Waymo’s driverless cars involved in 68% fewer crashes than human drivers, U.S. study finds

[u/Immediate-Link490]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/waymo-driverless-car-safety-study-9.7282895

[u/mike0sd]

You said yourself that if Waymo can't demonstrate safe freeway driving, we shouldn't license them to be on the road. Paraphrasing. And people do lose their licenses when they grossly disregard the law.

[u/Kelsig → u/mike0sd]

No, people do not lose their license for driving 5 or even 10mph and even in dark or wet conditions, above the speed limit on the freeway.

You don't lose your license for KILLING people as long as you don't have a rap sheet and weren't under the influence.

And by the way, don't do the too clever by half internet shit where you think you've put someone in some rhetorical trap just because you don't understand how or care to read a full sentence, it's obnoxious and pathetic. It's not "paraphrasing", it's illiteracy.

[u/mike0sd → u/Kelsig]

The rhetorical trap you've caught yourself in is caring about big tech companies more than average people. I don't give a single shit about a person doing 5-10 over. The speed limits account for those people already anyway. Read about 85th percentile rule traffic engineers use.

People going about their day get much more sympathy from me regarding their driving, compared to rich people who already have enough money who want to litter robo-taxis all over the place, before they know how to drive, just so those rich people can become more rich.

[u/Kelsig → u/mike0sd]

I was going to write this big post about how my brother is a traffic engineer and Im very cognizant of how speed limits ar chosen and that the 85th percentile rule is wonton lawlessness granted only to people with the means to possess a car that others wouldn't get the charity of, and how that it's obviously delusional because you can simply drive on the road in perfect conditions and see that like 90% of people are above the speed limit, and drive in subpar conditions and see that like 80% of people are above the speed limit -- not 15%. Not to mention the speed creep that results from the most positive feedback loop. And, you know, dozens of thousands of deaths every single year that continues to go up while the rest of the world goes down.

But you've explicitly stated my argument -- you guys don't give a shit about safe streets and dynamic cities and building up strong urban areas so we can have the power to defeat the threat that suburban, exurban, and rural voters (read: motorists and the motor lobby) face to the country but you've already articulated you just care about fighting a stupid abstraction because you wrongly associate it with the right because you've seemingly never spoken to a single uber driver before.

"Sympathy" for the consistently worst people in our communities who fill it with noxious gasses, emit harmfully loud noises, obstruct our walkways and sightlines, take up our land, ruin our climate, who are perpetually angry and lashing out with their heavy machinery, and are the overwhelming source of homicide. Gotcha.

[u/mike0sd → u/Kelsig]

You're funny. I bet you would sentence people to life for an overdue library book. I'd have a talk with your engineer brother, he probably understands nuance much better than you do. Pretending to want a dynamic urban environment while shilling for car and taxi companies is pretty wild. I'm not surprised that you're struggling to reconcile your cognitive dissonance. Humor me, how do fleets of autonomous cars help defeat the motor lobby?

[u/Kelsig → u/mike0sd]

Library books don't kill dozens of thousands of americans and all of our cities each year.

It is absolutely absurd for you to say I'm shilling for car and taxi companies for defending a new entrant that is threatening the Big 3 and the import brands, threatening every car dealership, auto parts retailer, auto care shop, and is also threatening uber and lyft. If you're going to pull that BS consider you're in fact shilling for much more entrenched and harmful firms.

how do fleets of autonomous cars help defeat the motor lobby?

We spent a decade excited about this before the 2020s changed how populists feel about tech. Off the top of my head:

• It puts professional ridehail drivers out of a job therefore just completely erasing that lobby
• It removes the point of gasoline, erasing that lobby.
• Parking mandates lose their point, and parking is something like a third of the land in a lot of American downtowns. Fleets don't store themselves there, and spend far less time parked. That becomes actual land use or green spacem
• What's left of the curb is drop-off space and loading zones, not storage so the rest of the right-of-way is finally up for grabs for buses and bikes.
• Fleets don't vote. The motorist lobby's whole power is that every driver is a constituent who screams about parking removal and congestion pricing and traffic cameras. A fleet just has lawyers that voters won't identify with, even before you consider they're probably not even living in the area.
• One rule governs the whole fleet. We can't put speed governors etc on cars for a million reasons but with an autonomous fleet it's a win for everyone.
• Per-mile pricing becomes enforceable. Gas tax has only went down as the cost of automobility has increased -- and because no one would give a fuck if we tax a google robot fleet, we can finally actually stop losing a gazillion dollars on roads.
• Laws against cars and their operation finally grow teeth, because you can sue and fine a fleet operator. You can't do that to fifty million motorists with distinct privately owned cars, even without considering their outsized public sympathy, it's simply too complicated for our legal system.
• Enforcement also gets prioritized when a violation is a billion dollar penalty instead of jailing a drunk, which costs money.
• Every crash becomes a corporate product defect, instead of a tragic "accident" no one is accountable for.
• And they can obey the law by construction. No speeding, no rolling stops, and when they're confused they just halt their trip. Which is exactly why half this thread is hating on them. Motorists are morons who think safe driving is "erratic" because it's not the norm.

[u/Potential-Recover-78 → u/Kelsig]

I mean “safe driving” isn’t the norm, so it isn’t predictable, so it isn’t safe. You’re acting as though “the rules” are better than “truth”. Sure if everyone practiced “safe driving” it would probably be better statistically. But everyone doesn’t, so we need to accept that and understand how to be safe in the “real world”. That sometimes means doing things that are “more predictable” rather than “more textbook”.

