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Replaying real life: how the Waymo Driver avoids fatal human crashes

blog.waymo.com

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Re: Replaying real life: how the Waymo Driver avoids fatal human crashes

#51

Post by andrewprock »

upbeat_general wrote: post #36
rwcarlsen wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solving the automated driving problem will require these systems to behave in ways that regular human drivers consider acceptable - at least for a transition period of time where both live on the road together. Sudden hard breaking in situations that humans see absolutely no need for it is an unacceptable behavior for human drivers to have. Just because it's not your fault doesn't mean you can't do things to prevent…

I’m speculating here but it’s possible that the waymo vehicle being rear ended is an optimal outcome here. If the waymo vehicle would have otherwise collided with a car in the intersection it would probably be a much worse crash than a rear end with a low/moderate relative velocity.

It might be locally optimal in the "out of the frying pan, into the fire" sense, but there is no way this is optimal.

Re: Replaying real life: how the Waymo Driver avoids fatal human crashes

#52

Post by andrewprock »

hardtke wrote: post #35
mindvirus wrote: post #17

This is really cool. I suspect that when we have self driving cars, it's going to take off very quickly due to insurance. In particular, if you are in a non self driving car and in an accident with a self driving one, it'll be hard to not be shown as at fault. So insurance I would guess go up based on the percentage of self driving cars, and likely be really cheap for self driving cars. I wonder if there's a period t…

I suspect the adoption process will be slow because consumers really don't want this product. Self driving cars will drive the speed limit and infuriate both other motorists and their owners who are getting passed by speeding human driven cars. There will also be well publicized stories of the few times that self driving cars perform worse than humans. All drivers think they are above average and therefore the statis…

Consumers definitely want a self driving product.

What they don't want is a self driving product where they bear liability for the mistakes the self driving product makes.

Re: Replaying real life: how the Waymo Driver avoids fatal human crashes

#53

Post by ncallaway »

hardtke wrote: post #35
mindvirus wrote: post #17

This is really cool. I suspect that when we have self driving cars, it's going to take off very quickly due to insurance. In particular, if you are in a non self driving car and in an accident with a self driving one, it'll be hard to not be shown as at fault. So insurance I would guess go up based on the percentage of self driving cars, and likely be really cheap for self driving cars. I wonder if there's a period t…

I suspect the adoption process will be slow because consumers really don't want this product. Self driving cars will drive the speed limit and infuriate both other motorists and their owners who are getting passed by speeding human driven cars. There will also be well publicized stories of the few times that self driving cars perform worse than humans. All drivers think they are above average and therefore the statis…

> and their owners who are getting passed by speeding human driven cars.

I personally drive 5-6 mph over the speed limit on freeways when the weather and visibility is good.

But I absolutely 100% do not care if the vehicle is driving the speed limit if I do not have to be controlling it. What do I care if the vehicle takes an extra 10 minutes to get to the destination? It'll just mean 10 extra minutes of work or nap time.

Re: Replaying real life: how the Waymo Driver avoids fatal human crashes

#54

Post by nsomaru »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #44
nsomaru wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No thanks. I drive an aged car and drove a friends recent Mercedes long distance. The thing has a feature where it breaks where it thinks it’s good to break, often just when I need to accelerate to get out of a tight spot. I need the vehicle to respond to my inputs directly, not mix my inputs with what it thinks must be done. It’s extremely unpredictable and it feels like I’m not in control of the car.

If studies show that automatic emergency braking cuts down on deaths overall, I think it's a worthwhile tradeoff -- I'd even be happy to have it be mandatory/non-disableable. It sounds like the car you were driving had some kind of defective implementation of automatic emergency braking. That doesn't invalidate the good that these types of systems do when implemented properly. Also I'm wondering what kind of situatio…

I’m getting downvoted for voicing my opinion on a darling HN technology, is that it? Next time I’ll just keep my mouth shut (as I usually do because of the downvote brigade).

This time, I’ll bite. I guess you guys have never driven in Africa. Or Asia. Braking is not always the best course of action is actually dangerous in some situations. Like if I can see someone screaming up behind me in the fast lane, there’s a car next to me that means I can’t move out of the way, so I need to accelerate to get past that car and move out of the way. If I don’t get out of the way I’m now in a stressful situation with an unpredictable and often reckless driver behind me, often right up against my tail.

Maybe it’s better on average but personally I prefer to have full control of my vehicle.

Re: Replaying real life: how the Waymo Driver avoids fatal human crashes

#55

Post by praxulus »

nsomaru wrote: post #54
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If studies show that automatic emergency braking cuts down on deaths overall, I think it's a worthwhile tradeoff -- I'd even be happy to have it be mandatory/non-disableable. It sounds like the car you were driving had some kind of defective implementation of automatic emergency braking. That doesn't invalidate the good that these types of systems do when implemented properly. Also I'm wondering what kind of situatio…

I’m getting downvoted for voicing my opinion on a darling HN technology, is that it? Next time I’ll just keep my mouth shut (as I usually do because of the downvote brigade). This time, I’ll bite. I guess you guys have never driven in Africa. Or Asia. Braking is not always the best course of action is actually dangerous in some situations. Like if I can see someone screaming up behind me in the fast lane, there’s a c…

>Like if I can see someone screaming up behind me in the fast lane, there’s a car next to me that means I can’t move out of the way, so I need to accelerate to get past that car and move out of the way.

Sounds like that guy's car should have automatic braking.

