab: It's kind of wild how you have so many ads targeted at devs in SF.
