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Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

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Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#431

Post by bradknowles »

jimmy1 wrote: post #152
Animats wrote: post #71

Driverless cars are coming along just fine. Waymo is making steady progress. The sensors are getting better. The problem comes from all those "fake it til you make it" startups, Uber and Tesla being the worst. Both have killed people. This is mostly about sensors and geometry. Machine learning has a role, but only in target identification. That's how Waymo does it. The fake it til you make it crowd had the fantasy th…

> Driverless cars are coming along just fine. I am curious why you believe this to be the case? Driverless cars have yet to even come close to being workable in adverse conditions, to my knowledge, please correct me if I am wrong. > This is mostly about sensors and geometry. And mostly about the limitations of sensors, and the limitation of available algorithms to overcome geometry. A algorithm a driverless car uses…

Improvements have been made in driverless cars, but that doesn’t mean they are perfect.

Much more improvement has yet to come before we get to being safe enough with level 5 autonomy.

But in the meanwhile, we can also still celebrate the intermediate stepswise improvements that have been made.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#432

Post by lsc »

linuxftw wrote: post #414
lsc wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's still close to the most likely cause of violent death for an American; Neck and neck with gun deaths, if you count the self-inflicted. I mean yeah, compared to medieval statistics, it's great, but in comparison to the other non-medical ways to die you face as a 21st century American? automotive fatalities are quite high, and the problem deserves a lot of focus.

Best way to reduce traffic deaths is to reduce traffic. That requires changing of zoning so people can live near where they work. You could also make it harder to be qualified to drive. I view autonomous cars as the 'lazy technocratic' solution to a problem caused by total government mismanagement.

You say lazy, I say possible. potato, potato.

(I mean, I agree that reducing miles driven is also a good goal. I'm just saying, making safer cars is a lot easier than talking people into allowing higher density construction and cities built around transit and walking rather than around cars)

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#433

Post by pauljurczak »

wpietri wrote: post #428
ehsankia wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a proof for that? Waymo is actually the only car that explicitly does not allow teleoperating. They specifically made this decision to bypass the risk of being hacked and taken over. The best a teleoperator can do is suggest a path to a car that is confused, and the car decides if the path is a good idea. We also don't know how often that's used. If it's rare enough, does it even matter? Does it not make…

I think you're correct on the first part; "It does have humans in remote operations centers who can communicate with passengers and guide the car in complicated situations—like a cop sending cars the wrong way down a one-way street—but they never take actual control of the driving; it’s the car’s job to stay safe." https://www.wired.com/story/waymo-self-driving-car-service-p... But yes, if a human has to get involved…

Precisely, not Level 5. They are hiring for their remote operations through Adecco: https://www.adeccousa.com/jobs/self-driving-vehicle-operator... . This is a job where you sit in front of the display(s) with steering wheel in your hand and foot on the pedal. Remote driving - pure and simple. Not very scalable.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#434

Post by candiodari »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #402
candiodari wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, judging by traffic's constant deaths ... Their don't . Anyone who's seen a Waymo car drive around the valley knows they're much safer than human drivers. They're annoyingly good, because for instance they just never miss a bike and are careful around them, and if you can't tell why it's a bit annoying. But I've always come away from such incidents with a feeling of "I should have seen that". I've yet to see them…

"Constant deaths" = 1 per ~100 million miles driven Self-driving cars might be able to beat that, but most of the self-driving car models aren't even close to 100 million miles driven.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_U...

(from page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_U... )

Furthermore self-driving cars are at this point ONLY driving through areas with a lot of pedestrians. You'd expect them, therefore, to have much higher accident fatalities than normal vehicles. Why ? They're always around pedestrians. Instead, in the first years of operation, they're safer than humans.

Even with Uber's less than stellar safety practices, and Tesla's ... well ... how do I put this politely ? [1] seems a good link. Let's just say Tesla owners could be more careful, especially since they signed a contract stating that they would be more careful (and youtube has much worse than that video). Given that that's how people use self-driving cars I would argue that's pretty damning for human driving skills.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JT5-Z2MswgU

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#435

Post by TheCoelacanth »

candiodari wrote: post #434
TheCoelacanth wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Constant deaths" = 1 per ~100 million miles driven Self-driving cars might be able to beat that, but most of the self-driving car models aren't even close to 100 million miles driven.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_U... (from page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_U... ) Furthermore self-driving cars are at this point ONLY driving through areas with a lot of pedestrians. You'd expect them, therefore, to have much higher accident fatalities than normal vehicles. Why ? They're always around pedestrians. Instead, in the first years of operation, th…

Not sure what your point is. That graph shows about 10 deaths per billion VMT, which is exactly the number I stated. It is a completely unfounded assertion that they are safer than humans.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#436

Post by prawn »

neumann wrote: post #311
techiferous wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other edge cases include: Amish buggies, rotaries in Boston, Syracuse's upside down traffic light (green is on top), etc. The possibilities are endless; how can you test them all? Humans are really good about adapting to novel situations on the fly, not so much computers.