Re: Replaying real life: how the Waymo Driver avoids fatal human crashes

#56

Post by rkagerer »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #44
nsomaru wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No thanks. I drive an aged car and drove a friends recent Mercedes long distance. The thing has a feature where it breaks where it thinks it’s good to break, often just when I need to accelerate to get out of a tight spot. I need the vehicle to respond to my inputs directly, not mix my inputs with what it thinks must be done. It’s extremely unpredictable and it feels like I’m not in control of the car.

If studies show that automatic emergency braking cuts down on deaths overall, I think it's a worthwhile tradeoff -- I'd even be happy to have it be mandatory/non-disableable. It sounds like the car you were driving had some kind of defective implementation of automatic emergency braking. That doesn't invalidate the good that these types of systems do when implemented properly. Also I'm wondering what kind of situatio…

Also someone barreling toward you from the side when you're in an intersection. I'm not sure how far down perpendicular roads Waymo cars can see, but I'd like to see them solve this weak spot to eliminate the rear-enders.

Re: Replaying real life: how the Waymo Driver avoids fatal human crashes

#57

Post by jeffbee »

nsomaru wrote: post #43
Animats wrote: post #18

You can read the California DMV's set of autonomous vehicle accident reports.[1] Almost all the Waymo reports are "vehicle was entering intersection, detected cross traffic, stopped, was rear-ended by human driver". There's one Waymo report where someone ran a stop sign and hit them. The rear-ending problem will be solved as automatic emergency braking becomes standard on cars. Already, it's shipping on almost all hi…

No thanks. I drive an aged car and drove a friends recent Mercedes long distance. The thing has a feature where it breaks where it thinks it’s good to break, often just when I need to accelerate to get out of a tight spot. I need the vehicle to respond to my inputs directly, not mix my inputs with what it thinks must be done. It’s extremely unpredictable and it feels like I’m not in control of the car.

People who believe they should accelerate out of dangerous situations, and who later comment upon such beliefs, should have their licenses automatically revoked by autonomous natural-language-processing robots that crawl around on the web for that specific purpose.

Re: Replaying real life: how the Waymo Driver avoids fatal human crashes

#58

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

nsomaru wrote: post #54
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If studies show that automatic emergency braking cuts down on deaths overall, I think it's a worthwhile tradeoff -- I'd even be happy to have it be mandatory/non-disableable. It sounds like the car you were driving had some kind of defective implementation of automatic emergency braking. That doesn't invalidate the good that these types of systems do when implemented properly. Also I'm wondering what kind of situatio…

I’m getting downvoted for voicing my opinion on a darling HN technology, is that it? Next time I’ll just keep my mouth shut (as I usually do because of the downvote brigade). This time, I’ll bite. I guess you guys have never driven in Africa. Or Asia. Braking is not always the best course of action is actually dangerous in some situations. Like if I can see someone screaming up behind me in the fast lane, there’s a c…

I think it will be a long time before AEB is mandatory in Africa or Asia, so you should be good in that case.

Personally I think this is a sort of moral hazard scenario, where exactly the people who most need AEB would be the ones who would turn it off. So even if it makes a few people unhappy, I'd probably support not allowing the user to have control over this safety feature. Of course we'd need to study the issue to establish whether this is the case.

Re: Replaying real life: how the Waymo Driver avoids fatal human crashes

#59

Post by dheera »

spike021 wrote: post #20
Animats wrote: post #18

You can read the California DMV's set of autonomous vehicle accident reports.[1] Almost all the Waymo reports are "vehicle was entering intersection, detected cross traffic, stopped, was rear-ended by human driver". There's one Waymo report where someone ran a stop sign and hit them. The rear-ending problem will be solved as automatic emergency braking becomes standard on cars. Already, it's shipping on almost all hi…

>The rear-ending problem will be solved as automatic emergency braking becomes standard on cars. Already, it's shipping on almost all high-end cars and 70-80% of midrange cars. There's a US auto industry goal of it being standard by 2022. That's probably the main feature needed for self-driving cars to coexist with human-driven cars. I really wish we could just enforce proper education of being observant. Most times…

When do the automatic emergency brakes kick in? Normally you're supposed to maintain at least 5 cars distance on the highway -- will it brake to always maintain that, eliminating those idiot tailgaters? :)

Re: Replaying real life: how the Waymo Driver avoids fatal human crashes

#60

Post by barbazoo »

xirbeosbwo1234 wrote: post #29
Animats wrote: post #18

You can read the California DMV's set of autonomous vehicle accident reports.[1] Almost all the Waymo reports are "vehicle was entering intersection, detected cross traffic, stopped, was rear-ended by human driver". There's one Waymo report where someone ran a stop sign and hit them. The rear-ending problem will be solved as automatic emergency braking becomes standard on cars. Already, it's shipping on almost all hi…

This does not, by the way, imply that the machines are working correctly and human drivers are the problem. These cars are rear-ended more often than human drivers, which suggests they stop more suddenly or at times humans don't expect. Slamming on the brakes is a flaw. Even if every car on the road had the ability to respond instantly to the car ahead, being forced to brake hard still risks loss of control especiall…

> Even if every car on the road had the ability to respond instantly to the car ahead, being forced to brake hard still risks loss of control especially in bad conditions

Driving on the road is not some kind of high speed car chase. If one had left enough space to the car in front based on the current road conditions and speed one wouldn't have to brake hard. Anyone can adjust their speed to increase the distance to the car on front. Often arguments sound like driving too close or too fast are inevitable facts of life.

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