The data coming out from an independent study of Waymo autonomous vehicles is, frankly, amazing. Swiss Re, one of the largest global insurance firms based out of Zürich, reports that 25.3 million fully autonomous miles drive by Waymo vehicles resulted in a 92% reduction in car crash injuries.
In plain English, Waymo self-driving tech is 12.5x safer than human drivers.
Let’s dig into what that means!
The real point of self driving cars is not to have to buy one. They should be ubiquitous fleets of taxis that never sleep, not personal possessions that sit in the driveway 90% of the time.
Delamain Cabs!
“Welcome to Johnny Cab!”
From where I’m sitting that’s very far from reality for a whole lot of reasons. I’d be happy to be wrong (because cars are unacceptably unsafe as-is) but there’s a long way to go
Okay, feel free to tell me all the reasons.
I’m not going to write you an essay
There are good video essays on the subject by Benn Jordan, Not Just Bikes, and Adam Something that (mostly) are a good overview of the problem and their videos explain things better than I’m ever going to write
Also the eternal taxi idea just seems like a shit excuse for not building other transit options. Like why not build trains and bike lanes instead of that
Well I wasn’t asking for an essay. Benjamin Faraday’s well known video about the effectiveness of automated taxi trials in St. Germaine and the Transportation Policy Institute numerous published case studies, which you can go Google, show how self driving taxis take net cars OFF the roads AND free up parking spaces for OH I DONT KNOW bike lanes and bus stops so perhaps these ideas aren’t so mutually exclusive as you suggest.