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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   2676 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for October 16, 2026

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I think once we get the robots driving for us, the accidents will plummet dramatically,

Me too. Waymo is getting in about 20% as many crashes as humans do. They claim a disproportionate number of the remaining crashes are not-at-fault, but they're a biased source.

There was a story a while ago about a robotaxi hitting a kid outside a school. A more charitable summary would be that its superhuman reflexes saved a jaywalker from more serious injuries. Repeat that same reporting slant a hundred times, and it's hard to get a good picture from the news.

Instead, consider an (obviously flawed) model where all collisions involve two vehicles: one at fault and one not. You can drop your accident rate by 50% by following the rules, and the last 30% would have to be from supererogatory actions like dodging bad drivers. From that, I suspect that an all-Waymo city would be even safer than a Waymo in a mixed-vehicle city.

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