“Safer” == “Safer than all other human drivers in the same city.” By their own admission, this is not a straightforward comparison. If they could do the math for the same routes, times of day, and conditions … maybe I’d believe it. Otherwise, this data is trivial to cherrypick, and they have every reason to present it as well as possible.

I believe Waymos are pretty safe, and that’s a great thing. “Safer than humans (for selected rides inside this area)” is still very good, but it’s not at all “Safer than humans (period).”

In essentially all cases where a Waymo and a human-driven car have collided, the human driver has clearly been at fault. This seems definitive and not susceptible to cherry picking.

A year or two ago, would have agreed with you. I used to think they were cherry picking as well.

But Waymos have driven so many miles by this point, if they are hiding some data that would tip the scales back towards human drivers I have yet to see it. If there is a way to slice the data that makes Waymo’s look less safe I would welcome the correction.

If Waymo truly has 80-90% fewer crashes in the conditions they drove in, then it still has policy implications for places like Phoenix that do have good conditions.

I've heard that Waymo relies on having very accurate map data for the areas where they operate, so perhaps they could perform worse than human drivers in areas where they don't have good map data.

But I also trust that the company wouldn't deploy them in those areas until the quality data they need is available. So perhaps "safer in the environments where they are actually deployed" would be more accurate, but that's also the only thing that matters.

Speculating about what would happen if they were used in ways they are neither intended to be used nor are actually used feels a little silly. Most machines can be unsafe if you use them in ways they're not intended to be used.

> By their own admission, this is not a straightforward comparison.

If they wanted to cherry pick, would they not omit that admission?

In any case, it seems plausible to me that the routes that Waymo drives are above average in human incidents, given that Waymo is probably overrepresented in high stress/traffic, inner city scenarios.

If you were choosing between getting into a Waymo or a car driven by a human driver (where Waymo operates, for a route that Waymo would do), the data shows that the Waymo is safer.

I appreciate the skepticism. While I suspect motor vehicles that cannot be distracted would be safer than motor vehicles that can be, it shouldn't be claimed without real evidence.

If I were Google, I'd partner with some insurance carriers to compare the number of claim events normalized to the number of drivers on the road (approximated with Android data) in a city (same time of year, etc) before and after introducing Waymo. If claims per driver decreases, then I would be more inclined to support the claim that they're actually safer and that they don't just "seem safer"

Perhaps the comparison should only be to other taxis. Since I cannot buy a Waymo, it is not really relevant whether it is better than an average driver (including all the drunk ones, and the speed racers, etc).

accidents are not equally distributed across humans. more serious accidents will be caused by people who are habitually doing things that are unsafe but, for various reasons, most places lack effective ways to stop these people driving so they keep causing accidents.

the metric is not some nebulous aspect of skill but the bottom decile of human drivers causing accidents. it is not difficult to believe that an AI can drive better than this group, it is not a high bar, below the 10th percentile are people who should not be driving but cause most of the accidents.

https://waymo.com/safety/impact/#methodology

Worth reviewing the methodology, rather than making stuff up.