Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel • Hacker News Board

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#91

Post by edshiro » Tue, Nov 07, 2017, 5:46 PM UTC

sliverstorm wrote: post #78

edshiro wrote: post #68

If Waymo's tech is years ahead of the competition (say 18-24 months ahead minimum) then I think a lot of the self-driving companies and car manufacturers in the US will be having cold sweats. This may not be a winner-take-all market (I don't know honestly...) but I see this lead up enabling Waymo to capture significant market share in the US in regions where laws towards autonomous vehicles are friendly. One way the…

Do we have a good signal that truly indicates Waymo has more advanced tech? Or could they simply have a bigger appetite for risk?

They've historically played it very safe so it feels like a bold announcement coming from them.

We don't know whether they have more advanced tech; there is too much opacity in this space. The best proxy we may have are the California disengagement reports[1] from last year and Waymo were doing better than anyone, by a WIDE margin.

[1] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disen...

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#92

Post by foolfoolz » Tue, Nov 07, 2017, 5:46 PM UTC

bluetwo wrote: post #77

The interstate highway system is an enormous and expensive asset paid for by the taxpayers of the US. Shouldn't we have a conversation about the rights of citizens before allowing corporations to set a precedent that we will not be able to roll back later?

what rights are you worried about? commcerial vehicles operate on our highways all the time. corporations are also tax payers in the US

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#93

Post by samstave » Tue, Nov 07, 2017, 5:48 PM UTC

Johnny555 wrote: post #87

samstave wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The public will accept the perceived risks in driverless rides. This is what I am trying to highlight - what, specifically, are these risks that people need to be made aware of? So now, in addition to everything, there will come a day when a person is stranded some-place as the driverless car couldnt exactly find them, and the person had to call the call center to get help and guess what... calling the call center…

So now, in addition to everything, there will come a day when a person is stranded some-place as the driverless car couldnt exactly find them Ahh, if you think this is a new problem, you're too young to remember the fun of calling a cab by pay phone to some obscure address, then alternating between going inside and calling the dispatcher and then running out to the street to try to flag down the cab. At least with a…

im 42, so no not too young - and I appreciate your point.

I feel that people are latching onto their opinions about driverless car tech and not talking about the wider implications. That is the point, I am poorly, making, apparently....

I just think that not all the questions have been asked about what it means to be a "driverless car" and that we need to run through all the risks -- and thats the one thing I find really lacking in any of these conversations at all.

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#94

Post by evgen » Tue, Nov 07, 2017, 5:50 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #67

joshuamorton wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After one or two get backed up, they alert the others that traffic is stopped and to go another way? In general the answer to all of these whacky what ifs is "whatever a human driver, or group would do, but with more efficient communication".

These aren't "wacky what ifs." I don't know what things are like in the Valley, but here on the east coast something unexpected changes my commuting route a couple of times a month (multiply that by tens of thousands of drivers). "Do whatever the human would do, but more efficient" isn't an answer. These cars can't get on WTOP the day before and listen to the warning that the Pope is visiting and X, Y, Z streets will…

Where do you think that radio station is getting its info? I promise you that Dan in Chopper5 is not actually feeding them real-time updates. That same data source (state DoT and municipal traffic data) is already fed into most mapping apps and you can see it just as soon as someone at the station gets a traffic update and has to decide when to feed to update into the broadcast, but you don't have to wait until minutes ending with a 6 to get the data now.

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#95

Post by tytso » Tue, Nov 07, 2017, 5:50 PM UTC

samstave wrote: post #62

joshuamorton wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of drivers have road cameras in their vehicles. If you crash into them, they will provide that as evidence when filing a police report. No one claimed that there would be a direct link from an autonomous car to police HQ, but that if you decided to break the law, the owner of that vehicle would do everything in its power to pursue you to the fullest extent of the law. That's not materially different than where…

Thats not what I presumed the commenters to be saying: "driverless cars will have sensors and cameras that wil report anything back to the police" So, lets assume we turn on an amber-alert and activate all driverless car cameras and sensors to find license plate X... Sure that sounds great - but "just leave all driverless car sensors up all the time and track everything everywhere is what I hear in that comment. And…

Every ATM and many shop keepers, hospitals, hotels, etc., all have cameras. They may not automatically be turned over to police, but if something happens, the police will often just go and see if there are any surveillance cameras and ask their owners to give them the recordings. Most of the time, they will be happy to do so, since they generally don't like crime happening outside their places of business.

So if you did a hit and run on me while on the road, and even if I didn't have a dash camera (there are drivers who do, and who keep them always recording because they want to be protected from the sort of anti-social behaviour you seem to be discussing), if I have a location and time/stamp, the police could easily try to see if there were any third-party surveillance cameras either at the scene of the crime, or in the various streets down which you might have fled.

And of course in London and the UK in general, people have gotten quite used to surveillance cameras everywhere, which are being recorded by the police, and sometimes there are being monitered in real time by employees of the police department, and in some cases they can even speak to you via a microphone and a speaker near the camera, "Hey, I saw you litter in the park! Please it pick it up and dispose of it properly and we'll say no more about it." The UK citizens are OK with this, and haven't been complaining about it being a police state.

Quite frankly, I'd much rather if the police always had body-cam videos running all time time, so we (a) get hard data on how many police actually do commit cases of misconduct, and (b) actually eject those that do out of the police force.

