alt Hacker News13X is way more impressive than it seems at first glance.
Let's take a simplistic model of accidents: that the average driver is at fault in an accident 50% of the time. So a perfect driver would only halve the number of accidents -- they only eliminate the accidents where they would otherwise have been at fault.
But Waymo's numbers are better than the "perfect" driver above. How is that possible? Because in most accidents the blame is not split 0%/100%. You can avoid a lot of accidents with defensive and safe driving.
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> You can avoid a lot of accidents
More than 1/2 of roadway fatalities involve alcohol or drugs. An oversized fraction of fatalities are represented by young men under 24. 1/6 of all fatalities are motorcycles. 1/6 of all fatalities are pedestrians being struck by a vehicle.
13x compared to what ? The average driver is such a bullshit statistic - accidents are highly correlated with stuff like alcohol/drugs/lack of sleep/lack of experience/physical issues, then the other huge behavioral factor distraction and driving style, and on top of that car performance matters a lot too. I don't see any attempt to correct for that in their "human benchmark". Heck the least they could have done is compare to human taxi drivers which would be apples to apples. If it's 13x compared to that I'm sold for using it as a taxi service !
But individual driving - you can eliminate all those factors assuming you're a healthy, expericed driver with a new car. Nothing against self driving in principle but the failure cases I've seen look so bizarre - I'm way more comfortable with my limitations.