No surprise there. Some people e.g me will feel sleepy when on passenger seat.
Waymo self-driving car crashed when driver fell asleep and triggered manual mode
101–110 of 124 posts
Re: Waymo self-driving car crashed when driver fell asleep and triggered manual mode
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a test vehicle. Actual Waymo "production" cars don't even have drivers. Humans are the weak link.
> This is a test vehicle. Actual Waymo "production" cars don't even have drivers. Source? The Waymo cars without steering wheels are just a concept design, not used in production.
Source for Waymo cars without a driver in the steering seat (OP never mentioned "without steering wheels" cars): https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/7/16615290/waymo-self-drivi...
Re: Waymo self-driving car crashed when driver fell asleep and triggered manual mode
#103That tester detected a serious bug in the whole concept, inadvertently risking his life during testing. He should've been promoted.
The guy who is hired to pay the electric company to power the data center didn't show up for work for 3 months. He helped discover a serious bug!
Re: Waymo self-driving car crashed when driver fell asleep and triggered manual mode
#104On 26 Sep. 1982 in 'Knight of the Phoenix' when Michael falls asleep KITT automatically takes over. Google should have a camera pointing at the driver and use machine learning to detect someone that is asleep or medically impaired and automatically take over if the car starts to leave its lane. Perhaps the driver could configure where it wants the car to go in such a case (if asleep: continue to final destination; if…
Maybe later, but there are an awful lot of fuzzy heroic heuristics in there. For now, I'd say the only safe thing to do when the driver falls asleep is come to a safe stop.
A safe stop on the highway?
Re: Waymo self-driving car crashed when driver fell asleep and triggered manual mode
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe later, but there are an awful lot of fuzzy heroic heuristics in there. For now, I'd say the only safe thing to do when the driver falls asleep is come to a safe stop.
A safe stop on the highway?
A "safe stop on the high way" means the side of the road in normal everyday context. That would be appropriate here, no? Highway patrol would check out the car pretty quickly.
Re: Waymo self-driving car crashed when driver fell asleep and triggered manual mode
#106This instantly evokes ideas about distinct technologies from different sources coming together to form a greater whole:
Things like the Apple Watch monitoring your awareness and activity level, and sending it to the car which uses that information to influence how it drives, or when it vibrates the seats to keep you awake or wake you up, and so on.
Re: Waymo self-driving car crashed when driver fell asleep and triggered manual mode
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe later, but there are an awful lot of fuzzy heroic heuristics in there. For now, I'd say the only safe thing to do when the driver falls asleep is come to a safe stop.
A safe stop on the highway?
Under the circumstances, I'd accept just slowly rolling to a stop with the hazard lights on. People behind the car will hate it, but probably no one will die.
Re: Waymo self-driving car crashed when driver fell asleep and triggered manual mode
#108And this is why engineers have invented the dead man's switch a long time ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_man%27s_switch The basic idea is that the switch can only be maintained in a non-braking state by an alert, not-incapacitated person. If you press too hard, it brakes; if you don't press hard enough, it brakes. You have to apply just enough force, and that's something only an alert person can do. Clearly,…
> Clearly, using the gas pedal to turn off auto-pilot is not good enough.
It's a trade-off: if the auto-pilot is doing something unsafe, it is better to have the human intervene immediately (this might mean stepping hard on the gas-pedal, or braking, or turning, depending on the scenario, which is impossible to know in advance). The assumption is that the software/data are not perfect (yet) and the human knows what's best. I don't think "don't trust the human test-driver" is one of the current parameters, especially since that is their literal job.
Re: Waymo self-driving car crashed when driver fell asleep and triggered manual mode
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which is why they’re not selling it to the public yet. They’re testing. And they NEED a working manual mode for that.
They do. But letting their manual operators fall asleep and trigger it is not good at all.
Letting a developer drop the production database[1] is not good either, but trusting a person to do their job correctly is baked into every organization and level. Still, accidents happen - there is no fool-proof way to stop humans from behaviours that are ultimately harmful. Elaborate systems will have elaborate loopholes.
1. https://about.gitlab.com/2017/02/01/gitlab-dot-com-database-...
Re: Waymo self-driving car crashed when driver fell asleep and triggered manual mode
#110I feel like an old man shaking my first at the slow march of inevitable progress - but - this is exactly why 'drive assist' or any other flavor of automated driving that is not 100% automation is not useful to me. If I have to pay attention and babysit piloting the vehicle, I might as well be driving (assuming I'm of sound enough mind and body to actually drive).
Waymo agrees with you, that's why their custom prototype car (the Firefly) didn't even have a steering wheel.
The Firefly was a joke. They had to install steering wheels shortly after getting them. The vehicles saw very little use.