> 4.6 cab crashes, 3.7 livery car crashes, and 6.7 crashes with private cars.
> Waymo 2.1 crashes
The numbers become much less 80+% plus claim in the article as you remove factors. It comes closer to 30% with professional drivers.
Livery car is still not always well maintained a high sitting SUV with better visibility[1], perhaps with all these factors included if it is 20% better it is impressive technical achievement for sure, but not going to create headlines anywhere.
The point is the methodology is not as objective as it could be, and this is biased/selective claim, not that self driving cannot be better than humans.
[1] Also there is major difference in the price point between Waymo and Livery cars, I cannot say how it will influence rates but the different rates means different class of clients using at different times of day/night to different locations that needs to be normalized for.
The percent improvement doesn't really matter though. The fact that it is better than even just professionals still means that there are fewer crashes, and therefore they are improving overall road safety.
* In a better car, serviced much better than the average professional vehicle.
The % matters because it is close enough excluding these factors, so we can not definitely say it currently better than humans yet, close but not conclusively so.
That is not a argument against them. It is a simple function of economics, i.e. as long as it better than Lyft/Uber(they are already) that is the price point that Waymo operates at, so it is safer for most users and easy choice to make.
However if you can afford and regularly use high quality private livery car services then the data has to be lot clearer to make the switch.
> Waymo 2.1 crashes
The numbers become much less 80+% plus claim in the article as you remove factors. It comes closer to 30% with professional drivers.
Livery car is still not always well maintained a high sitting SUV with better visibility[1], perhaps with all these factors included if it is 20% better it is impressive technical achievement for sure, but not going to create headlines anywhere.
The point is the methodology is not as objective as it could be, and this is biased/selective claim, not that self driving cannot be better than humans.
[1] Also there is major difference in the price point between Waymo and Livery cars, I cannot say how it will influence rates but the different rates means different class of clients using at different times of day/night to different locations that needs to be normalized for.