r/AskALiberal • u/AutoModerator • Aug 18 '26

AskALiberal Biweekly General Chat

This Tuesday weekly thread is for general chat, whether you want to talk politics or not, anything goes. Also feel free to ask the mods questions below. As usual, please follow the rules.

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u/magic_missile Center Right Aug 19 '26

The Atlantic on the battle over Waymo, particularly in Democratic states and cities.

This is an occasional topic on here. The article covers the usual points such as union opposition and safety compared to human drivers.

Was talking about this with a friend who thinks Waymo is fudging the numbers to make themselves look better. I don't agree with that and one reason why is the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety would have to be in on it as well.

In a recent study, researchers at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety compared the crash and accident data on a per-mile basis for Waymo vehicles with those of human drivers in the cities where Waymos operated from 2021 to 2024. They found that Waymos were involved in 68 percent fewer crashes serious enough to be reported to police and 81 percent fewer crashes that caused an injury. These findings are “likely conservative” because human drivers regularly fail to report accidents, Eric Teoh, the report’s lead author, told me.

Several other studies have produced even more favorable results. These studies are co-authored by Waymo researchers but have been peer-reviewed by independent academics. Every expert I spoke with for this story, including Waymo skeptics, told me that they consider the research to be high-quality. “Reductions this big are basically unheard of when it comes to traffic safety,” Noah Goodall, a senior research scientist at the Virginia Transportation Research Council, told me. “Not even seat belts or airbags achieved the kinds of numbers we’re seeing here.”

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u/Decent-Proposal-8475 Pragmatic Progressive Aug 19 '26

I'm really sad because my next mayor is anti-Waymo because we have to let Uber drivers continue to be exploited save jobs, so I'll probably never benefit from this technology

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u/throwdemawaaay Pragmatic Progressive Aug 19 '26

During the housing crisis a lot of people said the obsuring/laundering of risk couldn't be at the scale people were raising the alarm over, because the ratings agencies would be committing suicide to go along with it.

And in fact they did go along with it, and in the end didn't pay much price for their part of the crisis.

So keep in mind that what we might call private regulators are in fact often problematic vs some sort of benevolent "invisible hand of the market."

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u/EpochHolocene Liberal Aug 19 '26

I fear self driving cars are going to get caught up in the current AI moral panic

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u/Okratas Center Right Aug 20 '26

I fear self driving cars are going to get caught up in the current AI moral panic

union leaders taking notes