Every day dozens of Waymos are in close proximity to the people cleaning them and plugging them in, and they are maneuvering in tight spaces amongst other Waymos. That's not a peer reviewed study, but it seems to work.
The visual system can patch over tiny defects (see: blindspot) and visual field tests have not been part of standard yearly eye exams I've been to. And possible longer-term risks (say increased risk of cataracts) would be harder to conclusively show. And the sample size involved would skew heavily towards young healthy adults instead of people with pre-existing eye conditions.
I realize it's not easily possible to prove the negative, but when you're exposing the public the burden must be on the company to be transparent and rigorous. And from what I see it's difficult to even find certification documents for the lidars used in commercial self-driving vehicles, possibly because everything is proprietary and trade secret.
“…Every day dozens of cigarettes are smoked in close proximity to other people… that’s not a peer reviewed study, but it seems to work…”
- someone probably, sometime in the 1950s
OK, I did some digging. Automotive lidar passes tests to be classified as a class 1 laser device. Are you regularly around class 2 laser devices? Chances are good. I'll let you guess where. Hint: you never saw a warning sign either.
A camera CMOS dies at 1–2 µJ pulse, this same pulse energy reaches the cornea. If a sensor has fried, that means the dose to your eye is already in the zone of cataract creation. Human corneal endothelial cells do not regenerate. If the endothelium is damaged, stromal fluid accumulates and opacity can progressively over months/a year from one hit. You might never know what caused it.
Yep. Reminds me of the arguments in favour of leaded petrol.
Thomas Midgley even organised an event for reporters where he poured pure tetraethyl lead on his hands and inhale its fumes for around a minute to show how safe it was. "I could do this every day without getting any health problems", he claimed. Once the reporters left, he needed a lay-down to recover.
There's a history of things like this: pfas, tobacco, asbestos, BPA, which are later found to cause issues. Generally regulation seems to be under the principle of "no concern until dangerous side-effects found" when it should obviously be the other way around (assumed dangerous until sufficiently rigorous trials show no adverse effects).
That's a possibility. Google appears to be contracting out depot work to car rental companies because a Waymo depot is basically a car rental lot. They need three shifts for each depot. So there's probably a couple hundred people who would otherwise be cleaning out rental cars working the depots. At some point injuries would get hard to sweep under the rug.
