Human drivers are to blame for most serious Waymo collisions

That seems insanely high to me. Maybe this is just a SF thing?

These articles seem to be pushing the safety aspect and saying they can do just as good as a human driver. This is progress and could be better than relying on a taxi or Uber human. But if you want to convince me to use it, it needs to be better than me, not the average. The average is human driver terrible. I would love to hear (and see!) more about how good these systems are at defensive driving. Ok, so you got rear-ended or another car ran the light - not your fault, but what steps did the car take to try to avoid it?

The cases they highlight, such as a multi-collision hit and run, are obvious bad human situations. But, this article feels like it's being a bit generous in its interpretation.

After all, I've seen Waymo cars cause wild traffic jams, and that sort of unexpected behavior could absolutely cause collisions.

Waymo has an advantage here carefully planning tests in optimal conditions and locations to bias the results from the outset.

If safety was the key concern for travelling by car, highways would have a 30mph limit, cars would require yearly inspection (common in Europe), and city centres would be car-free.

Making the "look how safe we are" argument in order to garner support seems like a fools errand.

> Inside companies like Zoox, this kind of human assistance is taken for granted. Outside such companies, few realize that autonomous vehicles are not completely autonomous.

> For years, companies avoided mentioning the remote assistance provided to their self-driving cars. The illusion of complete autonomy helped to draw attention to their technology and encourage venture capitalists to invest the billions of dollars needed to build increasingly effective autonomous vehicles.

> “There is a ‘Wizard of Oz’ flavor to this,” said Gary Marcus, an entrepreneur and a professor emeritus of psychology and neural science at New York University who specializes in A.I. and autonomous machines.

> ...

> When regulators last year ordered Cruise to shut down its fleet of 400 robot taxis in San Francisco after a woman was dragged under one of its driverless vehicles, the cars were supported by about 1.5 workers per vehicle, including remote assistance staff, according to two people familiar with the company’s operations. Those workers intervened to assist the vehicles every two and a half to five miles, the people said.