Prove that. Because last time I checked in there wasn't a self-driving system in play that wouldn't faceplant into wet cement, blow through crosswalks, or find itself trapped in a cleverly deployed ring of salt. Additionally, by their own admission Waymo is nowhere near level 5 autonomy, which means they still haven't reached parity with what a mediocre human driver is capable of.
Well they just announced that they are doing tens of thousands of rides per week. That either works or it doesn't. And they seem pretty comfortable doing that. Also there's a distinct lack of horror stories involving Waymo cars. And I assume that they don't have thousands of mechanical turks wielding a joystick somewhere, which means these things are mostly working as advertised (i.e. autonomously) with the very occasional manual intervention.
So, what you are asserting and that cannot be true at the same time. So, my conclusion is that whatever you think you know here is probably wrong.
Idgaf if they're round-tripping the equivalent to mars and back weekly, the fact of the matter is their tech cannot perform at the level of a human driver who's had their license for a week, by their own admission. No amount of argle-bargle changes that as the autonomy levels are very well-defined and Waymo self-reports as L4 under optimal conditions and no clear path to L5 in sight in the next decade. Let's not confuse a legislative fuckup on the part of cdot with actual technical prowess yeah?
You are splitting hairs. Tens of thousands of rides per week. Autonomously. Those are the keywords. Other things they are bragging about involve such things as 24/7, night and day, and foggy conditions. I would suggest actually reading the short press release. They make quite a few interesting claims in it. Anyway, anyone in the SFO area will probably be reporting all the wonderful and uneventful rides they are enjoying with Waymo soon.
As for people that recently got their drivers license. I'm pretty sure that demographic is over-represented in the statistics of who drives the least safely, traffic fatalities, etc. Also insurers and rental car agencies have policies that reflect those cold, hard statistics. It will be interesting to see what they do when level 5 starts happening (probably sooner rather than later). My guess is that they'll charge people extra for the privilege of taking control of the car as they are far more likely to damage the vehicle and otherwise cause trouble.
And obviously one of the points Waymo is trying to make with their press release is that they are already safer. It's a press release of course and not the same as cold hard facts. And you make a fair point about self reporting. But it suggests the obvious notion that computers are getting pretty good at not crashing into stuff (or people). I find that entirely unsurprising, BTW. It does not seem like a particularly hard problem.
I'm not splitting hairs. The difference between L4 and L5 autonomy is enormous. I submit that you cannot get enhanced safety outcomes out of a system that cannot perform the task at hand at least as well as a mediocre human, and realistically not until you're routinely out-performing the bulk of human operators. And if you think not crashing into random shit in a perfectly chaotic environment is an easily solved problem please explain to me why store PoS tech (orders of magnitude smaller problem space) has been a roiling dumpster fire for decades now. Software doesn't have an amazing track record at solving problems. It has proven to be absolutely phenomenal at shifting problem spaces in weird ways and introducing spectacularly stupid unplanned side effects however.
Not only will safety take a long time for technical reasons, but its extremely predictable under what financial conditions corporate execs sweep safety issues under the carpet. If Alphabet has a few tricky quarters good luck to everyone.
Oh sure yeah. It'd take exactly one legislative push to place full liability in the case of accidents onto the vehicle manufacturer (where it clearly belongs) to fold up every autonomy division in the industry like a wet towel. What galls the shit out of me is there's apparently enough dumb money afoot to float R&D spend equivalent to the GDP of a middle of the road 3rd world country just to make cabbies lives even more miserable.
That dumb money mountain will go to fighting legislation as we have seen with big oil, telco, pharma, wall st etc. The money always flows and aggregates around anything that promises to become a monopoly tomorrow. And monopolies can then collect rent at whatever rate they want. This end state is what attracts money more and more. The money is not just to replace the existing solution, its reqd to capture and lock in talent, attention, suppliers, lobbyists, politicians etc. The more the spend the more competitors exit too, the closer to market capture. But they have been spending for a long time to end up in just 2 cities so the pressure to scale, monetize, compromise will keep growing.
