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Comment by IAmBroom

13 hours ago

The statistically relevant question is: How many human drivers have hit children near elementary schools, since Waymo's last accident?

If Waymo has fewer accidents where a pedestrian is hit than humans do, Waymo is safer. Period.

A lot of people are conjecturing how safe a human is in certain complicated scenarios (pedestrian emerging from behind a bus, driver holds cup of coffee, the sun is in their eyes, blah blah blah). These scenarios are distractions from the actual facts.

Is Waymo statistically safer? (spoiler: yes)

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IAmBroom

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gjm11  12 hours ago

This is wrong, although something quite like it is right.

Imagine that there are only 10 Waymo journeys per year, and every year one of them hits a child near an elementary school, while there are 1000000 non-Waymo journeys per year, and every year two of them hit children near elementary schools. In this scenario Waymo has half as many accidents but is clearly much more dangerous.

Here in the real world, obviously the figures aren't anywhere near so extreme, but it's still the case that the great majority of cars on the road are not Waymos, so after counting how many human drivers have had similar accidents you need to scale that figure in proportion to the ratio of human to Waymo car-miles.

(Also, you need to consider the severity of the accidents. That comparison probably favours Waymo; at any rate, they're arguing that it does in this case, that a human driver in the same situation would have hit the child at a much higher and hence more damaging speed.)