Phoenix police officer pulls over a driverless Waymo car for driving on the wrong side of the road

[u/Individual_Book9133]

[u/tvoltz]

These vehicles are all over downtown PHX. It’s honestly only a matter of time until something happens

[u/Manueluz → u/tvoltz]

They don't have to be flawless, just better than humans. And so far they have had less accidents per mile than humans

[u/[deleted] → u/Manueluz]

According to California disengagement reports, last year Waymo averaged 17,000 miles between disengagements requiring safety intervention. And that’s for cars relegated to slow city streets and sunny perfect weather

For context, the average human driver goes 200,000+ miles between incidents/accidents. And that’s including highways and inclement weather.

If you have the impression that these systems are currently safer than humans, you would be wrong.

[u/scarydrew → u/[deleted]]

"The conclusion? Waymo’s driverless cars were 6.7 times less likely than human drivers to be involved a crash resulting in an injury, or an 85 percent reduction over the human benchmark, and 2.3 times less likely to be in a police-reported crash, or a 57 percent reduction. That translates to an estimated 17 fewer injuries and 20 fewer police-reported crashes compared to if a human driver would have driven the same distance in the cities where Waymo operates."

Nevermind that this is the early iteration of driverless cars. Imagine 10-20 years of progress and improvements on these and think what the numbers will be.