Cruise and Waymo have been as cautious as they can reasonably expect to be. They both have months long training courses for their safety drivers, and camera in the vehicle that monitor driver attention. While the vehicles are still challenged by complex scenarios, basic object detection and emergency braking are pretty good. Neither has had an at-fault accident, excluding an ambiguous but non-injurious incident between a Cruise car and a lane splitting motorcyclist.
At this point, being let’s say a “transportation safety activist” in the Bay Area, they seem about the same.
That said, I’ve seen Waymo still being too cautious relative to Cruise. Like I was waiting on the crosswalk with my bike at a 45-degree angle, and Waymo seemed terrified that I was going to bike diagonally through on-coming traffic. It was kind of hilarious.
That said when I’ve tried to test the safety parameters on Cruise while on my bike or skateboard and the system has called my bluff. I don’t know if this means Cruise is less safe. Or they’ve found a way to give the AI a sense of confidence and assertiveness against people using micromobility to aggressively bypass urban traffic congestion.
At least going by the r/selfdriving cars subreddit, it seems like Cruise cars get into a lot more 'incidents' than Waymo cars. Especially getting randomly stuck because they don't know what to do.
It's not too useful to lump Tesla, Cruise, and Waymo together here. Tesla is years behind Cruise and cruise is years behind Waymo in terms of driving capability. Waymo doesn't even drive on highways, so we don't know how safe it would be (probably very safe).
Waymo and Cruise are being much more careful. Consequently, they’re finding out that self-driving cars cannot be deployed yet without being dangerous to people. It’s not a surprise that Uber and Tesla have killed people.
After riding in both Cruise and Waymo cars in SF, I think that Waymo cars are so much more road-ready. While my Waymo rides all seemed pretty smooth albeit with a timid driver, my cruise rides featured extremely skittish behavior around other cars, missing several turns to avoid being around others, and stopping in odd places, especially for dropoff and pickup.
The flip side is every now and then a situation arises that requires machine reaction times or attentiveness.
Waymo cars have driven over 10 million miles so far without any fatal accidents. That's not nearly enough miles to compare against human drivers, but it'll be interesting to see who does better once they log some more miles.
> Cruise and Waymo have both done tons of closed course testing, that's where they validate their respective systems against mission critical stuff. But eventually they've got to go out into the real world and learn to deal with real traffic on real roads.
Waymo has been doing that longer than anyone, though.
fwiw, my personal experience testing both has been that Waymo's vehicles are noticeably better at driving, and also drive more aggressively. It's to the point where sitting in a Waymo vehicle is unremarkable and I don't even pay attention to its driving, while Cruise still typically has at least 2 "that wasn't great" moments per ride.
15 years ago I worked on robot tanks for the US Army, I currently am in machine learning and I live in Phoenix, so I was very interested in this and have taken several rides on Waymo (never been in a Cruise). The Waymo felt very safe- and is definitely trying to convince you of that fact. Most seats have a screen that shows the cars current situational awareness of all obstacles around it- you can even see pedestrians, parked cars, etc., and when you come up to a stop light it will display a little icon with the correct light so you know that it is reading the red/yellow/green correctly. It plans routes such that it rarely takes an unprotected left turn (though the current generation of vehicles seem to be more willing to do that- on the old Pacifica minivans I don't think I ever had one do that, the iJag's have done it occasionally though not often). They are clearly thinking about trying to make it feel safer, and convince riders of that safety.
Now, I will note that the Phoenix area is by far the easiest driving I have ever encountered in 25 years of having a license. Wide roads, little traffic, few pedestrians (I moved here from NYC!), little weather, and I don't see them out as much at night. They crucially also completely avoid the most unpredictable driving in the area, for example Sky Harbor Airport, and near construction sites (there is construction in our kids school parking lot, and the Waymo won't go in- they will only drop us off next door and make us walk). But this too builds my confidence in the system- the people who are operating it seem to understand that it has limitations, which suggests to me that they are wearing their engineers hats and not management or, God forbid, salesmen hats. Is it perfect, I'm certain not. But I definitely prefer it to Uber or anything like that- no tip, no worry about the driver doing something concerning, just gets me where I want to go.
Waymo is amazing, knowing some of the stuff they do behind the scenes to ensure safety - I would feel safer riding in a Waymo than driving myself.
My biggest fear has always been that Cruise or Tesla would shit the bed so bad we don't get any self-driving, either because of regulatory constraints or ruining the public perception of them.
Waymo appears to be the real deal. Last night I saw one navigate a situation with a hesitant pedestrian better than most human drivers. And before people chime in with "ideal conditions," it was at night in the rain.
I never trusted the Cruise cars, they would drive like a teenager that was afraid of the road. But Waymo seems a step up even from the Uber drivers.
Waymo have driven 8 million miles and had one minor accident that was the cars fault where it thought a bus would give way and a dent resulted.
I've driven about 200,000 miles and done considerably worse including two cars written off, though no injuries. I'd say Waymo seems safer than me. And judging from my insurance premiums which are low, I'd be safer than the average human driver.
When Waymo was known as the Google Self-Driving car project they were cavalier about safety, but became much more conservative after spinning out as Waymo under John Krafcik in 2017.
Waymo has not had any serious incidents and these days it seems they're doing what they can to remain low-key and avoid attracting negative attention to themselves. Like you said, when Cruise, Uber or Tesla behave recklessly, it can't help but bode poorly upon Waymo in the eyes of the public.
We can't directly compare what these companies have going on under the hood because it's all quite proprietary. Waymo nonetheless has been chipping away at the problem for longer and with more resources at their disposal than any competitor. Waymo's 'Driver' is far and away the most experienced. While I'm fully confident making that claim, there's no easy way to measure it or make an emprirical comparison to other drivers.
If you want to play this game and you aren't very experienced, you can fake it by being reckless. You can make it seem to investors that you're better than you are by putting hundreds of vehicles on the road. Investors want results. You have to be able to point to a line on a graph that goes up and to the right and say "look at all these new benchmarks we hit! More cars! More miles!"
Waymo is effectively patronized and will run at a loss for as long as they need to without any pressure to fake it until they either make it or break it. It's Larry and Sergey's pet project. It's the one they won't let go of. A single scandal can really mess things up.
Waymo is currently under investigation for multiple incidents, not all of which it had previously disclosed to the NHTSA [0]. The recent light pole incident also doesn't help [1].
If they are doing 50k rides a day, then they would appear to have a remarkable safety record.
It will be interesting to see if these investigations lead to a repeat of the Cruise debacle or if this will become the price of doing business.
Cruise and Waymo have been as cautious as they can reasonably expect to be. They both have months long training courses for their safety drivers, and camera in the vehicle that monitor driver attention. While the vehicles are still challenged by complex scenarios, basic object detection and emergency braking are pretty good. Neither has had an at-fault accident, excluding an ambiguous but non-injurious incident between a Cruise car and a lane splitting motorcyclist.
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