I mean, you are right about humans as a species, but oh god, not as drivers. As a cyclist commuter, pass/get passed by a lot of cars and see a lot of irregular/irrational behavior. Everytime there is a change in the traffic rules along my route (detour, construction, closed lane, new signalling) you will get a pretty high rate of people who either ignore the change, panic and drive recklessly, or panic and come to a…

Zoox has hinted that their vehicles will use sounds (at least) to signal intent and reactions.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#437

Post by jazzyjackson »

ant6n wrote: post #415
jazzyjackson wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the part that drives me crazy - America HAD electric railroads all over the place. Or at least Illinois (my homestate) did. You can look up 'Illinois InterUrban' and see maps of rails connecting every rural city. Many of the carriages were used as scrap metal for WWII, and once cars took off the demand wasn't there to rehabilitate them. But it would be so much cheaper to build out than even just replacing the…

Interurbans were actually very fast, they were like hybrids between trams and mainline fast trains. The 1930s "Red Devil" could do 90mph ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Devil_(interurban) )

Wow, not sure where I heard 20mph, maybe it was a particular route. Thanks for the link.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#438

Post by airstrike »

linuxftw wrote: post #204
jimmy1 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Driverless cars are coming along just fine. I am curious why you believe this to be the case? Driverless cars have yet to even come close to being workable in adverse conditions, to my knowledge, please correct me if I am wrong. > This is mostly about sensors and geometry. And mostly about the limitations of sensors, and the limitation of available algorithms to overcome geometry. A algorithm a driverless car uses…

I think interesting edge cases include: 'empty cardboard box or log?' 'Deer just crossed road, is there another one close behind?' 'Driving temporarily on the wrong side of the street due to construction or a downed tree limb' 'Police directing traffic' 'Driving on wrong side of road to avoid collision' 'One lane bridges' 'Busy parking garage with blind corners' 'City Bus driver forces themselves recklessly into your…

> Not to mention, any snow on the road is going to make it supremely hard for a computer to determine where their lane is, or even the road is.

HD mapping allows cars to know precisely where they are on the road even if they cannot see the lane markings below. In fact, georeferenced HD maps can pinpoint the car's location in the world down to less than 10cm of absolute precision (as opposed to relative precision)

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#439

Post by anticensor »

JBReefer wrote: post #160
anticensor wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-driving car: ZF Electric car: ZF TaaS: ZF Self-driving advertising services: ZF All will be available, all from the same company. EDIT: Waymo laughed at "route-based advertising" when I mentioned, but ZF supports this idea. Route-based advertising or route advertising is an advertising model where your vehicle diverts to make you see a particular place and/or get you to visit a particular shop. For example, it m…

That is extremely dystopian

Also prone to hijacking by terrorists.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#440

Post by DATACOMMANDER »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #424
DATACOMMANDER wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems backwards to me. Shouldn’t we be comparing the performance self-driving cars to the performance of competent human drivers? The variance in human driving ability is quite high, which suggests (to me) that self-driving cars will become better than a significant fraction of human drivers well before they become (what I would consider) safe. I personally don’t want to see any more below-average drivers on the…

I think you're confusing the end goal with the path towards that goal. Ultimately, yes, we will want to compare AI driven cars against the best human drivers. But right nwo we're trying to determine if AI driven cars should even be allowed on the road. The underlying assumption I'm making is that AI driving improvement is accelerated by being on the real road. If that's true, then we want the cars on the road as soon…

That’s a fair point. From a utilitarian perspective, I think you’re probably right. Unfortunately, the public will not follow this dispassionate line of reasoning if AI drivers start killing people in “large” numbers, even if there’s strong evidence to support its soundness. It might therefore be best to be just a little less aggressive than would otherwise be optimal, to avoid a public backlash that could—despite being irrational—delay the arrival of competent AI drivers.
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