Are you suggesting Waymo would become available where cabs aren't due to economics, or that Waymo-like technology in privately owned vehicles would solve that? Because I wouldn't buy the former, but I can see how the latter would, yet we are far away from that.
I am not referring only to "small number statistics", but to obvious miscomparisons. We don't want SDVs to beat "average human driver", because average is worsened by impaired humans — we need them to "beat" at least an average, non-impaired human. Going by the numbers alone, they would achieve that too, but not by the same amount.
But more importantly, we need them to compare both in identical driving conditions, which is where most of my complaint really is. Unless Waymo has driven in the same amount (proportionally) of rush-hour traffic, road-works, risky-drivers-around conditions, parking into tight spots and garages... of miles out of their 25M miles as their human counterparts, we could very well be looking into Waymo-in-simpler-situations vs humans-in-all-situations. And the numbers would be meaningless, which to me they seem they are.
And it is important that they have achieved similar success with 6x the miles, but they need to account for more challenging conditions. And while some tricks can work while they are in small numbers (eg. avoiding road works by re-routing), it will lead to congestion elsewhere when such technology dominates the traffic.
I would also note that it is impressive, regardless of the conditions they operated in, that they were involved in exactly 2 "bodily injury" claims over those 25M miles, and both of those appear not to have been the fault of Waymo.
I am not referring only to "small number statistics", but to obvious miscomparisons. We don't want SDVs to beat "average human driver", because average is worsened by impaired humans — we need them to "beat" at least an average, non-impaired human. Going by the numbers alone, they would achieve that too, but not by the same amount.
But more importantly, we need them to compare both in identical driving conditions, which is where most of my complaint really is. Unless Waymo has driven in the same amount (proportionally) of rush-hour traffic, road-works, risky-drivers-around conditions, parking into tight spots and garages... of miles out of their 25M miles as their human counterparts, we could very well be looking into Waymo-in-simpler-situations vs humans-in-all-situations. And the numbers would be meaningless, which to me they seem they are.
And it is important that they have achieved similar success with 6x the miles, but they need to account for more challenging conditions. And while some tricks can work while they are in small numbers (eg. avoiding road works by re-routing), it will lead to congestion elsewhere when such technology dominates the traffic.
I would also note that it is impressive, regardless of the conditions they operated in, that they were involved in exactly 2 "bodily injury" claims over those 25M miles, and both of those appear not to have been the fault of Waymo.