# The very human challenge of safe driving



## Queenslander (Nov 4, 2018)

*The very human challenge of safe driving*
By John Krafcik, CEO

Medium - Nov 5

At Waymo, our safety culture is core to everything we do. We have carefully developed our testing program in the past decade and over 10 million miles. Every day, our vehicles are testing in our private test facility and on city streets, and it is our responsibility to ensure the safety of our vehicles - for our test drivers, our passengers, and other road users.

Recently, one of our vehicles was involved in a manual collision that injured a motorcyclist. While driving on El Camino Real in Mountain View, our test driver took control of the vehicle after seeing a passenger car to the left abruptly move towards our vehicle's lane. Our driver responded by quickly moving the vehicle into the right lane. Unfortunately, our driver did not see that a motorcyclist had just moved from behind our vehicle into the right lane to pass us. As a result, our vehicle's rear right bumper came into contact with the motorcycle.

Testing on public roads is vital to the safe development of self-driving technology, and we're sorry that a member of the community was injured in a collision with one of our cars. We recognize the impact this can have on community trust. We hold ourselves to the highest standard, and we are always working to improve and refine our testing program.

As professional vehicle operators, our test drivers undergo rigorous training that includes defensive driving courses, including guidance on responding to fast-moving scenarios on the road. However, some dynamic situations still challenge human drivers. People are often called upon to make split second decisions with insufficient context. In this case, our test driver reacted quickly to avoid what he thought would be a collision, but his response contributed to another.

Incidents like this are what motivate all of us at Waymo to work diligently and safely to bring our technology to roads, because this is the type of situation self-driving vehicles can prevent. We designed our technology to see 360 degrees in every direction, at all times. This constant, vigilant monitoring of the car's surroundings informs our technology's driving decisions and can lead to safer outcomes.

Our review of this incident confirmed that our technology would have avoided the collision by taking a safer course of action. While our test driver's focus was on the car ahead, our self-driving system was simultaneously tracking the position, direction and speed of every object around it. Crucially, our technology correctly anticipated and predicted the future behavior of both the merging vehicle _and_ the motorcyclist. Our simulation shows the self-driving system would have responded to the passenger car by reducing our vehicle's speed, and nudging slightly in our own lane, avoiding a collision.

Waymo was founded with the goal to improve road safety, and our mission informs what we do every day. As CEO, I commit that we will continue to always do our best, every day, to earn and keep the trust of the communities that we drive in.


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## Workforfood (May 12, 2018)

Human scapegoat. The truth of the matter is that the car didn't slow down autonomously. " Would of" did not occur and should have initiated prior to any physical input from the human. They importantly stated that the system was tracking everything but not that it had initiated an avoidance strategy.


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## LuisEnrikee (Mar 31, 2016)

Humans are bad drivers but when you put it mile per mile human and robot driven .
Robots take then cake . They are very destructive in the short time span.


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## goneubering (Aug 17, 2017)

Workforfood said:


> Human scapegoat. The truth of the matter is that the car didn't slow down autonomously. " Would of" did not occur and should have initiated prior to any physical input from the human. They importantly stated that the system was tracking everything but not that it had initiated an avoidance strategy.


Claiming their SDC would have made a better decision is empty. This was a real world situation and Waymo's software apparently failed.


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## Gonetoscottuber (Nov 6, 2018)

Queenslander said:


> *The very human challenge of safe driving*
> By John Krafcik, CEO
> 
> Medium - Nov 5
> ...


Waymo is easily beating GM, Ford & the human ingredient.
Insurance Co. Stats make it evident , human drivers kill lots of people


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## Workforfood (May 12, 2018)

Gonetoscottuber said:


> Waymo is easily beating GM, Ford & the human ingredient.
> Insurance Co. Stats make it evident , human drivers kill lots of people


?


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## heynow321 (Sep 3, 2015)

Hi greg!


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## uberdriverfornow (Jan 10, 2016)

Such a horrible spin. Let's see the video. 

They always say it's somehow the human drivers fault, but if the sdc actually worked the human driver wouldn't have had to even "allegedly" drive the car himself/herself.

Let's talk to the human driver. Oops, they're under a nondisclosure agreement and can't talk to anyone. How convenient.


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## CarpeNoctem (Sep 12, 2018)

Gonetoscottuber said:


> Waymo is easily beating GM, Ford & the human ingredient.
> Insurance Co. Stats make it evident , human drivers kill lots of people


And you would be wrong.

"1.25 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles (or 12.5 deaths per billion vehicle miles) traveled in 2016" And to compound this, it probably includes the death by an SDC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_United_States

All the SDC's combined can't reach anywhere near that number and there have already been 3 deaths?


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## uberdriverfornow (Jan 10, 2016)

If the sdc's actually drove themselves like they say they do, there would be many more deaths.


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## Workforfood (May 12, 2018)

Yeah, but don't forget that civil claims would be settled by arbitration not a jury of eight. Criminal guilt leads to a corporate fine. Hurt or kill a pedestrian or motorist,human error.
Just like in 2001 a space Odyssey
" This sort of thing has cropped up before. It has always been attributable to human error"?!!!


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