7.1 million miles, 3 minor injuries: Waymo’s safety data looks good::Waymo says its cars cause injuries six times less often than human drivers.
And all 3 times the Waymo was rear ended by a human driver.
If those same miles had been driven by typical human drivers in the same cities, we would have expected around 13 injury crashes.
I’m going to set aside my distrust at self reported safety statistics from tech companies for a sec to say two things:
First, I don’t think that’s the right comparison. You need to compare them to taxis.
Second, we need to know how often waymos employees intervene. From the NYT, cruise employed 1.5 staff-members per car, intervening to assist these not-so-self driving vehicles every 2.5 to 5 miles, making them actually less autonomous than regular cars.
Is this the end of taxi drivers? Also will this speed up delivery drivers service if they dont need to drive/navigate a vehicle, just deliver goods?
Unlikely…these things drive like grandma after Sunday service.
Not really, they just drive the speed limit. I’ve been in Waymos a few times, and sure, on wide roads where people go 15mph over the speed limit, they’re quite slow. But I’ve also seen the Waymos go faster than other cars in more narrow roads since people were going slower than the speed limit.
Realistically, the Waymos are the only cars following the law, which can make them feel slow at times.
