Technology

What’s tricky is figuring out the appropriate human baseline, since human drivers don’t necessarily report every crash.

Also, I think it's worth discussing whether to include in the baseline certain driver assistance technologies, like automated braking, blind spot warnings, other warnings/visualizations of surrounding objects, cars, bikes, or pedestrians, etc. Throw in other things like traction control, antilock brakes, etc.

There are ways to make human driving safer without fully automating the driving, so it may not be appropriate to compare fully automated driving with fully manual driving. Hybrid approaches might be safer today, but we don't have the data to actually analyze that, as far as I can tell.

I used to hate them for being slow and annoying. Now they drive like us and I hate them for being dicks. This morning, one of them made an insane move that only the worst Audi drivers in my area do, a massive left over a solid yellow across no stop sign with me coming right at it before it even began acceleration into the intersection.

As a techno-optimist, I always expected self-driving to quickly become safer than human, at least in relatively controlled situations. However I’m at least as much a pessimist of human nature and the legal system.

Given self-driving vehicles demonstrably safer than human, but not perfect, how can we get beyond humans taking advantage, and massive liability for the remaining accidents?

How are they with parking lots, tho'?

That doesn't seem like a very high bar to achieve

I believe it, but they also only drive specific routes.

Focusing on airbag-deployments and injuries ignores the obvious problem: these things are unbelievably unsafe for pedestrians and bicyclists. I curse SF for allowing AVs and always give them a wide berth because there's no way to know if they see you and they'll often behave erratically and unpredictably in crosswalks. I don't give a shit how often the passengers are injured, I care a lot more how much they disrupt life for all the people who aren't paying Waymo for the privilege.

And yet it's still the least efficient mode of transport.

how those robot food delivery "robot ai boxes"? by starship doing?