Edit: I don’t mind the downvotes, but I wish they came with a rebuttal rather than radio silence.
https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/west/2018/02/01/479262...
The latest disengagement report showed that Waymo vehicles, in tests conducted from December 2016 through November 2017, on average logged 5,596 miles without Waymo’s safety drivers disengaging the system and retaking the wheel. Its next closest contender was Cruise, owned by General Motors Co, at 1,214 miles on average between disengagements.
And later
Waymo, for example, drove 352,545 miles in the state during the period with only 63 disengagements. Cruise vehicles drove about a third less, at 127,516 miles, and had 105 disengagements.
The third best performance came from Nissan Motor Co , which drove 5,007 miles and had 24 disengagements, meaning that its vehicles had disengagements on average every 208 miles.
The numbers fall off sharply after Nissan, with Baidu Inc at an average rate of every 41 miles, chipmaker Nvidia Corp at 4.6 miles on average, and Mercedes, with disengagements every 1.3 miles on average.
Some further discussion and context:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-autonomous-ca...
Between mistakes a human wouldn’t make unless impaired, such as accelerating into a crash barrier or into a fire truck, and the high rate of human intervention, compared to the rate of fatal accidents per x miles humans have (1.27 per 100 million miles even including drunks, the elderly and new drivers) the argument for “safer than humans” seems utterly insupportable at this time.
Personally (again, anecdote, but still) I've seen many, many people who, when brought to a new situation while driving, will begin to panic and ultimately stop in the middle of traffic... Often during rush hour. I can imagine that the systems driving these cars could be put in to a similar position (remember the bicyclist and the Waymo car?) and need human intervention to continue.