‘I recently got called to see a teenager ejected in a rollover car crash. The trauma team rushed him into surgery to stop major abdominal bleeding, but we all knew. When that much energy enters a skull, no operation can turn it back. He was declared brain dead. His death was a reminder of the staggering amount of suffering and loss of human life we accept from car accidents every single day.
Self-driving car company Waymo recently released data covering nearly 100 million driverless miles in four American cities through June 2025 [https://waymo.com/safety/impact/\], the biggest trove of information released so far about safety. I spent weeks analyzing the data. The results were impressive. When compared to human drivers on the same roads, Waymo’s self-driving cars were involved in 91 percent fewer serious-injury-or-worse crashes and 80 percent fewer crashes causing any injury. It showed a 96 percent lower rate of injury-causing crashes at intersections, which are some of the deadliest I encounter in the trauma bay.
So far, other autonomous vehicle companies don’t report or report incomplete data. Waymo, by contrast, published everything I needed to analyze the data: crash statistics with miles driven that allow accurate comparison to human drivers in the same locations.
Waymo’s autonomous vehicles see dramatically lower crash rates than human drivers’
Interesting take on the dangers of living and doing so recklessly. The kid was forced to not wear a seat belt and roll his car over ? The slippery slope raises its ugly head again with an eager audience to utopia. Reading between the lines before first light.
By the time that even remotely becomes possible - you’ll be long dead by then.
At BEST we are at level 3 of fully autonomous driving vehicle. In certain conditions there are level 4 on the road. Don’t expect to see level 5 until 2030 (probably closer to 2040). It’ll take many more years before they become fully accepted.
The difference between Level 4 and 5 seems only to be the absence of driver controls and offer of general sale to the public.
The Waymo system, while having driver controls since it is based on an existing car is arguably already at 4 and could continue to 5 in short order. It travels without a driver, picks up the passenger who rides away from the controls and delivers them to the destination. The steering wheel and pedals don’t need to exist today.
Level 5, other than the driver controls, defines it as “for sale” to the general public. Personally I think that this technology will never be sold to the general public. It will be sold to and operated by public or private companies. It removes the liability issues from the traveler. The liability is carried by the operators and the manufacturers.
If the car you buy has this technology, doesn’t it do that by default? You’re no longer in control either way.
Never is a long time
I see this progression happening first with expressway travel. By then, cars will be able to communicate with each other and perhaps a central control system. You want to take an expressway? Your car takes over, merges you into travel lanes by making room with other cars in most efficient manner. Car controls the speed and distance to other cars until reaching your destination. Most efficient means of travel. No more slinky effect. Cars can be grouped very close together, traveling in packs. Also very safe as it eliminates the oddball trying to go faster than everyone else, weaving around traffic. Analogous to a train ride. Control is returned to you upon exiting the expressway.
I attended a seminar hosted by the Nvidia folks probably 8 years ago now. They were talking about autonomous vehicles and saying that the need for people to actually own a car will go away at some point for the vast majority of people. It is coming to fruition through Waymo/Google/Alphabet/Nvidia…
We will just have to see what happens. But seems to me new York is already there but with yellow cars and drivers instead of white. Not a pleasant look.
No. Level 4 vehicles today are in carefully mapped areas. Level 4 doesn’t address inclement weather and most of the edge-case scenarios. Level 4 is only for certain driving conditions. There’s been limited success in driving in snow or what happens when Satellites go out like during a sun-spot. As a retired software engineer/manager/architect and a car guy I’ve been keeping up on the technology and read everything about it I can. Trust me - we have a long ways to go before level 5. In fact SAE is even considering adding new levels between 4 and 5 so companies can show some progress.
That’s “in the city”. Most of the serious injury crashes on the news are outside of the city or on freeways and are speed related in one way or another.
#1 area where serious injury accidents occur are at INTERSECTION. Not too many intersections I know of on Freeways. #2 Urban areas due to large population.
Do Waymo vehicles obey speed limits, and further reduce speed as needed for weather conditions? One article I read says the obey the speed limit exactly. If this alone was forced on to human operated vehicles, I suspect the fatalities and serious injuries would drop to 1/2 or even 1/4. Apparently the UK has already implemented vehicle enforced speed limits in to new vehicles.
The most interesting thing about that research is that this immense increase in safety of the computer driven vehicle is achieved while sharing the roads with human operated vehicles! It is possible to be safe out there despite others on the road, at least in city traffic. Pulling out in to cross traffic and failing to yield is most often done by young inexperienced drivers.
Yes intersections are bad, but often not fatal. Side impact crash protection is better than ever, but tall vehicles are worse than ever as well. Interstates have serious roll over accidents, and vehicles crossing the median when there is no barrier. Two lane roads often have fatal head on collisions.
Nice strawman argument. Never said it did, nor did the comment Jerome make. He said that most serious crashes occur outside the city. And that’s NOT true. I have no idea what you’re arguing about.
It’s a strawman strawman now. I wasn’t really supporting or refuting what you wrote, or trying to make it seem that you wrote something different, but you claim I am.
I don’t really even get your point. Is it that since most injuries happen at intersections, that it is therefore false if it is claimed that a lot of serious accidents happen on highways?
Autonomous vehicles are still very new and there are bound to be problems. The real problem is that Waymo may be jumping the gun and putting them in public too early. They are treating these vehicles like new software and allowing the public to Beta Test them. Beta testing software won’t get you killed. There has to be other ways to Beta test in real world situations without endangering the public.
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