I think you're over-playing how decisively a Waymo will move and under-playing how decent the average human is.

I've ridden in Waymos. They don't exactly slap on the blinker and move at the limit of traction like someone about to miss their exit. If cut off they absolutely will go full brake rather than perform any sort of spicy lane change or turn.

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jjmarr 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> If cut off they absolutely will go full brake rather than perform any sort of spicy lane change or turn.

Essentially, a meat driver was waiting at a stop sign to make a turn onto the main road. I was in a Waymo driving on the main road and did not have a stop sign.

When we were 10 meters away from the intersection, the meat driver suddenly started to enter the intersection. I have no idea why.

Full brake would've hit the other car in the driver's side door at 40 km/h.

> under-playing how decent the average human is.

I got to SMFC in CSGO which means I'm in the top 3% of players in clicking on heads within 500 ms of them appearing on my screen. I have never reacted as fast as that Waymo did.

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necovek 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If instant (<50ms) reaction would have lowered the speed only to 40km/h in 10m, Waymo was going too fast for the intersection IMO.

My experience is that for a human driver to react quickly in city driving conditions, style and prep are more important than reaction time: in the case you describe (entering an intersection with another car waiting on a stop sign perpendicular to your path), I'd have my foot hanging over the brake and off the gas pedal — this has helped me avoid hitting many other cars with inattentive/distracted/bad drivers, and even pedestrians running over the road or a red light on a crosswalk. When you are prepared and looking, you slam the brakes much faster!

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6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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Fire-Dragon-DoL 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

To be fair, we are not provided with the sensors to swerve safely. If we had some sort of 360 constant recording in the car (on screen?) it would be safer for humans to swerve. Instead we have to move our head, which is cheaper but lacks info. That's why we now have rear cameras

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hammock 6 hours ago | parent [-]

We have rear cameras because people DONT move their head. And because regulations have made cars way taller than they need to be, meaning there is a big blind spot close to the ground

	▲	Fire-Dragon-DoL 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I mean, even in low cars you cannot see a small enough kid walking behind your car. That's why you back slowly. Back when I just got my driver license, there is a big lesson many drivers go through (in Italy) which is you back off a parking and there is an obstacle that's so low that cannot be see through the back window and it's small enough that cannot be seen through the mirror. You hit it and if you followed the "go slow part" you only damaged the paint. So I'm not opposing the ideas of rear cameras, but I'm totally against tall cars, because you cannot see kids IN FRONT either now.

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Ferret7446 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I think you're humongously overselling the average driver. I mean, the stats for waymo vs human drivers speak for themselves.

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necovek 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Depends on how you define "average driver": what if 95% of the crashes are caused by 5% of the drivers?

My reading of all the human crash stats has been that majority of them happen when human drivers are impaired (drunk, drugged or too tired): as this is something we could (in theory, at least) control, I'd like to see and compare with stats for non-impaired human drivers too.

Then, I'd like to see it compared to attentive, non-distracted drivers too (but we won't have crash data for this, as they would avoid most potential crashes).

Note that I am only talking things under every human driver's control, and not things like skill, reaction time, etc.

Also, modern cars (like Waymos) will have a much lower braking distance compared to "average": eg. my Volvo has 35m braking distance from 100km/h or 62mph compared to 50m (45% more) listed as average (excluding reaction distance) — so from 50km/h, it should be around 8m!

	▲	CalRobert 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		To be fair, if 5% of drivers cause 95% of crashes then the average driver is still terrible. The median one might be better, but does it even matter? The average driver is still wreaking havoc.

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qwerty_clicks 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

In Houston the stats suggest that every driver should get into a crash at least once every. But many ppl haven’t been an crash all their lives and more have been in multiple