The Data on Self-Driving Cars Is Clear. We Have to Change Course.

[Mr. Sparkle]

I have a guest essay in @nytimes today(Dr. Jon Slotkin) about autonomous vehicle safety. I wrote it because I’m tired of seeing children die. Done right, we can eliminate car crashes as a leading cause of death in the United States. @Waymo recently released data covering nearly 100 million driverless miles. I spent weeks analyzing it because the results seemed too good to be true. 91% fewer serious-injury crashes. 92% less pedestrians hit. 96% fewer injury crashes at intersections. The list goes on.

39,000 Americans died in crashes last year. More than homicide, plane crashes, and natural disasters combined. The #2 killer of children and young adults. The #1 cause of spinal cord injury. We’ve accepted this as the price of mobility.We don’t have to.

In medicine, when a treatment shows this level of benefit, we stop the trial early. Continuing to give patients the placebo becomes unethical. When an intervention works this clearly, you change what you do. In driving, we’re all the control group. Cities like DC and Boston are blocking deployment. And cities are not the only forces mobilizing to slow this progress. It’s time we stop treating this like a tech moonshot and start treating it like a public health intervention that will save lives.

Link to tweet

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/opinion/self-driving-cars.html
http://archive.today/1IrZf

[dalton99a]

1. .

Videos show Waymo vehicles illegally passing Austin school buses 19 times this year
KXAN
Dec 2, 2025

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/driverless-waymo-vehicle-inadvertently-takes-riders-tense-police-stop-rcna246994

Driverless Waymo vehicle goes through tense police stop in L.A.
Video shows the Waymo passing a white pickup pulled over in Los Angeles by several police cruisers with their lights flashing as the suspected driver lies on the ground.
Dec. 2, 2025, 1:42 PM CST / Updated Dec. 2, 2025, 5:59 PM CST
By Andrew Blankstein and Corky Siemaszko

[Mr. Sparkle]

3. 3 children, 2 adults dead after school bus and semitruck collide in Illinois

https://abcnews.go.com/US/3-children-2-adults-dead-after-school-bus/story?id=108026854

Both vehicles were on manual driving. I think you missed the main point showing statistical analysis done by Dr. Jon Slotkin which shows a vast decrease in accidents. Computers can react much faster then we can and while they may not be able to prevent all accidents, they can react in a way that does much less damage then which would have typically occurred.

[dalton99a]

4. They still have a lot of work to do on the decision-making side in the software

like stopping for school buses and emergency vehicles

[uncle ray]

8. Waymo also has waaay more tech packed in than so-called self driving cars like tesla.

to the tune of about a quarter million dollars each IIRC.

[EdmondDantes_]

10. You're still missing the point

Compare those incidents to the number of people driven cars over the same miles. Just because the autonomous vehicles aren't perfect doesn't mean they aren't vastly better than us.

Think of it like this. It's news when a plane crashes, but car crashes aren't. Which one happens more frequently? You hear about the instances of an autonomous car doing something wrong precisely because it's rare.

[tinrobot]

2. They're all over Los Angeles. They're generally good drivers.

I recently had an Uber driver illegally cut into a bike lane at 40mph just to get around traffic. Quite harrowing and not cool.

Waymos may not be perfect, but they're never going to try stupid stunts like that.

[DBoon]

9. The difference between Waymo and a human LA driver

The human will run through a yellow light turning red.

The Waymo will always come to a stop.

The Waymos are the most polite drivers on the road.

[tinrobot]

11. I know a cyclist in SF who rides next to Waymos.

He says it's because they're the ones least likely to hit him or cut him off.

[Shambala]

5. I took a Waymo for the first time for the novelty of it up in SF

and felt safer in that than any taxi, uber, bus, I’d ever been in. It felt like riding with a very careful driver. That’ll be my first choice now in areas served by Waymo.

[dalton99a]

6. They are actually ok for routine traffic in good weather on clearly marked roads

They are safer than a drunk or a teenager on a cellphone

However, I've personally seen Waymos stopping in the middle of an intersection and in a lane closed for construction - basically acting like a confused robot

[harumph]

7. The problem is that there are too many cars on the road.

Driverless cars do not solve that problem. As if the proliferation of personal vehicles on the road is a given. Of course the car companies desire and depend on the status quo. This solution is no solution. We have dug a deep hole for ourselves with our car culture, but I refuse to think of the problem as inescapable.

[dickthegrouch]

12. It's been shown many times that driverless cars are NOT programmed to stop in questionable circumstances

If there's a question, it should always be safer to stop than to continue.
Fog and badly behaved pedestrians (or at least not-cars) are the most frequent situations I've seen on various videos.
Badly behaved pedestrians are my #1 bugbear in the San Jose-SF area.
Especially those that cross after the Pelican crossing lights have started to flash, and the idiots who cross in unsafe places which used to be called Jaywalking.

[EdmondDantes_]

13. Except the data doesn't show that

The data linked in the article referenced shows autonomous vehicles hit pedestrians less frequently. Can you provide data that shows that?

[dickthegrouch]

14. Here

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=20007888