According to the state of California, Waymo had less than 1.5 million miles driven in 2019[1]. That is basically nothing when it comes to proving a track record of safety. The fatality rate in California is around 1 per 100 million miles. Waymo's cars can be twice as deadly as humans and there would only be a 3% chance of killing someone in a 1.5 million miles.
There is no breakdown there of where these miles occurred. It appears that most of those miles came out of the Phoenix area which leads back to my original point.
Either way, 20 million miles is once again a drop in the bucket compared to the number which would indicate these cars are as safe or safer than human drivers. For comparison, Tesla is likely around 4 billion miles with Autopilot. I still wouldn't be comfortable saying definitively that Autopilot is as safe or safer than humans.
If you have a very limited fleet of self driving cars then maybe it's actually ok if they are not as safe as human drivers as long as the trajectory is towards better safety. I'm sure the very first test car driving anywhere was less safe than a human driver. Each step will lay the foundation baseline for the next step. The Tesla 4 billion miles can't be compared with anything since those aren't really autonomous driving. It's like saying there's a trillion miles on cruise control.
I don't disagree with you. I'm not coming from a position that Waymo is unsafe. I am coming from the position that we don't have any substantial evidence on the safety of Waymo and we should be cautious drawing conclusions from the extremely limited track record.
Waymo has 20 million miles using multi-modal sensory data: cameras, LIDARs, etc. Because the sensory data is gathered in multiple modes, it can be cross-referenced and calibrated against each other even if the placement of individual components change (so long as not all components change at the same time), meaning that the data can be used across multiple models.
Tesla has 4 billion miles using a single mode of sensory data, but because it uses a single mode of input (visual), old data becomes mostly useless when they make any changes to the system, such as to the visual resolution of the cameras, or their positioning on the vehicles. This is one of the big reasons that they get so many regressions with Autopilot.
Also, despite having 4 billion miles of sensory data, that hasn't stopped Tesla from being the industry leader in self-driving fatalities. The rest of the industry combined has only a single fatality.
>Also, despite having 4 billion miles of sensory data, that hasn't stopped Tesla from being the industry leader in self-driving fatalities. The rest of the industry combined has only a single fatality.
You are missing the point. Tesla is the industry leader in fatalities primarily because they have such a huge lead in the number of miles. Miles are not directly comparable to each other because each company has a different approach, but Tesla's fatality rate is 1 every 800 million miles. Waymo appears to be the leader among the rest of the industry with 20 million miles. How can you predict Waymo is safer than Tesla at this point? They may end up being safer, but it is way too early to say that right now.
I don't know how you are drawing that conclusion and it is irrelevant to the original discussion about having a track record of safety. Neither company has proven their system is as safe or safer than humans. Tesla at least has a much longer track record of their system not being substantially more dangerous than humans. Waymo doesn't have enough data to say even that.
Tesla's own legal filings shows that Autopilot is 2-3x more likely to get into accidents that Teslas without Autopilot engaged. (The 2x for Autopilot disabled but other advanced driving features engaged; 3x for all advanced driving functions disabled.) https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2020/10/28/new-te...
What you need is a zillion representative miles. If Waymo mostly drives in easy conditions, or autopilot is mostly only on in easy conditions, then even 100 billion miles won’t let you extrapolate on how safe it is in a full regular person end to end commute scenario.
It’s clearer by hours instead of by miles. If a normal car gets into an accident every 1 zillion hours, and I’ve driven my research car for 20 minutes and then had it parked for 100 zillion hours and it only had one accident accident, I don’t get to claim it’s 100x safer. (100x fewer accidents per hour!) It has to be apples to apples.
