- Waymo proved in their studies that autonomous cars are safe to ride.
- In simulated situations, Waymo cars showed 100% mitigation of severe accidents. The passengers are 15x less likely to have serious injuries.
Autonomous cars increase road safety by manifold. Waymo releases today, a study that shows how autonomous cars would respond to real-world fatal accident scenarios. Autonomous driving technology can make a significant amount of difference in various situations. But, so far, no one has conducted scenario-based research. There has not been any publication to show how autonomous cars would perform in situations that led to fatal accidents with human drivers.
The Alphabet division has collected information from the fatal accidents that happened in Chandler, Arizona between 2008-2017. The public ride called Waymo One has been operating. It covers thousands of miles in the southeast area of Phoenix. Waymo reconstructed the situations that its vehicles would find themselves in.
In the first 52 sets of scenarios, the autonomous cars played the role of initiator. They would act as the vehicle that caused the accident. In such situations, the car “avoided every crash by consistent, competent driving, and obeying the rules of the road.”
Waymo autonomous cars:
Waymo then put the autonomous cars in the situation where the human drivers initiated the accidents. The research team observed that:
- The cars avoided 82% of simulated accidents with “smooth, consistent driving” which did not need pulling hard brakes or urgent preventive response.
- In the other 10% of the situations, the events happened at the intersection where other vehicles turned across the car’s path. To handle the situation, Waymo “took action that mitigated the severity.”
- The remaining 8% of responder crash simulations were unaltered since the Waymo cars were given some amount of time to respond. These situations involved human-driven cars striking the rear of the autonomous cars which were on a halt or traveling at a constant speed.
The technology behind Waymo uses a blend of long-range and 360-degree cameras, radar, and lidars. With the situation of mitigated accidents, Waymo claims that the passengers are 1.3-15x less likely to suffer serious injuries. Overall, Waymo’s autonomous cars avoided and mitigated about 100% of accidents apart from the ones where the autonomous cars were struck from behind. It included every event which involved a pedestrian or a cyclist. They conducted around 20 similar kinds of simulations with Waymo’s autonomous cars.
Google’s Firefly:
Waymo cars are Google’s project and they have been working on the technology since 2009. Google claims that it has made cars work perfectly well in complex environments. By the time it was 2015, Google tested vehicles called Firefly. Firefly is an autonomous car that has customized sensors, computers, steering, and brakes with the absence of the actual steering wheel and brake pedals. A guy named Steve Mahan took the world’s first completely autonomous ride on public roads in Austin, Texas. And the most interesting part of this ride was that Steve is legally blind.
In 2017, Waymo invited Phoenix residents to join the first public trial for autonomous cars which was operated by Waymo Driver.
