Robotaxis Are "Safer" than Human Drivers, but Also They Sometimes Drive Into Floods, Whoops

"Calling a driverless robotaxi to transport me to happy hour, without dealing with the myriad potential annoyances and outright hazards of interacting with a strange driver? That's the dream right there, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. But also: I'd prefer not to be swept away in a flood, or become an accessory to running over a kid leaving a school bus. The question then becomes: What risk of those things happening is acceptably small enough that I'd actually call the robotaxi? And sadly, we're definitely not there yet, and it's hard to say when we ever will be."

"The domain of the commercially active robotaxi, as operated by companies like Waymo (Alphabet Inc.), Zoox (Amazon), Cruise (General Motors) and Tesla's Cybercab, is mostly in the Southwest and West Coast, in cities like San Francisco, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Austin, Seattle and Houston, where robotaxis are increasingly in regular use. Almost all are EVs, which only makes sense for reasons of both climate and practicality, particularly in the region of the country where gasoline is most expensive."

"In those cities, we've seen both the good and the bad of what this technology can offer, but it will always be difficult to look past the most scandalizing of the headlines. What it boils down to is this: You can teach an autonomous vehicle to operate near perfectly within a normal range of driving scenarios, but they continue to struggle when presented with more specialized scenarios or extenuating circumstances."

Commercial driverless vehicles are appealing for reducing driving effort and avoiding hazards from human interaction, but acceptable safety levels are not yet achieved. Robotaxi services are operating mainly in the Southwest and West Coast cities, including San Francisco, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Austin, Seattle, and Houston, with many services using electric vehicles for climate and practicality. Public perception is shaped by both positive performance and negative incidents that receive major attention. Autonomous systems can perform near perfectly in typical driving scenarios, yet they struggle with specialized situations and unusual circumstances. The result is uncertainty about when risk will become low enough to justify routine use.

Read at Jezebel