@Boenau
According to Waymo's published data, their technology is preventing injuries & deaths. My view is that if this is true, and I have yet to see a debunking of their data, then we safety advocates should be welcoming the technology. If Waymo is lying or manipulating data, then write about how they're doing that! Instead the analysis in this recent Streetsblog article is limited to "the authors of the Waymo safety report work for Waymo!" FFS, are we going to toss out all the NYCDOT reports about how their bike lanes improve safety? Are we going to toss out the decongestion pricing reports because they were written by the transit employees who want transit to succeed? I hope not! Here's what we've been told by Waymo: ā 170.7 million rider-only miles driven without a human driver (equivalent to roughly 200 human lifetimes of driving). ā 92% fewer serious injury or worse crashes compared to human drivers in the same cities and conditions (0.02 incidents per million miles vs. 0.22 for humans; 35 fewer such crashes). ā 83% fewer airbag-deployment crashes in any vehicle (230 fewer crashes). ā 82% fewer injury-causing crashes overall (544 fewer crashes). ā 92% fewer pedestrian injury crashes compared to human benchmarks. ā 85% fewer cyclist injury crashes. ā 81% fewer motorcycle injury crashes. ā No fatalities caused by the Waymo Driver across these 170.7 million driverless miles. ā At current scale (over 4 million miles per week), Waymo prevents 1 serious injury crash every 8 days. If data is manipulated or false, then report on that. Otherwise you come out looking like someone who only likes safety benefits that aren't shaped like a car. It's going to set back Vision Zero advocacy in states across the country that are on the fence about allowing autonomous vehicle operations. Waymo does have a profit motive. So do corporations who build homes, distribute food, host concerts, publish books, and make medicine. Not all of them are the same and some are downright awful. Always challenge motives and incentives. What's interesting about Waymo is that they have a financial incentive in being the absolute safest form of motorized vehicle on the street. They'll lose business if their software is just as dangerous as an average human driver. But that in no way means streets must be overtaken by motor vehicles (theirs or any other brand). What do we want? 92% fewer pedestrian injury crashes compared to humans? 85% fewer cyclist injury crashes? Then come up with a way to let AVs into cities across the country.
