• scratchee@feddit.uk
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    5 days ago

    You’re not wrong, but arguably that doesn’t invalidate the point, they do drive better than humans because they’re so much better at judging their own limitations.

    If human drivers refused to enter dangerous intersections, stopped every time things started yup look dangerous, and handed off to a specialist to handle problems, driving might not produce the mountain of corpses it does today.

    That said, you’re of course correct that they still have a long way to go in technical driving ability and handling of adverse conditions, but it’s interesting to consider that simple policy effectively enforced is enough to cancel out all the advantages that human drivers currently still have.

    • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      You are completely ignoring the under ideal circumstances part.
      They can’t drive at night AFAIK, they can’t drive outside the area that is meticulously mapped out.
      And even then, they often require human intervention.

      If you asked a professional driver to do the exact same thing, I’m pretty sure that driver would have way better accident record than average humans too.

      Seems to me you are missing the point I tried to make. And is drawing a false conclusion based on comparing apples to oranges.

      • DesertCreosote@lemm.ee
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        5 days ago

        Waymo can absolutely drive at night, I’ve seen them do it. They rely heavily on LIDAR, so the time of day makes no difference to them.

        And apparently they only disengage and need human assistance every 17,000 miles, on average. Contrast that to something like Tesla’s “Full Self Driving” (ignoring the controversy over whether it counts or not), where the most generous numbers I could find for it are a disengagement every 71 city miles, on average, or every 245 city miles for a “critical disengagement.”

        You are correct in that Waymo is heavily geofenced, and that’s pretty annoying sometimes. I tried to ride one in Phoenix last year, but couldn’t get it to pick me up from the park I was visiting because I was just on the edge of their area. I suspect they would likely do fine if they went outside of their zones, but they really want to make sure they’re going to be successful so they’re deliberately slow-rolling where the service is available.

        • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          Waymo can absolutely drive at night

          True I just checked it up, my information was outdated.

      • scratchee@feddit.uk
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        4 days ago

        I specifically didn’t ignore that. My entire point was that a driver that refuses to drive under anything except “ideal circumstances” is still a safer driver.

        I am aware that if we banned driving at night to get the same benefit for everyone, it wouldn’t go very well, but that doesn’t really change the safety, only the practicality.

    • Fredthefishlord@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      5 days ago

      driving might not produce the mountain of corpses it does today.

      And people wouldn’t be able to drive anywhere. Which could very well be a good thing, but still