Replaying real life: how the Waymo Driver avoids fatal human crashes • Hacker News Board

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

#141

Post by Laarlf » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 3:00 PM UTC

zip1234 wrote: post #134

Laarlf wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not leaving your house would solve a lot of things. Why don’t people do that? Anyway, slowing down traffic is not the answer. Driving should either be more automated or more engaging so drivers stop using their phones. 2 hours of driving 20 mph in a straight line will be boring enough to create more accidents.

If cars were limited to a certain speed it would for certain cut down on crashes. It would also cut down on fatalities. When the news article says "speed was not a factor", they are only referring to the fact that the driver was going at or under the posted speed. That does not mean speed was not a factor. You think it would not work because driving is boring? Perhaps if you can't handle driving responsibly, you shou…

Europe has built roads forever that makes driving engaging. Europe has a lot less issues with phones while driving etc.

Germany also solves that problem by having no speed limit when it gets boring. Making driving engaging is the best way to create mindful drivers.

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

#142

Post by tablespoon » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 3:03 PM UTC

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #137

freddie_mercury wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any solution that relies on "let's just make humans beings better" is basically doomed to failure and little more than hand wringing and virtue signalling. Cars have been pervasive for over a century and virtually none of the actual improvements in safety have come from "hoping humans do better".

>Cars have been pervasive for over a century and virtually none of the actual improvements in safety have come from "hoping humans do better". Improvements to signage and traffic controls, cracking down on reckless and intoxicated driving and the massive campaign to get people to actually wear their seat-belts (listed in no particular order) seem to fall solidly in the "make humans do better" category.

>>> I really wish we could just enforce proper education of being observant.

>> Cars have been pervasive for over a century and virtually none of the actual improvements in safety have come from "hoping humans do better".

> Improvements to signage and traffic controls, cracking down on reckless and intoxicated driving and the massive campaign to get people to actually wear their seat-belts (listed in no particular order) seem to fall solidly in the "make humans do better" category.

None of those things actually involve "making humans do better [at driving]. They either involve implementing technical solutions or preventing humans in certain conditions from driving at all.

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

#143

Post by bkor » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 3:05 PM UTC

pnutjam wrote: post #121

javagram wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the US, unless things are different from TV, you can get trained by someone else with a license in a regular car and do an exam. Be cautious about believing TV drama is realistic. States I’m familiar with require 30 hours of licensed classroom instruction and 6 hours of licensed driving instruction beyond the training via a parent or other adult. In any case, no amount of training seems to stop people from using…

I'm teaching my kids, insurance companies stopped giving any discount for drivers ed. My daughters all passed the exam to get a learning license on the first try. I made them read the dmv book, on the state website. I also quizzed them on various scenarios. They have friends who took classes and still failed the exam multiple times. IMHO, the problem has more to do with the entitlement around driving. People don't vi…

> I'm teaching my kids, insurance companies stopped giving any discount for drivers ed.

What's not clear is the difficulty of the test. Class based training, I'm not a fan. Only 6 hours of actual driving seems very minimal. Learning through another: they'll likely pick up bad habits.

> They have friends who took classes and still failed the exam multiple times.

That's good. Here it's a practical exam that often takes various tried to get. Plus theoretical one. It includes loads of things. Not just knowledge, but also e.g. judgement about safety. So in case something is unsafe the answer isn't "yes, it is legal", but more of a "there's a hazard".

From my perspective it's more difficult to unlearn a bad habit than to leach it properly (and immediately address something) right from the start. And it's great that some are good drivers, but I'm more concerned with the amount of bad drivers passing their "skill" to someone else.

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

#144

Post by ddp26 » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 3:08 PM UTC

A big caveat to this study is that, in the reconstructed simulations, once the self-driving car (SDC) deviates from what the human-driven car did, the behavior of all other agents becomes unrealistic. Often in these sims, instead of reacting to the new SDC trajectory, they replay their original behavior.

Ideally, once the SDC deviates, all other agents are simulated as well. A tall order, but necessary if these counterfactuals are to hold weight.

