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Waymo’s Backseat Drivers: Confidential Data Reveals Self-Driving Taxi Hurdles

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Re: Waymo’s Backseat Drivers: Confidential Data Reveals Self-Driving Taxi Hurdles

#31

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

bertil wrote: post #9
mdorazio wrote: post #2

Interesting analysis using comments/rider scores. 10% improvement over 6 months is actually pretty good, though. Even if that rate slows as trickier edge cases get handled, It still implies early 2020s for true driverless readiness in select locations. That's pretty much on track with overall predictions for the autonomous market.

I think standard car manufacturers and insurances would be in awe if their car safety improved at that rate.

Well, there's a ceiling of 100% safety, so it's diminishing returns after a certain point.

Re: Waymo’s Backseat Drivers: Confidential Data Reveals Self-Driving Taxi Hurdles

#32

Post by outworlder »

Judgmentality wrote: post #23
dumbfoundded wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Level 5 driving doesn't require AGI at all. It's an extremely narrow set of problems that have to be solved incredibly well. It mostly just comes down to creating an accurate 3d representation of the world from a bunch of sensors. You also have to correctly segment and label each object in that 3d representation. If you did those two things extremely well, the actual driving logic can be hardcoded. The problem is tha…

This is incorrect. The hardest part of developing a self-driving car is predicting the world around you in the immediate future. Knowing whether or not that object is a person is a lot easier than guessing whether or not that person is going to jump out in front of the car 1 second into the future. You have to know who is going to run stop signs, when cyclists are about to cut you off, when someone is about to back u…

You can probabilistically predict those events with machines much better than humans can. You don't really know someone will decide to run a stop sign, but you do know when the vehicle is past the point it was supposed to start slowing down. That's relatively "easy", we have been predicting physical object motions with analog computers, even. As the parent says, accurate data from sensors is a much bigger problem. But once you have the data, you can model these objects with dumb algorithms.

Computers can also have a much faster reaction time, so a human may need to predict one second ahead, but computers may be able to get away with less.

Re: Waymo’s Backseat Drivers: Confidential Data Reveals Self-Driving Taxi Hurdles

#33

Post by mactrey »

mdorazio wrote: post #2

Interesting analysis using comments/rider scores. 10% improvement over 6 months is actually pretty good, though. Even if that rate slows as trickier edge cases get handled, It still implies early 2020s for true driverless readiness in select locations. That's pretty much on track with overall predictions for the autonomous market.

10 percentage points, 25% relative improvement (40% non-5 stars to 30%), seems quite good to me.

Although I wonder if seasonality is important here - obviously Phoenix isn't Minnesota but could driving conditions have been worse in Q1 compared to this summer, from the perspective of a self-driving car?

Re: Waymo’s Backseat Drivers: Confidential Data Reveals Self-Driving Taxi Hurdles

#34

Post by smelendez »

netinstructions wrote: post #3

I wonder how many people are upset that the vehicles had to drop them off in a valid passenger load/unload zone as opposed to the usual Lyft / Uber tactic of parking in a no parking / no stopping zone, bike lane, crosswalk, etc because it's most convenient for the drivers and passengers (at the safety and expense of everyone else sharing the space)... That quote at the end: > I guess Lyft has me spoiled. I like getti…

It seems like there's an overall issue where people feel they can't do anything if the car takes a weird route or drops them off in the wrong place.

Another comment mentioned in the story says the car skipped the drop-off location and inched passed a bus stop, and other people mentioned inefficient routing.

I don't know how the system works, so this might be user error of some kind, but plenty of people are not going to want to get in a taxi if they feel like they have no control over where it's going or where they can get out.

Re: Waymo’s Backseat Drivers: Confidential Data Reveals Self-Driving Taxi Hurdles

#36

Post by threeseed »

netinstructions wrote: post #3

I wonder how many people are upset that the vehicles had to drop them off in a valid passenger load/unload zone as opposed to the usual Lyft / Uber tactic of parking in a no parking / no stopping zone, bike lane, crosswalk, etc because it's most convenient for the drivers and passengers (at the safety and expense of everyone else sharing the space)... That quote at the end: > I guess Lyft has me spoiled. I like getti…

I have raised this point many times before.

Uber/Lyft drivers break the law dozens of times a day. In fact the entire experience is predicated on their ability to pick you up/drop you off in places they shouldn't e.g. out the front of your house.

I guess self driving cars will be closer to Uber Pool in terms of experience.

Re: Waymo’s Backseat Drivers: Confidential Data Reveals Self-Driving Taxi Hurdles

#37

Post by scarmig »

What's HN's stance on publishers posting links directly to HN?

To be clear, this isn't meant as a blast against The Information or ballmers_peak; they're transparent about their affiliation and that this is an article white listed for readers referred by Hacker News. It's also a totally appropriate article for HN.

That said, I kind of wish there was some in-line indicator of a motivated submission source. I guess a downside would be unethical publishers just laundering their submissions through ostensibly unaffiliated accounts, but I'd feel more comfortable knowing that we did have some kind of system here to encourage transparency.

Re: Waymo’s Backseat Drivers: Confidential Data Reveals Self-Driving Taxi Hurdles

#38

Post by minimaxir »

scarmig wrote: post #37

What's HN's stance on publishers posting links directly to HN? To be clear, this isn't meant as a blast against The Information or ballmers_peak; they're transparent about their affiliation and that this is an article white listed for readers referred by Hacker News. It's also a totally appropriate article for HN. That said, I kind of wish there was some in-line indicator of a motivated submission source. I guess a d…

HN doesn't have any rules against self-promotion as long as it's not spammy/low quality content.

Additionally, this is an interesting case as the custom link is an official way to bypass the paywall, which is the more frequent HN complaint: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20414141

Comments are a different story, e.g. if a startup employee that works for the startup comments on a post about the startup, they should disclose it.

Re: Waymo’s Backseat Drivers: Confidential Data Reveals Self-Driving Taxi Hurdles

#39

Post by abtinf »

scarmig wrote: post #37

What's HN's stance on publishers posting links directly to HN? To be clear, this isn't meant as a blast against The Information or ballmers_peak; they're transparent about their affiliation and that this is an article white listed for readers referred by Hacker News. It's also a totally appropriate article for HN. That said, I kind of wish there was some in-line indicator of a motivated submission source. I guess a d…

As long as HN has effective vote ring detection, I don’t see any issue with directly posting links.

The crowd helps us here and paternalistic rules can only prevent it from functioning correctly. If the post is good, it will move up. If not, it won’t.

Re: Waymo’s Backseat Drivers: Confidential Data Reveals Self-Driving Taxi Hurdles

#40

Post by kahnjw »

ForrestN wrote: post #13
damq wrote: post #6

> The data provide the most detailed view yet of the passenger experience inside vehicles from Waymo, which doesn’t disclose the information even though it uses public roads as its testing grounds. What's up with this statement? Should I be forced to publicize my phone calls just because I made them while driving on public roads? It's utterly bizarre that the author thinks he is entitled to see Waymo's data.

I'm not sure if I agree with the writer's statement here, and I'm not sure the right outcome is for Waymo to share data, but I don't think your analogy works. Your individual phone calls are made as part of your general participation as an individual in society. One of the largest companies in the world, which does its best to avoid paying taxes, is using public roads as a fundamental part of the infrastructure for a…

How about UPS/FedEx? They certainly test new products on public roads and have no requirement to make public the resulting data.
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