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Safety performance of the Waymo rider-only automated driving system [pdf]

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Re: Safety performance of the Waymo rider-only automated driving system [pdf]

#11

Post by mlyle »

nawgz wrote: post #5
tropsis wrote: post #4

One of the reports says that the accident was caused by the other driver looking at their phone. Could potentially the sensors of the waymo detect that and warn the other driver?

"Hey guys, self-driving is a decent sprint but I think you should expand the scope to include detecting and modeling driver behavior in nearby vehicles. Add a quick study for HCI to warn drivers of their dangerous aberrant behavior and I think we might have something real here!" - tropsis, 2023

Lol. I think the other comment is making a suggestion that isn't quite reasonable, but maybe it's adjacent to a reasonable ask.

Humans have a horn to warn other humans of unsafe behavior or conditions. We really only need to worry about warning in front of us. And we provide some warning to cars behind us in specific cases with hazard lights and brake lights.

The autonomous vehicles have a better understanding of the whole state. We've already talked about warning other autonomous cars with V2V, but maybe there's something easy/sane they can do to warn human cars behind them and further increase safety.

Re: Safety performance of the Waymo rider-only automated driving system [pdf]

#12

Post by onos »

Animats wrote: post #2

"Every vehicle-to-vehicle contact event in the first one million miles involved one or more road rule violations or dangerous behaviors on the part of the operator of the other vehicle." That agrees with the California DMV reports. The usual problem is being rear-ended at slow speed when the autonomous vehicle detects a threat at an intersection and stops. That shows up over and over in California reports. The Arizon…

Curious if the car weighs the risk of getting rearended when it decides to be cautious in situations like this. I have a feeling human drivers do to some degree.

Re: Safety performance of the Waymo rider-only automated driving system [pdf]

#13

Post by 988747 »

How does Waymo compare to human drivers when it comes to driving style? I've seen some complaints that it is annoyingly slow and indecisive sometimes, e.g. taking forever to make a left turn. Is this something Waymo also analyzes? Any hard data on that?

Re: Safety performance of the Waymo rider-only automated driving system [pdf]

#14

Post by alphabetting »

988747 wrote: post #13

How does Waymo compare to human drivers when it comes to driving style? I've seen some complaints that it is annoyingly slow and indecisive sometimes, e.g. taking forever to make a left turn. Is this something Waymo also analyzes? Any hard data on that?

I don't think there is hard data. From two rides experience in Arizona it feels eerily similar to a human driver minus it adhering the speed limit.

Re: Safety performance of the Waymo rider-only automated driving system [pdf]

#15

Post by jeffbee »

nawgz wrote: post #5
tropsis wrote: post #4

One of the reports says that the accident was caused by the other driver looking at their phone. Could potentially the sensors of the waymo detect that and warn the other driver?

"Hey guys, self-driving is a decent sprint but I think you should expand the scope to include detecting and modeling driver behavior in nearby vehicles. Add a quick study for HCI to warn drivers of their dangerous aberrant behavior and I think we might have something real here!" - tropsis, 2023

Predicting the behavior of other actors on the road is a core feature of Waymo.

https://waymo.com/research/identifying-driver-interactions-v...

Re: Safety performance of the Waymo rider-only automated driving system [pdf]

#16

Post by parton »

Silly question: will the Waymo AV use the horn? I see a few parking lot incidents where another driver backed into the front of a stationary Waymo AV at ~2 mph. I think a human driver might have tried honking at the other driver, on seeing a slow-motion collision about to occur.

Re: Safety performance of the Waymo rider-only automated driving system [pdf]

#17

Post by jdlshore »

notatoad wrote: post #10

tl;dr: 20 collisions. 8 where another vehicle reversed into a stationary waymo vehicle. 6 where a vehicle rear-ended the waymo vehicle. 1 where a garbage truck hit a stationary waymo vehicle. 5 instances of the waymo vehicle hitting an object: - a shopping cart - a parking barrier - a construction pylon - a minibike (slid into the waymo's lane) - a plastic sign (blew over onto the waymo)

Correction: five cases where a vehicle rear-ended the Waymo, one where the Waymo rear-ended another vehicle. In that case, the other vehicle merged into the Waymo's lane and immediately braked. Incident #7 on p11 of the report.

Re: Safety performance of the Waymo rider-only automated driving system [pdf]

#19

Post by WkndTriathlete »

ra7 wrote: post #8

If you don't want to read the full 30 page paper, Waymo has a blog post summarizing it: https://blog.waymo.com/2023/02/first-million-rider-only-mile... It's refreshing to see Waymo continue to be transparent about their safety data. I guess it's easier to do when you have a stellar safety record.

> I guess it's easier to do when you have a stellar safety record.

... for the conditions that the Waymo vehicles operated in.

Deployment of Waymo FSD across the board would seem to be a sure win in SF and Phoenix, so I hope that it gets widely adopted in those areas at minimum since I think it will save a lot of lives. There's a lot of work to be done by Waymo yet to get it to work in other areas of the country and conditions, though.

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