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

#145

Post by bkor » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 3:09 PM UTC

jaywalk wrote: post #129

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cars have been pervasive for over a century and virtually none of the actual improvements in safety have come from "hoping humans do better". I disagree, given how standards for getting a driver's license are different between countries and getting more and more tighter. In the US, unless things are different from TV, you can get trained by someone else with a license in a regular car and do an exam. Over here, you…

The requirements in my US state are very similar to yours, except the amount of time you need to spend with a licensed instructor in an adapted car is fixed (don't remember the number). But after that, and before you can take your practical exam, you're required to spend a significant (fixed minimum) amount of time driving with a parent or guardian in the passenger seat. And the cost is far less than the nearly $3000…

> you're required to spend a significant (fixed minimum) amount of time driving with a parent or guardian in the passenger seat.

That seems pretty unsafe from my viewpoint. Just because you can drive doesn't mean you can teach/instruct. I think people here generally do 20 hours of driving with a licensed instructor. There's no minimum I think, it's just that the (practical) exam is expensive so people only do the exam when you think you're good to go. Licensed instructors are also rated on the how often someone successfully passes an exam.

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

#146

Post by vbezhenar » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 3:09 PM UTC

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…

There are plenty of people who are afraid of driving. They might be self driving car audience, if self driving cars would not require driver license.

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

#147

Post by tantalor » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 3:11 PM UTC

robbmorganf wrote: post #11

1) Would a random driver (random steering and throttle) also have avoided these crashes? It seems like they were fatal because several variables coincided very exactly, and really any other input would have avoided them. 2) What input is the Waymo driver using here? If these were not originally Waymo cars, then is it perceiving simulated video or getting raw access to ground truth vehicle positions?

They should try human drivers in a simulator. You would have to be careful not to signal when the accident was about to happen, because accidents in real life are very uncommon.

You could estimate how avoidable an accident was by the percentage of human drivers in the simulated "responder" vehicle that avoided it.

Maybe some accidents are easily avoided by humans because the real responder driver was distracted. I'm not impressed if Waymo driver can also avoid these.

But some accidents may be very difficult to avoid for humans. If Waymo driver can perform better in these cases then it's truly remarkable.

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

#148

Post by vbezhenar » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 3:11 PM UTC

rexf wrote: post #74

Bancakes wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So who's going to pay for that? Tesla? No, tech companies will just hide a "Not actually self-driving, driver takes full responsibility" sticker near the VIN. It'll be easy to blame the human for negligence then.

It's easy to be cynical. Volvo has already said they take responsibility [0], and I assume other manufacturers will also accept blame if their self-driving was involved. 0 - https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a15352720/volvo-will-take-...

Will Volvo directors go to jail if Volvo car would kill someone? I don't think so. That's not a responsibility.

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

#149

Post by ghaff » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 3:15 PM UTC

bkor wrote: post #140

ghaff wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has had a driver's license in the US for a very long time, my experience is that--as with many things--one of the main things that makes you a better driver is putting in hours driving. Could you move more of those hours into a supervised learning environment? Probably. But you do that at the cost of making getting a license more difficult, expensive, and exclusive (in an environment where driving is o…

> I'm not sure how "more expensive training" eliminates some people texting while driving. You can do and the other. It's not about eliminating. If someone is great at something that doesn't mean that they're good at teaching that skill. Further, just because someone drove for a long time doesn't mean they're a good driver. Likely they've improved, but it hasn't been checked. When I got my license I learned about a l…

It would probably be great if everyone could take a high-end week-long defensive driving course. That's also not very realistic. I'm not sure the typical driver's ed imparts any particularly unique insights that generally responsible adult drivers don't have.

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

#150

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 3:16 PM UTC

bumbada wrote: post #76

They can use it to start fixing the roads, not the cars. Just look at the cross intersection they use as an example, typical of the US. The ROAD is the death trap there. People are crossing each other at high speed, this is the BUG, and should be fixed. The proper solution is putting there a roundabout, and you will have instantly less fatal accidents. The US was the first to use roundabouts, but those early designs…

[deleted]