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Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

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Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#71

Post by pkolaczk »

monkmartinez wrote: post #39
jonknee wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering Waymo's vehicles drive much like stereotypical blue hairs (slooooow and cautious) I think everything will work out fine.

I work on a busy fire engine in the same-ish zipcode. I can tell you that blue hairs cause a lot of accidents when they are in town. Slowwww and clueless... to be fair, there are several demographics that we suspect get into far more accidents than most others. No data however.

I don't know how it is USA, but in Poland the police and insurance companies actually do have real data on who causes the most accidents / the most severe accidents. And the facts are brutal: young inexperienced drivers < 25 years old are responsible for higher number of severe accidents than blue hairs, and this phenomenon is reflected in the insurance price they have to pay.

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#72

Post by nvr219 »

Asooka wrote: post #65
kyrra wrote: post #2

TLDR: * People can apply to use/borrow a Waymo vehicle (RX450 or Pacifica) for some period of time. * "as part of this early trial, there will be a test driver in each vehicle monitoring the rides at all times." * Limited to Phoenix metro area for the time being. * You apply here: https://waymo.com/apply/ * Waymo will be adding 500 more of the Pacifica minivans for this program.

Interesting that they only let you borrow for now. Will car ownership be killed with self-driving cars? Will Waymo let you actually buy and own a car that isn't network connected and fully yours? Seeing how value extraction works in today's enterprise, i.e. via rent-seeking, I'm guessing we're headed to not owning cars any more.

> Will car ownership be killed with self-driving cars?

I hope so.

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#73

Post by hart_russell »

Pigo wrote: post #53

After seeing the movie Logan, I was curious if the movie was taking a jab at the autonomous vehicle trend by portraying them as a danger to ma & pa drivers on the highway. It showed a crowded highway full of shipping containers pushing a truck hauling horses off the road. It seems the message was not that the technology can't be courteous, but that once it's accepted, corporations will abuse the roads to help their b…

By all accounts, autonomous vehicles will be much safer than human drivers. Companies will be sued up the ass if they program their vehicles to take risks and end up killing people.

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#74

Post by jacquesm »

differentView wrote: post #59
kyrra wrote: post #2

TLDR: * People can apply to use/borrow a Waymo vehicle (RX450 or Pacifica) for some period of time. * "as part of this early trial, there will be a test driver in each vehicle monitoring the rides at all times." * Limited to Phoenix metro area for the time being. * You apply here: https://waymo.com/apply/ * Waymo will be adding 500 more of the Pacifica minivans for this program.

>You apply here: https://waymo.com/apply/ I tried a bunch of zip codes in California, none are available. Phoenix, Arizona works though, I think they're still only testing there.

GP writes:

> * Limited to Phoenix metro area for the time being.

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#75

Post by Siecje »

sovnade wrote: post #40
foolfoolz wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

googles cars have gotten in a few fender benders and side swipes people have died using teslas autopilot

That also could be because autopilot is only usable on highways (IIRC) and the fatality rate per accident on highways is much higher than standard town/city driving. Either way there's not nearly enough data to draw conclusions from.

Autopilot won't stop at stop signs or stop lights, so it is not as useful when not on highways.

Just to clarify the downvotes.

Highway driving is safer.

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#76

Post by maxerickson »

Siecje wrote: post #68
maxerickson wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The system that killed people didn't represent a point of progress for their self driving tech. They decided to abandon the hardware package it was using. Their current implementation doesn't seem to be learning any higher level behaviors (there's a Youtube video of guy using it in a park where it repeatedly accelerates towards islands in the road and then flails off the road as it goes too fast around the island).

Do you have a link to the video?

First couple minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ1XLqc5IUg

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#77

Post by scarmig »

monkmartinez wrote: post #28
AndrewDucker wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2017/3/20/cars-and-second...

I didn't read the entire piece... People think the autonomous car is going to solve a lot of the current problems; Accidents, Parking, Congestion. It kind of makes me giggle a bit, as I ponder what may happen. That is, the conclusions drawn from "self-driving" vehicles are possibly way over cooked. The certification process for these cars are going to be very, very expensive. Think about the software involved for the…

If driverless cars work at all, they'll be substantially safer than human-driven ones. There's a strong moral case for banning human-driven cars on public roads if it'll save tens of thousands of lives. There's also a strong possibility of media-driven moral panics. Think of poor little Billy, hit by one of those irresponsible human drivers!

Insurance companies will charge steep premiums to the risk takers who want to drive their own car. Alphabet etc. will have a well-oiled team of lobbyists in every state and country to pass laws to make driving safer for everybody (i.e. more optimized for Waymo cars).

There will be a lot of people who join the NRA (National Retrovehicle Association), who'll make a stink about things. And they'll fight a rearguard action and probably win some guarantees in the more rural states. But where 90% of Americans live, the economics and legalities will work out to push everyone to self-driving cars.

And then economies of scale will be lost, and even in the remaining areas human car driving will become a luxury for people who own their own private roads.

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#78

Post by foolfoolz »

aianus wrote: post #54
pythonaut_16 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a lot of respect for Waymo's approach to this. While Tesla and Uber have both just recklessly (imo) jumped in and started setting loose self driving cars and making bold claims, Google/Waymo has really taken a slow and measured approach and given great care to making sure their cars are actually safe.

Killing a few extra people today to bring self driving cars to market faster could actually save more lives in total. I have much more respect for Tesla for shipping something.

I think you slept through an ethics class

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#79

Post by Spare_account »

maxfurman wrote: post #27
josefresco wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's approach is cautious, however has Tesla been reckless?

Arguably. Tesla has not done a good job educating their customers on the limits of their "Autopilot" system, which has led to at least one preventable death. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/07/28/tesla_autopilot_dea...

Is it possible to extrapolate from the recorded reduction in accidents after the introduction of autopilot and work out if fewer people have died as a result of introducing when they did?

Here's an article which describes a 40% drop in the accident rate:

https://electrek.co/2017/01/19/tesla-crash-rate-autopilot-nh...

The NHTSA's figures show a drop from 1.3 crashes per million miles before Autosteer to 0.8 crashes after Autosteer.

Would any of those crashes have been fatal? I don't have the numbers to answer that but I posit that introducing Autopilot has prevented more deaths than it has caused.

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#80

Post by QuercusMax »

maverick_iceman wrote: post #62
QuercusMax wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was only one accident I'm aware of in which the Waymo vehicle was at fault; the vast majority have been humans doing stupid things like rear-ending them at stop lights and t-boning by running a red light. (Disclaimer: I work for an Alphabet company.)

Humans will do stupid things. A self-driving car has to drive safely in spite of them.

How do you avoid being rear ended at a stoplight?

There may be ways to avoid some of the other types of accidents, but those ones (which have happened several times) are difficult to escape.

The real question is what's the safety threshold - safer than median human? 90th percentile? 99th?

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