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Waymo Safety Impact

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201–210 of 424 posts

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#201
post #53
post #3

Anecdotally, both from riding in them and walking/driving next to/around them, this feels obvious. They never get distracted. Sure, they sometimes make mistakes, but the mistakes are never "I didn't see that". They see better than humans in all cases (where they operate). They react faster than humans. The one case where they hit a child, it was because the child jumped in front of the car. And they showed that they…

Waymo saved my life in LA. When I visited LA, I rode in a Waymo going the speed limit in the right lane on a very busy street. The Waymo approached an intersection where it had the right of way, when suddenly a car ignored its stop sign and drove into the road. In less than a second, the Waymo moved into the left lane and kept going. I didn't even realize what was happening until after it was over. Most human drivers…

[deleted]

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#202
post #3

Anecdotally, both from riding in them and walking/driving next to/around them, this feels obvious. They never get distracted. Sure, they sometimes make mistakes, but the mistakes are never "I didn't see that". They see better than humans in all cases (where they operate). They react faster than humans. The one case where they hit a child, it was because the child jumped in front of the car. And they showed that they…

There was however a detail that explained the car was in a school area during pickup time and should have been on high alert exactly for that

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#203
post #188

When is waymo going to be available in the north east?

Hard to predict.

Waymo is trialing in several northeast cities. Search for "waymo trial boston" or "waymo trial nyc".

But beyond the technical issues, there are also political issues. Search for "new york bans waymo".

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#205
post #130

I just watched a short that said some (all) Waymo drivers are not autonomous, but remote controlled by humans in the Phillipines. I'm sure it's a combination of both since the latency would mean immediate reactions are impossible, but the presenter raised an interesting point, and that was that the remote drivers are not licensed to drive in the states that Waymo operated in, which would make it illegal.

Waymo uses remote contractors to hint the Waymo driver when it can't figure out a path forward. They're not being remote piloted. They are however, very cagy about how often this is necessary.

They don't necessarily even hint them. I think the car mainly asks them yes/no questions and they respond.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#206
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo saved my life in LA. When I visited LA, I rode in a Waymo going the speed limit in the right lane on a very busy street. The Waymo approached an intersection where it had the right of way, when suddenly a car ignored its stop sign and drove into the road. In less than a second, the Waymo moved into the left lane and kept going. I didn't even realize what was happening until after it was over. Most human drivers…

I hope you are misremembering. Swerving is most often the wrong choice, and I would be disappointed if Waymo were opting for that. By far the best option is to panic stop. Human or robot, physics is a harsh mistress and swerving is more likely to make you lose control and end up in a much more unforgiving wreck.

I assume waymo has a constant full picture of what's around, so swerve should be way safer for a machine than a human

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#207
post #53
post #3

Anecdotally, both from riding in them and walking/driving next to/around them, this feels obvious. They never get distracted. Sure, they sometimes make mistakes, but the mistakes are never "I didn't see that". They see better than humans in all cases (where they operate). They react faster than humans. The one case where they hit a child, it was because the child jumped in front of the car. And they showed that they…

Waymo saved my life in LA. When I visited LA, I rode in a Waymo going the speed limit in the right lane on a very busy street. The Waymo approached an intersection where it had the right of way, when suddenly a car ignored its stop sign and drove into the road. In less than a second, the Waymo moved into the left lane and kept going. I didn't even realize what was happening until after it was over. Most human drivers…

> Waymo saved my life in LA. When I visited LA, I rode in a Waymo going the speed limit in the right lane on a very busy street. The Waymo approached an intersection where it had the right of way, when suddenly a car ignored its stop sign and drove into the road.

> ...

> Unfortunately, the Waymo only supported Spotify and did not work with my YouTube Music subscription, so I was listening to an advertisement at the time of my near-death experience. 4.5 stars overall.

What?! Is this a generated comment?

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#208
I give up. I’m not even going to try to read “fade in” pages anymore. We had an article about that just the other day.

It’s horrible and makes reading harder.

I wanted to see this, but I give up.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#209

The bar is low. I don’t want comparison with an alcoholic with multiple DUIs who still drives and crashes. The benchmark should be the top decile of drivers.

The number of people who think they're top tier drivers never ceases to amaze me.

Yes statistics are full of drivers with more than one accidents at fault. 15% of the drivers are causing more than 70% of the accidents.

I don’t care about the average driver. I care about the median.

It is not a high bar to expect an autonomous system to be better than 90% of the American drivers.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#210
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're over-playing how decisively a Waymo will move and under-playing how decent the average human is. I've ridden in Waymos. They don't exactly slap on the blinker and move at the limit of traction like someone about to miss their exit. If cut off they absolutely will go full brake rather than perform any sort of spicy lane change or turn.

> If cut off they absolutely will go full brake rather than perform any sort of spicy lane change or turn. Essentially, a meat driver was waiting at a stop sign to make a turn onto the main road. I was in a Waymo driving on the main road and did not have a stop sign. When we were 10 meters away from the intersection, the meat driver suddenly started to enter the intersection. I have no idea why. Full brake would've h…

To be fair, we are not provided with the sensors to swerve safely. If we had some sort of 360 constant recording in the car (on screen?) it would be safer for humans to swerve. Instead we have to move our head, which is cheaper but lacks info. That's why we now have rear cameras
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