I immediately formed a conspiracy theory that Teslas automatically accelerate when they see Waymo cars
Comment on Tesla Robotaxis Reportedly Crashing at a Rate That's 4x Higher Than Humans
merc@sh.itjust.works 1 day agoNot just lower, a tiny fraction of the human rate of accidents:
Also, AFAIK this includes cases when the Waymo car isn’t even slightly at fault. Like, there have been 2 deaths involving a Waymo car. In one case a motorcyclist hit the car from behind, flipped over it, then was hit by another car and killed. In the other case, ironically, the real car at fault was a Tesla being driven by a human who claims he experienced “sudden unintended acceleration”. It was driving at 98 miles per hour in downtown SF and hit a bunch of stopped cars at a red light, then spun into oncoming traffic and killed a man and his dog who were in another car.
Whether or not self-driving cars are a good thing is up for debate. But, it must suck to work at Waymo and to be making safety a major focus, only to have Tesla ruin the market by making people associate self-driving cars with major safety issues.
TooManyGames@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
merc@sh.itjust.works 23 hours ago
And it’s not out of aggression. It’s just that their image recognition algorithms are so terrible that they match the Waymo car with all its sensors to a time-traveling DeLorean and try to hit 88 mph… or something.
TooManyGames@sopuli.xyz 16 hours ago
They crash for the memes. Sounds about right considering who’s in charge.
ThirdConsul@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
www.iihs.org/research-areas/…/state-by-state
Well, no. Lets talk fatality rate. According to linked data, human drivers
Vs Waymo 2 deaths per 127 million miles :)
merc@sh.itjust.works 23 hours ago
Well, Waymo’s really at 0 deaths per 127 million miles.
The 2 deaths are deaths that happened were near Waymo cars in a collision involving the Waymo car. Not only did the Waymo not cause the accidents, they weren’t even involved in the fatal part of either event. In one case a motorcyclist was hit by another car, and in the other one a Tesla crashed into a second car after it had hit the Waymo (and a bunch of other cars).
The IIHS number takes the total number of deaths in a year, and divides it by the total distance driven in that year. It includes all vehicles, and all deaths. If you wanted the denominator to be “total distance driven by brand X in the year”, you wouldn’t keep the numerator as “all deaths” because that wouldn’t make sense, and “all deaths that happened in a collision where brand X was involved as part of the collision” would be of limited usefulness. If you’re after the safety of the passenger compartment you’d want “all deaths for occupants / drivers of a brand X vehicle” and if you were after the safety of the car to all road users you’d want something like “all deaths where the driver of a brand X vehicle was determined to be at fault”.
The IIHS does have statistics for driver death rates by make and model, but they use “per million registered vehicle years”, so you can’t directly compare with Waymo:
iihs.org/…/driver-death-rates-by-make-and-model
Also, in Waymo it would never be the driver who died, it would be other vehicle occupants, so I don’t know if that data is tracked for other vehicle models.
hector@lemmy.today 14 hours ago
I seem to recall a homeless woman that got killed like right away when they released these monstrosities on the road, because why pay people to do jobs when machines can do them for you? I’m sure that will work out for everyone, with investment income.
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
That was Uber’s attempt at self driving after they had to give up the stolen Waymo data. Waymo is probably the best at self driving, but even they spend too much time blocking traffic when they can’t reach the Indian call center to fix the situation they’ve gotten themselves in.
merc@sh.itjust.works 6 hours ago
You seem to recall wrongly.
73ms@sopuli.xyz 23 hours ago
When there’s two deaths total it’s pretty obvious that there just isn’t enough data yet to consider the fatal accident rate. Also FWIW like was said neither of those was in any way the Waymo’s fault.
hector@lemmy.today 13 hours ago
That’s the problem, you can’t trust these companies not to use corrupt influence to blame others for their mistakes. It’s you verses a billions of dollars companies with everything at stake, that owns (senior tiered leasing rights,) your politicians, both locally, in state, and federally, and by extension the regulators up and down the line.
Do you not know how things work in this country? Given their outsized power we don’t want them involved in determining blame for accidents, dash cam footage or no, we’ve seen irrefutable evidence is no guarentee of justice, even if it’s provided to you.
73ms@sopuli.xyz 13 hours ago
Well Waymo isn’t assigning blame, it’s a third party assessment based on the information released about those accidents. The strongest point remains that fatal accidents are rare enough that there simply isn’t enough data to claim any statistical significance for these events. The overall accident rate for which data is sufficient remains significantly lower than the US average.
ThirdConsul@lemmy.zip 17 hours ago
The “fault” means nothing to “deaths per miles” statistic though?