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Discussion (14 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
Waymo Robotaxis Record Higher Serious Injury and Fatal Crash Rate Than NYC's For-Hire Fleet (https://www.yahoo.com/news/science/articles/waymo-robotaxis-...)
It may also be worth noting that waymo doesn't report all crashes to the DMV and they went to court to keep crash data secret (https://techcrunch.com/2022/02/22/waymo-to-keep-robotaxi-saf...)
Waymo compares its safety record with that of the average human driver. The study says New York City's for-hire vehicles are involved in serious or fatal crashes at a rate that is 14 times lower than the average vehicle, making them a more appropriate benchmark for robotaxis. ... The researchers compared Waymo's nationwide crash data with New York City's for-hire fleet and found the robotaxis had a serious injury or fatal crash rate about 1.5 times higher per mile driven.
Through that lens, I honestly don't know if Waymo's future would lead to preservation of life. I actually think it might increase physical harm to Americans, only that harm is laundered out of our roadways and into our failing healthcare system.
This is an important aspect of any tech that threatens whole sectors of employment.. "safety" is always thrown into question when you cut & consolidate economic lifelines without a societal safety net. If it happens to truckers it can happen to you, too.
[1] https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/06/america-keeps... This article lists 3.5 MILLION truckers, not even counting rideshare drivers and other CDL holders.
The better approach is to ask government to come up with a solutions that does not involve limiting science and tech.
It is yet to be seen whether waymo can really drive everywhere that humans drive, though.
Should we smash the machines in the factories and go back to everything being handmade? Get rid of the pick-and-place machines for our electronics and have everything hand-soldered on hand-drawn boards? Think of the jobs!
I hear these new-fangled steam locomotives can move as much freight as hundreds of horse-drawn carts. That's hundreds of jobs being replaced by just a few on the train. Think of the jobs for all those horse drivers, all the barn workers, and more!
There are tons of jobs that used to exist that don't anymore. Many were very common. We used to have to pay people to go light all the street lights. Can you imagine having to pay an army of people to walk all the city streets every night to go light all the lights and every morning to extinguish them?
To be fair, I am a bit of a skeptic of driverless cars taking over 100% of the driving industry. I think as long as roads are open to the public there will be some humans behind the wheel. There's probably just going to be enough "odd" kinds of transportation needs that don't map well to the automation that cover 90% of people and trips just fine.
I would LOVE an autonomous utopia but if Waymo wants do the "autonomous" without the social safety net, they can spare me the BS about this saving lives and admit that their automation is about the cold, hard savings of eliminating human workers
There is a ton of research that can be done, or trash that can be picked up if people “need” jobs. The government just needs to tax and pay for it.
Are all tech companies just supposed to just stop and send all the engineers home and quit making new things until we get UBI?
In the end your frustrations seem more like policy choices being made by an elected government. 49.8% of voters thought this set of policy ideas were the way to go. I disagree vehemently, but a lot of people do like these policies overall.
In the end, we've eliminated tons of jobs in the past, and yet continue to make jobs that didn't even exist before. There will be more work to be done. What, did all those switchboard operators end up on unemployment forever? Did all those computer operators who manually loaded the tapes end up destitute forever? What do you think happened to all the lamplighters? This is one type of job that will probably face severe cuts in the future, but that's not proof there will be no other jobs for those people to do. Just not driving anymore. Just like how we don't pay for people to manually solder in all the components in our electronics anymore.
You're acting like this is some new thing, that Silicon Valley is somehow "speedrunning" this, but this has just been the case of technology throughout all of historical humanity. New technology comes in and supplants expensive labor. I don't see what makes autonomous vehicles different.
does scale matter at all though?
do crashes stay constant per miles driven
What other divisor makes sense to you?