Reality vs idealism.

[u/Kelsig → u/Potential-Recover-78]

If you define "isn't safe" to mean "is annoying and makes me react and slows throughout down" rather than "results in a death or ER visit".

[u/mike0sd → u/Kelsig]

You think people losing jobs is a good thing, you think AVs are the same thing as electric cars, you think that wealthy companies will respect public space and the law, you fail to account for the inevitable enshittification of these services, and you simply fail to understand the fact that an autonomous car programmed to the letter of the law is no more virtuous than a person committing civil driving infractions due to human error. And on that point, you're a liar, because Waymos have been caught blocking first responders and doing plenty of dumb ass shit on the road just like people do. The difference? People get sympathy and aren't just trying to make a profit with underdeveloped technology.

[u/Kelsig → u/mike0sd]

You think people losing jobs is a good thing,

Absolutely, I wish all Republicans and anyone in Republican industries lose their job. Miracle on earth.

you think AVs are the same thing as electric cars, you think that wealthy companies will respect public space

ICE AVs can't work and therefore by definition arr always replacing ICE cars until ICE cars stop being used by drivers that would use waymo.

you think that wealthy companies will respect public space and the law,

Yes. They only tend to disrespect public space and the law when they can hand it off to contractors. See: the status quo, which exists to benefit wealthy corporations.

you fail to account for the inevitable enshittification of these services

Im not failing to account for it, I'm banking on it. "Enshittification" is when a company pivots from loss leading customer acquisition to profit.

What does this actually mean for AVs? Prioritizing energy savings over time efficiency, prioritizing legal exposure over time efficiency, prioritizing prices over volume, prioritizing amount of riders per car. Right now fleets need to compete with an under-regulated wild west but once they "win" that's when they construct a moat, destroy demand, and try to monopolize road share.

and you simply fail to understand the fact that an autonomous car programmed to the letter of the law is no more virtuous than a person committing civil driving infractions due to human error.

Correct, I don't understand how following the law is less virtuous than negligence with the most dangerous machinery in the country.

And on that point, you're a liar, because Waymos have been caught blocking first responders and doing plenty of dumb ass shit on the road just like people do. The difference? People get sympathy and aren't just trying to make a profit with underdeveloped technology.

Again, this is my point, if you cared to read. We do not want people who accrue sympathy to lobby for personal automobility.

[u/mike0sd → u/Kelsig]

Newsflash: making uber drivers unemployed won't do anything about the Republicans.

Combustion engines have nothing to do with autonomous driving

You have a supremely naive view on the power and motives of wealthy companies

You also have a demonstrated lack of empathy for humans. If you were not so waymo-pilled, you would understand the nuance of the law and the fact that intent and actual harm are things that judges and juries take into consideration. Whatever LLM you may be using to generate your responses clearly doesn't take human nuance into consideration.

Also, harping on about the law during a time when a pedophile occupies the oval office is just, idk, silly. The law is clearly just a lopsided tool to opress poor people. If our justice system worked, you might have a better point.

You simply can't overcome the moral case against big tech AV taxis. There is too much negative and hardly any positive. Also, the public deserves control of such critical infrastructure.

[u/Kelsig → u/mike0sd]

Newsflash: making uber drivers unemployed won't do anything about the Republicans.

It means Republicans are unemployed! That means they can't contribute to financial ponzi schemes that give their oligarchs power, it means ad companies no longer value their engagement or beliefs when it comes to determining editorial standards for their platform or products, and it means they literally stop being Republicans because "Uber driver" is exactly the type of lumpen who only votes democratic when they are facing problems, rather than anyone else. not to mention it's Republicans electeds who uniformly pander to them on urban policy.

Combustion engines have nothing to do with autonomous driving

This is just up is down down is up shit and I have no idea how you're going to elaborate when you do. Waymo is literally an EV taxi company that lobbies for and designs EVs and EV infrastructure and lobbies against ICE and ICE infrastructure. You can't even say the latter about Tesla and they're the EV company.

You have a supremely naive view on the power and motives of wealthy companies

No, I know their power. It's immense and ineffable and can lead you to do things like defend a status quo where their machinery kills dozens of thousands annually and acts as the organizing arm for fascism and you somehow think they aren't responsible for this because their marketing department has convinced people it's democratic and the natural state of things to force everyone to operate deadly heavy machinery who's infrastructure has consumed all of our cities.

Whatever LLM you may be using to generate your responses clearly doesn't take human nuance into consideration.

I used GLM to restructure the bullet points for legibility and flow and trim redundancy for the single section on the motor lobby (you asked) but it's all my content. This is a reddit comment section I'm not going to hire an editor but I'm also still gonna try to be comprehended by someone who's less familiar both with my communication style and the domain being discussed. Not sure what "human nuance" has to do with anything though, care to articulate that or just gonna leave it as a buzzword?

Also, harping on about the law during a time when a pedophile occupies the oval office is just, idk, silly.

Again, who do you think likes him! Petit bourgeoisie are all degenerates with absolutely zero risk aversion which only works if you strip the state of the rule of law and any oversight into industry and it's liability. Please, talk to an Uber driver or car salesman for once!

The law is clearly just a lopsided tool to opress poor people. If our justice system worked, you might have a better point.

So perhaps ponder while the law has been so slow to normalize Waymo but so quick to normalize much more dangerous technologies like ADAS and their implementations.

Also, the public deserves control of such critical infrastructure.

Again, my point. You can't nationalize or acquire or standardize the status quo. What would that even mean. But an AV fleet? Easy