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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

#141

Post by pnutjam »

beefield wrote: post #99
dmoy wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Platooning kind of messes up highway traffic because people need to either cross a ton of lanes to get in and out of the platoon (if the platoon is on the left), or non-platoons can't get on/off (if the platoon is on the right). If everything was forced to platoon on highways it would work. But that's like 30-50 yrs later, after the tech is introduced, barring some really radical legislation with huge popular and sta…

Not sure if it would be techically possible to have gaps in the platoon after every five cars, but at least it would be trivial to set max size of one platoon to something reasonable.

You honestly trust some random driver at the front to make your decisions?

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

#142

Post by snarf21 »

Animats wrote: post #54

That's useful info. I wonder where they had trouble with erratic steering. One Cruise video shows that where driving is alongside parked cars on a narrow street and the parking is irregular. The self driving vehicle is trying to stay in its half of the street unless absolutely necessary. Waymo still has to use "safety drivers". So far, nobody seems to have full self driving without "safety drivers". Which makes it us…

I firmly believe that autonomous taxis are 30 years away. The big benefit will be for long haul trucking. That will be here in 10 years or less. They will have special rest areas where the autonomous trucks will park. From there they will only drive on interstates for long distances. When there, they will park at similar special rest areas. Local drivers will then take over and do the more difficult driving. It could really reduce costs as these trucks can drive 24/7 and we can even have them immediately turn around with another load from another company. This could all be completely automated. These rest areas are also a great place to put in charging stations to move these all to electric. By removing most of the narrow streets, cross traffic and unexpected pedestrians, it will be a lot safer.

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

#143

Post by Barrin92 »

dmix wrote: post #95

> 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. Why would it riding on public roads matter when it's about what happens inside a private vehicle during a high-value R&D experiment? They got permission from Arizona to run the tests and it will likely benefit Arizona's ec…

because other drivers and pedestrians on public streets have a very strong interest in knowing how safely these cars perform and how they glitch out given that they could cause accidents at any point?

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

#144

Post by JoeAltmaier »

Barrin92 wrote: post #143
dmix wrote: post #95

> 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. Why would it riding on public roads matter when it's about what happens inside a private vehicle during a high-value R&D experiment? They got permission from Arizona to run the tests and it will likely benefit Arizona's ec…

because other drivers and pedestrians on public streets have a very strong interest in knowing how safely these cars perform and how they glitch out given that they could cause accidents at any point?

How's that different from any human driver on Saturday night?

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

#145

Post by decoyworker »

calcifer wrote: post #112
jessriedel wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That phrase is just thrown in there to stoke the reader and create a story out of nothing. It indicates a lack of journalistic integrity.

> It indicates a lack of journalistic integrity. Or, the author is suggesting that public resources should be used for public, not private benefit?

Isn't the whole point of public resources is that everyone can use them?

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

#146

Post by Barrin92 »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #144
Barrin92 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because other drivers and pedestrians on public streets have a very strong interest in knowing how safely these cars perform and how they glitch out given that they could cause accidents at any point?

How's that different from any human driver on Saturday night?

Human drivers know what to look out for in other human drivers, we don't know what to look out for in autonomous vehicles. If those vehicles perform particularly badly under some conditions that are not obvious the public would benefit from having transparent insight into how the cars function, so they can be appropriately alert.

A research experiment that exposes the public to additional risk should be performed with the maximum amount of transparency possible. It is frightening that this even needs to be spelled out.

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

#147

Post by skywhopper »

nishantvyas wrote: post #74
falcor84 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Oh, and said protocol has to be hack-proof so trouble-makers can't start convincing cars that they're in the middle of a construction zone and force them out of their lanes on normal roads. Why would it be easier for trouble-makers to fool autonomous cars? As a human driver, I'd be fooled by pretty much any road marking or guy in an orange vest.

Correct. It’s amazing, how much forgiving we can be for human errors ( accidents every year) but absolutely not for machine/autonomous vehicles, even when, statistically speaking, machines may make better decision much faster(or at-least no worse than human judgement)... I guess feeling/perception of being in control is more important to us... Other interesting observation I find in every autonomous vehicle discussio…

The problem is that you encounter edge cases on every drive, and you need to be ready to respond. The car may be able to handle 80% of the trip, but one of those edge cases will sneak up on you and the car. How long would it take you to regain situational awareness and safely maneuver the car in the event of some unexpected situation after you've been cruising in self-driving mode for an hour? Ten seconds? Five? Can you do it in one? What if the car doesn't realize it can't handle the situation at all?

Like any risk, you also need to consider the impact of getting it wrong. If an audio assistant gives you the wrong answer to the population of your hometown, no big deal. But if your car thinks everything is okay and drives you into a stationary fire truck on the shoulder of a freeway when you are travelling at 70mph, the downside of that edge case is infinitely worse.

Sure, humans can make these mistakes, too. But the fact is that your notional world where computers are able to make smarter decisions than humans about how to drive doesn't actually exist. No one has figured out how to make it work. And they won't anytime soon. They've solved all the easy parts. But it turns out there's a lot more involved in driving than all the billions of dollars poured into the problem so far can figure out.

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

#148

Post by JoeAltmaier »

Barrin92 wrote: post #146
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How's that different from any human driver on Saturday night?

Human drivers know what to look out for in other human drivers, we don't know what to look out for in autonomous vehicles. If those vehicles perform particularly badly under some conditions that are not obvious the public would benefit from having transparent insight into how the cars function, so they can be appropriately alert. A research experiment that exposes the public to additional risk should be performed wit…

Human drivers have their own low-hanging fruit that can be pointed at for accident reduction. Tired, impaired, distracted driving are horribly commonplace.

Its a low bar, for automated cars to be better than human drivers. Sure they'll have their 'blind spots'. That's no condemnation of the whole industry. Because what we have now is not very good at all (fallible humans, all different). And when automated drivers have an issue we discover, they can all be fixed. Try that with humans.

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

#149

Post by jfoster »

Barrin92 wrote: post #146
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How's that different from any human driver on Saturday night?

Human drivers know what to look out for in other human drivers, we don't know what to look out for in autonomous vehicles. If those vehicles perform particularly badly under some conditions that are not obvious the public would benefit from having transparent insight into how the cars function, so they can be appropriately alert. A research experiment that exposes the public to additional risk should be performed wit…

You're spreading fud. Waymo have a lot of vehicles on the road and most of the time the human drivers run into the back of them while they're stopped. They haven't had any big incidents.

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

#150

Post by Barrin92 »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #148
Barrin92 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human drivers know what to look out for in other human drivers, we don't know what to look out for in autonomous vehicles. If those vehicles perform particularly badly under some conditions that are not obvious the public would benefit from having transparent insight into how the cars function, so they can be appropriately alert. A research experiment that exposes the public to additional risk should be performed wit…

Human drivers have their own low-hanging fruit that can be pointed at for accident reduction. Tired, impaired, distracted driving are horribly commonplace. Its a low bar, for automated cars to be better than human drivers. Sure they'll have their 'blind spots'. That's no condemnation of the whole industry. Because what we have now is not very good at all (fallible humans, all different). And when automated drivers ha…

As the article lays out waymo has accurate data on where the cars glitch out. Take that data, put it onto a public map, make that available for resdients to browse so they have accurate, data driven insight into what they need to look out for when they encounter autonomous vechilces. There is absolutely no reason not to do this, the amount of effort is trivial, and it would enhance the safety of people living in those areas.

If waymo wants to have the privilege of secrecy they can run experiments somewhere not open to the public. That should be the standard we apply to these companies.

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