First-of-its-kind study finds autonomous vehicles are safer than human drivers | Hacker News Reader

First-of-its-kind study finds autonomous vehicles are safer than human drivers

swissre.com

2 pointszxt_tzx6 comments

> The results of the research are exciting both for the insurance industry and the safety community alike: in over 3.8 million miles driven without a human being behind the steering wheel in rider-only mode, the Waymo Driver (Waymo’s fully autonomous driving technology) incurred zero bodily injury claims in comparison with the human driver baseline of 1.11 claims per million miles. The Waymo Driver also significantly reduced property damage claims to 0.78 claims per million miles in comparison with the human driver baseline of 3.26 claims per million miles.

> Similarly, in a more statistically robust dataset of over 35 million miles during autonomous testing operations, the Waymo Driver, together with a human autonomous specialist behind the steering wheel monitoring the automation, also significantly reduced both bodily injury and property damage claims per million miles compared to the human driver baselines.

Link to the full research paper: https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2309/2309.01206.pdf

Not gonna read all that. Just wondering, is there any adjustment for efficiency or road use?

If autodrivers are creeping around very carefully for instance, taking half again longer to get anywhere, it's reasonable to ask if that increase in statistics is enough compensation?

The study controls mileage (driving exposure) and zip-code (geographic region) but it does not specifically mention controlling for variables like efficiency or road use. So you're right, the vehicles could be moving more slowly or cautiously.

I do wonder whether a world of autonomous vehicles moving more slowly but safely is still a better world than ours — is there reason to the current speed/safety trade-off is optimal?

Faster is cheaper, in terms of how much road we need.

Road-hours are absolutely fixed, for a given set of roads - 24 hours in a day times physical road miles divided by car spacing is a hard limit.

Slow cars are on the road longer.

Ideally all the cars would go the speed of light and use the roads for milliseconds per trip.

Surely we're not optimal now - speed is set by arbitrary limit signs placed largely politically. Then people go whatever speed they feel is right anyway.

Just saying, the measure of autodriving is a larger space than accident-rate.

Sponsored by the autonomous car industry?

But anyway, I have a feeling that in the long run they probably will be. In the meantime they share the road with human drivers and the real benefits won’t be seen until its just autonomous vehicles all carrying out the same rules.

> Sponsored by the autonomous car industry?

Fair, the litmus test would be whether Swiss Re charges less for (re)insuring autonomous vehicles vs regular drivers.

> But anyway, I have a feeling that in the long run they probably will be. In the meantime they share the road with human drivers and the real benefits won’t be seen until its just autonomous vehicles all carrying out the same rules.

Agree.

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