Posted on 09/17/2024 8:48:20 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Autonomous vehicle (AV) technology advocates tout a variety of potential benefits when it comes to widespread AV implementation. However, the most important benefit is an increase in safety compared to the average human-driven vehicle. Nevertheless, with high-profile incidents like the Cruise accident last year that resulted in a pedestrian injury, convincing the public that AVs are indeed safer might be something of a challenge.
Now, a new website published by Alphabet’s Waymo AV division highlights some of the statistics around driverless vehicle safety.
Waymo currently operates a fleet of autonomous, all-electric vehicles across the U.S. as a means of developing new AV technology. The company also operates its driverless ride-hailing service, Waymo One. According to the company’s website, Waymo One vehicles have covered well over 22 million miles in the four cities in which the service is available, including 15.4 million miles in Phoenix, 5.93 miles in San Francisco, 855,000 miles in Los Angeles, and 14,000 miles in Austin.
Compared to human-driven vehicles, Waymo states that its autonomous vehicles had 84 percent fewer airbag deployment crashes, 73 percent fewer injury-causing crashes, and 48 percent fewer police-reported crashes. The website also includes graphs indicating a significant crash reduction estimate per million miles compared to human drivers if the AVs had traveled the same distance as human drivers in the cities in which the company operates.
“By making detailed information about crashes and miles driven publicly accessible, Waymo’s transparency will not only support independent research, but foster public trust,” says Chief Research Officer, Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, David Zuby, per the new website. “We hope other companies developing and deploying automated driving systems follow suit.”
Even so, in the methodology section, Waymo highlights that “drawing meaningful comparisons between [human-driven and autonomous vehicles] is challenging,” stating that AV and human data differ in the definitions of a crash, with the former required to report any physical contact that results or allegedly results in any property damage, injury, or fatality, and human crash data requiring at least enough damage for a police report. The company also states that not all human crashes are reported, and that, as a ride-hailing service, Waymo operates primarily in dense city scenarios.
Back in October, a Cruise autonomous vehicle was involved in an incident in which a pedestrian was struck by a human-driven vehicle and thrown under a driverless Cruise AV. The incident resulted in a massive restructuring effort at Cruise as the company attempted to regain public trust in AV technology.
A lack of insurance doesn't stop illegal aliens.
“When will they ban people from driving ?”
All depends if you are talking one year from now or 100 years from now. Within 100 years, it is very likely.
I have over a million miles under my wheels, some in the most difficult driving environments imaginable. Zero accidents.
Show me an automated system that can achieve that kind of record.
Benny Johnson reported a funny story about Waymo Cars the other day, he stated these Waymo cars (in China I believe) are parked together at night and when one of the cars start honking the other cars honk back and pretty soon all the cars are honking at each other as this goes on all night and wakes everybody up.
However, it is not clear that you will be able to retain your skills at 80 or 90 years of age.
I’ve been in these companies, so I’m not ‘anti’ self-driving cars.
That said...I don’t want the goal to always be giving me more time to work. I also never want the ability to drive the car to be taken away, which is almost inevitable. I like driving. I don’t want to find myself in a vehicle that is yielding to a mob that is coming for me. I don’t want the government to have an ‘off switch’ to my ability to travel.
Etc...that said, when the tech is good enough, I’d LOVE to be able to know, when exhausted, that as soon as I get to my car I can sleep!
No way software can maneuver the car better then a person. Too many variables.
“I don’t want the government to have an ‘off switch’ to my ability to travel.”
Too late every major car maker after 2018 or so has some form of Onstar,Bluelink, Fordpass..etc. Every major USA manufacture has those in every new car now. It doesn’t matter if you have the service on or not monthly the modem is always active and the remote functions including the kill command is always on its hard wired into the ECU it’s not some module you can share tree cut out the car will cease to run without the ECU. After 2026 every car sold must have a remote kill switch for police use to eliminate high speed chases and auto theft lowjack use. Ice and EV the mandate is for every vehicle sold in the USA power system doesn’t matter. One could try to jam the 4/5G signal but that takes a rather powerful multi spectrum frequency jammer which would be screaming to the Fed’s mobile triangulation vans that routinely run around major cities looking for GPS and cell phone jammers. It’s a 20 year felony to use a jammer that affects HPS because of aircraft safety, and additionally ten more years to use at cell phone frequencies. Jamming is something the FCC takes seriously.
Even if one keeps an old vehicle if the govt doesn’t want someone to drive they will just put their plate number into the pull over this person database. Automated plate readers are in a lot of police cars front and back and probably will be on all of them soon. It would be easy to also integrate traffic light camera feeds, tollway feeds at the one and off ramps plus red light cams and speed cameras.The average person passes 15 cameras a day its only a few hundred lines of code to get AI to grab every plate it sees and compare that to its no drive , no insurance or no valid licence database. Once it sees a violation the AI would send out a signal to the nearest officer located via GPS and issue a stop and detain notice. Or just mail the large ticket with a court appearance date, then a warrant if no show on that court date, with a no fly tag on the warrant due to flight from justice risk until bond is set and paid. The tech is already in place. There will be no hiding from the police state that’s already formed. Peoples seem to think only EVs have remote kill that is already false for nearly every major automaker selling in the USA they all beat the mandate by years. My 2009 SAAB had remote kill, I used it when a valet parking idiot took it for a joy ride and its geofence altered me. Onstar shut it down and the police went to arrest the valet guy for UUMV as clearly doing 95mph 5 miled from the concert was not in parking duties. My Volvo, F250, Expedition, and Telsa all have remote access , FordSync,Fordlink,VolvoOnCall, and of course Tesla link to the hive mind. If the dotgov doesn’t want me to drive they will just put the full weight of the state on my back and then it’s obey or jail or start start slotting floppies there is no hiding.
Ok. Sure.
I’m a software architect in the automotive industry. While I can’t speak for all auto-makers, as can nobody, there are separations between the systems. Removing a SIM card or removing the power from the TCU will not disable the entire vehicle. Doing this will have varying levels of difficulty but it isn’t rocket science. Is it too difficult to achieve quickly, so that if you’re stealing a car you won’t be able to? Sure - but there’s no part of the regulatory requirements that state if the vehicle connectivity isn’t working then the car cannot be driven.
An infrastructure that relies on automated vehicles, possibly without steering wheels (eventually), is a different story. Such vehicles require connectivity for HD maps at the very least.
Make average drivers better drivers.
Give them training in defensive driving. Give them training in spin recovery and off-roading.
Eliminate distractions and enforce cellphone bans.
Punish drunk driving severely. Significant jail time even if nobody is hurt.
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