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US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

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Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#121

Post by lclarkmichalek »

dmix wrote: post #79
mastax wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were trying to evaluate that code deployed willy nilly in the wider world, sure. But that code exists within a framework which is deliberately limiting rollout in order to reduce risk. What matters is the performance of the combined code and risk management framework, which has proven to be quite good. Airbus A320s wouldn’t be very safe if we let Joe Schmo off the street fly them however he likes, but we don’t…

I'm just curious to see how they handle highways more broadly which is where the real danger is and where Tesla got in trouble in the early days. Waymo avoided doing that until late last year, and even then it's on a very controlled freeway test in Phoenix, not random highways https://waymo.com/blog/2024/01/from-surface-streets-to-freew...

Highways are pretty safe. The road is designed from start to finish to minimise the harm from collisions. That’s not true of urban streets

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#122

Post by d4mi3n »

terminalshort wrote: post #45
d4mi3n wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not an unreasonable take given historic behavior. Rather than decrying the cynicism, what steps can we take to ensure companies like Tesla/Waymo/etc are held accountable and incentivized to prioritize safety? Do we need hasher fines? Give auto regulators as much teeth as the FAA used to have during accident investigations? Genuinely curious to see how addressing reasonable concerns in these areas can be done.

Why isn't allowing people to sue when they get hurt and general bad PR around safety enough? Did you see what happened to Boeing's stock price after those 737 crashes?

I’d counter that with the Equifax breach that raised thei stock prices when it became clear they weren’t being fined into oblivion. Suing is also generally only a realistic option if you have money for a lawyer.

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#123

Post by r0m4n0 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #20
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, we do. The problem is that you need to be physically present to catch and deal with those people, and you can only really deal with one party (others will do their thing while a police officer is dealing with the first driver they stop). Not to mention that drivers change their behavior if they see the police around, so it's harder to catch them in the act. So for a variety of reasons it's harder to solve the…

With how cheap high definition cameras are, I don’t see why society needs a person to be physically present.

Yea so as someone who lives on a busy road with daily visibility into how many people flaunt the law I basically did this to force the city to make changes to the street. There really isn’t much you can do to the folks who break the law and drive away but high def video of daily shenanigans is great ammo for other types of solutions that force drivers into making better decisions.

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#125

Post by atleastoptimal »

On net, Waymos are safer than human drivers. Really all that matters is deaths per passenger mile, and weighted far less, injury/crash per passenger mile.

Waymos exceed human drivers on both metrics, thus it is reasonable to say that Waymos have reduced crashes compared to the equivalent average human driver covering the same distance.

Mistakes like this are very rare, and when they do happen, they can be audited, analyzed with thousands of metrics and exact replays, patched, and the improved model running the Waymo is distributed to all cars on the road.

There is no equivalent in humans. There are millions of human drivers currently driving who drive distracted, drunk, recklessly, or aggressively. Every one of them who is replaced with a Waymo is potentially many lives saved.

Approximately 1/100 deaths in the US are due to car fatalities. Every year autonomous drivers aren't rapidly deployed is just unnecessary deaths.

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#126

Post by jfoster »

krisoft wrote: post #120
themafia wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we can develop a fix and roll it out on all of them. You have to know what you're fixing first. You're going to write a lot of code in blood this way. It's not that people are particularly bad at driving it's that the road is exceptionally dynamic with many different users and use cases all trying to operate in a synchronized fashion with a dash of strong regulation sprinkled in.

> You have to know what you're fixing first. In this case the expected behaviour is clearly spelled out in the law. > You're going to write a lot of code in blood this way. Do note that in this case nobody died or got hurt. People observed that the autonomous vehicles did not follow the rules, the company got notified of this fact and they are working on a fix. No blood was spilled to achieve this result. Also note t…

And "much blood" is (globally) to the tune of ~1.2 million lives lost, and many more injuries.

Compared to that, autonomous vehicles have barely harmed anyone. Also they will probably save most of those lives once they become good.

The "least harm" approach is to scale autonomous vehicles as quickly as possible even if they do have accidents sometimes.

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#127

Post by alasdair_ »

cco wrote: post #117
andoando wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont get it. It looks like it just made a left turn in front of a stopped school bus? That's illegal? In any case it seems like tiny issue. Illegal or not it didnt do anything dangerous

haha great proof that humans don't follow the law all the time just like Waymo. Yes, if you see a school bus with its flashers on, you may not pass it. Period.

That depends on how many lanes there are and if there is a median.

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#128

Post by strken »

anitil wrote: post #97
Loughla wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(St)Roads where the kids have to cross a busy road to get to the other side where their house is. In my case, a rural highway where traffic goes 55mph. Is better to stop all traffic than force kids to figure out how to frogger through traffic.

Ah there might be some assumption here that I didn't realise. Typically we'd have a cross walk or traffic light near the bus stop where you'd cross. I'm in Sydney so I don't know of anywhere that you'd be going that fast that would also have bus stops (they max exist I'm just not aware of them)

The kids near me (in Melbourne, about 10km outside the CBD) just take the same public transport system as everyone else. You don't see school bus systems unless you're in the far outer suburbs, a regional/rural area, or maybe some other special cases.

Growing up, our school bus stop was on a service road off a 100km/h highway, but it had good visibility in both directions and most of the kids over the other side got dropped off by their parents while they were young.

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#129

Post by m0llusk »

This is a great technology and has clearly made great strides, but at this time it is hard to trust. These vehicles have had many problems that human drivers do not. Problems with maps can cause dozens of them to collect in dead end alleys. They may stop on busy one lane roads. They consistently fail to react appropriately to responders and emergency situations. And even if the supposedly reliable recording and reporting work out it is not always clear who is responsible when things go wrong. Simply not killing as often as humans is not good enough for mass deployment of this technology.
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