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#96

Post by songshu » Tue, Nov 07, 2017, 5:50 PM UTC

juliesulti wrote: post #54

dcsommer wrote: post #37

I hope these cars eventually drive more aggressively than the video shows. With zero traffic they seem to inch along.

The video shows the vehicle operating at 25 MPH in residential blocks, approaching speed bumps at 10 MPH, respecting a temporary 15 MPH school zone, and coming to a full and complete stop at stop signs and red lights. That is how you are supposed to drive a car.

Yes. The current situation is funny since it's a game of "what's the most effective limit to tell people to stick to" rather than "what's the most effective limit to stick to". Maybe once all cars drive under the limit we will decide that the limits are too low and increase them. And maybe a lot of stop signs will turn into yield signs at some point too.

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#97

Post by samstave » Tue, Nov 07, 2017, 5:51 PM UTC

kllrnohj wrote: post #88

samstave wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The public will accept the perceived risks in driverless rides. This is what I am trying to highlight - what, specifically, are these risks that people need to be made aware of? So now, in addition to everything, there will come a day when a person is stranded some-place as the driverless car couldnt exactly find them, and the person had to call the call center to get help and guess what... calling the call center…

> So now we have driverless cars effectively classified as emergency ambulances That's quite a huge leap you made there. Care to back up and explain how a drunk person calling an uber magically turns the uber into an emergency ambulance?

They manage to climb in, they OD/go into arrest, cant climb out.

What then? So the uber now has to either get a person or take that car to a hospital - how do they know to do such?

So is uber running a massive call center that watches every driverless ride and monitors the situation?

Are they monitoring if people get into a fight in the car?

That actually happened to me, where I took an uber pool, and the two other riders got into a physical fist fight in the car and the driver had to pull into a gas station and kick them out.

How to monitor a potential rape? How to monitor unless your watching literally every ride.

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#98

Post by jfoster » Tue, Nov 07, 2017, 5:53 PM UTC

sliverstorm wrote: post #78

edshiro wrote: post #68

If Waymo's tech is years ahead of the competition (say 18-24 months ahead minimum) then I think a lot of the self-driving companies and car manufacturers in the US will be having cold sweats. This may not be a winner-take-all market (I don't know honestly...) but I see this lead up enabling Waymo to capture significant market share in the US in regions where laws towards autonomous vehicles are friendly. One way the…

Do we have a good signal that truly indicates Waymo has more advanced tech? Or could they simply have a bigger appetite for risk?

If anything, Waymo's risk appetite has seemed cautious to me. How many years have they been at it? How many millions of miles have they tested on? Every company that has something good in this race (Waymo, Tesla, Mercedes, etc.) seems to want to show it off. It seems pretty definite that Waymo is in the lead.

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#99

Post by Fricken » Tue, Nov 07, 2017, 5:55 PM UTC

edshiro wrote: post #68

If Waymo's tech is years ahead of the competition (say 18-24 months ahead minimum) then I think a lot of the self-driving companies and car manufacturers in the US will be having cold sweats. This may not be a winner-take-all market (I don't know honestly...) but I see this lead up enabling Waymo to capture significant market share in the US in regions where laws towards autonomous vehicles are friendly. One way the…

It's certainly not a winner take all market, the world is a big place and it would be ridiculously capital-intensive to deploy everywhere before anyone else has a shot. Though we could very well end up seeing regional monopolies where a single fleet provider dominates in a given city.

Uber is working hard to develop autonomous vehicles, but I don't think they need to worry about getting usurped by a competitors robotaxis near term. Uber's biggest future markets are in the developing world, particularly fast growing metropolises where transit infrastructure can't grow to meet demand. In places like Lagos, Dhaka, Delhi, Jakarta or Karachi it will be a long time before robotaxis can handle that level of chaos, or compete with low-cost human labour in those markets. Overwhelmed and cash strapped governments in these places are more than happy to let a private operator such as Uber handle transit. (interesting article on that: https://thebolditalic.com/ubers-goal-is-not-to-operate-along...)

Regarding OEM's, well, some are doing better than others. GM subsidiary Cruise Automation has some real inertia. While Waymo is first to hit this milestone, I'm betting Cruise will be the first to deploy 100k robotaxis. Waymo doesn't make cars, and doesn't have any sort of manufacturing partnership on lock-down. With these FCA Pacifica's Waymo basically just bought them and retrofitted the autonomous hardware themselves. It's not clear if the so-called partnership will go any further than that.

In a few years maybe one or several of the OEM's will throw up their arms and say "This is too hard, I give up", and that will be Waymo's opportunity to pounce, though they'll likely be competing with intel/mobileye, who are a little behind but entertain aspirations of becoming an open provider of autonomous hardware and software, and have a lot of money to spend.

Re: Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel

#100

Post by joshuamorton » Tue, Nov 07, 2017, 5:55 PM UTC

samstave wrote: post #89

joshuamorton wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>driverless cars will have sensors and cameras that wil report anything back to the police Well, driverless cars do have extensive sensor suites, and if you are a hit and run driver and I had a photo of your license plate, I would certainly use that to my advantage. I think you're reading the worst possible thing into what people are saying, which is your prerogative, but probably not constructive. >And like I said,…

You are aware that amazon is literally running .gov datacenter infra for exactly what I was talking about? https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/07/the-d...

That's what we call moving the goalposts. A paas is not remotely similar to what you're suggesting.

Are you interested in constructive conversation, or will this just be more whataboutism?