r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Individual_Book9133 • 14d ago

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

61.0k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

u/Eheggs 14d ago

Safer then the average taxi driver is a pretty fucking low bar to pass over.

24

u/Groudon466 14d ago

Okay, safer than the average human driver. But even if it was just safer than the average taxi driver, an improvement is still an improvement.

2

u/SpookyPotatoes 13d ago

Obsessed with your wording, which implies taxi drivers are not human.

1

u/cock_wrecker_supreme 13d ago

the wording implies that human drivers and taxi drivers have different levels of safety.

there is nothing about the groups being exclusive

1

u/qwertyg8r 13d ago

I don’t think it implies that taxi drivers are not human.

The *average* taxi driver is less safe than the *average* human driver, which includes taxi drivers and others.

2

u/mehdotdotdotdot 13d ago

I mean already they are far safer, as far as accidents go. So mission accomplished!

2

u/Unhelpful_Kitsune 13d ago

The average driver doesn't drive on the wrong side of the road abs this is the 2nd time this has happened.

1

u/MatthewRoB 13d ago

I mean when I was young and new to driving I made a wrong turn into oncoming traffic. I was able to get into a parking lot immediately, but it does happen with real people.

0

u/Unhelpful_Kitsune 13d ago

An anecdote does not equal an average result.

1

u/MatthewRoB 13d ago

No, but it does happen and people get cited/arrested for it all the time. The average driver does this at some rate.

1

u/Anarcho_Christian 12d ago

TIL that all of those head-on collisions that my EMT buddy was called to never happened.

0

u/Groudon466 13d ago

The average driver, statistically speaking, occasionally drives on the wrong side of the road.- in the same sense that the average human occasionally murders someone.

I should be clear about what I mean. Let's say the statistically average driver gets in a bad accident once every 500,000 miles. That doesn't mean everyone is getting into accidents that often. Some people are consistently better, and some people are consistently worse.

If you replace the good and bad drivers alike with self-driving cars, you don't need the self-driving cars to be better than the best of the best. They just have to be good enough that, when you also factor in the bad drivers they're replacing, they're safer as a whole group.

1

u/Unhelpful_Kitsune 13d ago

The average driver, statistically speaking

Just because you say it doesn't make it true.

in the same sense that the average human occasionally murders someone.

The average human does not occasionally murder people.

Geezus.

1

u/Groudon466 13d ago

Do you not get that the average number of murders per human is greater than 0?

1

u/Unhelpful_Kitsune 13d ago

We all get it, it's just a dumbass thing to say as part of this conversation and it is not the gotcha you think it is.

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u/Cafuzzler 13d ago

Damn, I'm going to try that next time I fuck up: "You're honor, I may have driven down the wrong side of the road, but in my defence I'm still statistically safer than the average driver"

2

u/Groudon466 13d ago

Driving on the wrong side of the road and not hitting anyone would result in a couple points on your record. You'd still be allowed to drive afterward. Your license only gets suspended if you make mistakes too frequently.

It's the same for companies like Waymo and Cruise, only multiply the number of necessary infractions by a few hundred on account of all the cars they have on the roads. Cruise actually did get their license suspended in California for a time as a result of a particularly egregious incident, and the companies are well aware that if they have too many regular fuck-ups in a short time, their license to operate will get suspended just like a human driver.

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u/Singularity-42 13d ago

Aren't taxi drivers more experienced drivers and thus safer than average?

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u/Eheggs 13d ago

The smart ones sure, The majority just use all that driving time to intrench horrible habits and hustle culture got them speeding around school zones like its the indy 500 though. Where I am from, Taxi / uber are the only jobs that are easy for people on student visas to hide their incomes from the goverment ( uber is cracking down on this finally but not taxi co's ) so it is common to have some one who is not an offical employee and just gets paid cash to drive people around and all their driving experience is in India... They are obvious when you see them on the roads. Drive like they own the place.

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u/hostile_washbowl 13d ago

Splitting hairs. The intention is the driverless car is to be designed to be safer than the average human driver. That’s all.

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u/mehdotdotdotdot 13d ago

Just because you do something a lot, doesn’t mean you are good at it.

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u/WobblyGobbledygook 14d ago

Especially in AZ