Re:Jazz CRJ9 at New York on Mar 22nd 2026, collision with fi...
by alex43578 on Tuesday March 24, 2026 @03:51PM
(#47508112)
Yeah, I agree with you too. Per IIHS, the fatality rate per 100,000 people ranged from 4.9 in Massachusetts to 24.9 in Mississippi, so clearly there's a huge variance even with "US population".
The other person's comment was "we won't ever have self-driving cars" because they aren't good enough: but something like Waymo already is, particularly for the population. If we waved a wand and replaced everyone's car with a Waymo, accident rates would fall, at a population level and at a per-mile driven level.
It's even tough to see that a Waymo would be more dangerous for a good driver: they too have never been the cause of a serious accident and have certainly driven more miles across the fleet than any human driver. All 4 serious injury accidents and both fatalities were essentially "other driver at fault, hit Waymo".
This isn't meant to glaze Waymo, but point out that self-driving cars in certain environments are "solved". They're expensive, proprietary, aren't suitable for trucking or deployment to cold climates (yet?); but self-driving that is safer than people-driving is already here. To your point: human skill in driving is variable: Waymo won't replace Verstappen right now, but just like the AGI argument with LLMs, they're already "smarter" than the average person in certain domains.
The other person's comment was "we won't ever have self-driving cars" because they aren't good enough: but something like Waymo already is, particularly for the population. If we waved a wand and replaced everyone's car with a Waymo, accident rates would fall, at a population level and at a per-mile driven level.
It's even tough to see that a Waymo would be more dangerous for a good driver: they too have never been the cause of a serious accident and have certainly driven more miles across the fleet than any human driver. All 4 serious injury accidents and both fatalities were essentially "other driver at fault, hit Waymo".
This isn't meant to glaze Waymo, but point out that self-driving cars in certain environments are "solved". They're expensive, proprietary, aren't suitable for trucking or deployment to cold climates (yet?); but self-driving that is safer than people-driving is already here. To your point: human skill in driving is variable: Waymo won't replace Verstappen right now, but just like the AGI argument with LLMs, they're already "smarter" than the average person in certain domains.