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Waymo Safety Impact

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Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#391

Post by jjmarr »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #316
hattmall wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only a robot could've safely swerved into another lane and avoid the crash entirely. Do you drive a lot? I feel like humans take evasive actions like this all the time.

Yeah I have done similar evasive maneuvers a bunch of times. Also people run stop signs constantly, a competent defensively driving human may have just not started driving forward yet when they saw the other car driving towards the stop sign with some speed. I’m not sure of the exact timing in the story but I’ve waited at a stop sign when I saw another car driving towards the intersection many, many times, and a smal…

In this case, the other car didn't run the stop sign.

It waited at the stop sign like it was making a turn, then suddenly entered the intersection when the Waymo was 5-10 meters away, despite not having the right of way.

Maybe they were trying to commit suicide-by-Waymo?

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#392

Post by necovek »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #361
necovek wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If instant ( My experience is that for a human driver to react quickly in city driving conditions, style and prep are more important than reaction time: in the case you describe (entering an intersection with another car waiting on a stop sign perpendicular to your path), I'd have my foot hanging over the brake and off the gas pedal — this has helped me avoid hitting many other cars with inattentive/distracted/bad dr…

>Waymo was going too fast for the intersection IMO. This is literally impossible without slowing to single digit speeds for every intersections. At some point you just have to rely on the other traffic honoring signaling and signage or having some desire for self preservation.

Waymo uses new cars which probably have 100km/h (62mph) to zero stopping distance around 36m (120ft) — that's what my 2020 car quotes and tests at. As stopping distance grows quadratically, from 50km/h it would have stopped in 8m. Two lane street is usually at least 8m wide.

The claim was that after braking for 10m, it was still going at 40km/h. It'd take another 6-7m to come to a full stop. If it was a full 18m stopping distance (half the one from 100km/h), that'd mean a bit over 70km/h, so over 60km/h anyway for 16-17m.

I do not know of any country where there are intersections you can go through at 60+ km/h legally.

This does not mean that Waymo in question was going too fast, but something is off in the claim (maybe it did not react on time and really brake for 10m; maybe the collision speed was not a full 40km/h; or maybe it was going too fast...).

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#393

Post by necovek »

CalRobert wrote: post #289
necovek wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on how you define "average driver": what if 95% of the crashes are caused by 5% of the drivers? My reading of all the human crash stats has been that majority of them happen when human drivers are impaired (drunk, drugged or too tired): as this is something we could (in theory, at least) control, I'd like to see and compare with stats for non-impaired human drivers too. Then, I'd like to see it compared to at…

To be fair, if 5% of drivers cause 95% of crashes then the average driver is still terrible. The median one might be better, but does it even matter? The average driver is still wreaking havoc.

It certainly matters: "average driver" does not exist, and 95% of the drivers beat the average.

So a claim how autonomous driving system beats the average would only tell us that it beats 5% of the human drivers.

Now, the way stats are massaged here is not even about "drivers", but miles driven, and this language is even worse. We'd need to make sure we are looking at human-driven miles in the same area, same roads, with similar cars.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#394

Post by Clamchop »

Retric wrote: post #26
jedberg wrote: 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 as a system has crossed the threshold where I trust them more than average driver, but all this hardware is relatively new, well maintained, and their software is closely tied to it. I’m way less confident of self driving in the hands of the general public when differed maintenance often results in people and even companies driving with squealing breaks and balding tires etc.

The way I see it, self-driving cars have the potential to deliver us from the burden of ownership altogether--maintenance, insurance, liability, parking, and all the rest. This hinges on availability, quality of service, pricing, and a rather large shift in the culture around cars and driving but I have hope that we can get there with time.

Cars are very expensive things to buy and own.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#395

Post by johnbarron »

jedberg wrote: 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…

[dead]

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#396

Post by johnbarron »

jjmarr wrote: post #53
jedberg wrote: 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…

Great reaction time from the Waymo. But a 50 km/h side impact in a 5 star crash-rated Jaguar with curtain airbags is not "saved my life" territory, more like an insurance claim. The fact that you instinctively framed it as a near-death experience is Waymo most impressive engineering achievement.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#397

Post by FL410 »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #330
FL410 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it's customary to leave a path in the left 'passing lane' for any traffic that wants/needs to go faster than you It's not just customary in many (most?) states, it's the law. People who sit in the left lane are the problem.

Can you cite a specific state law that says that? The last couple laws like that I checked only talked about limiting flow below the speed limit.

https://www.mit.edu/~jfc/right.html

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#398

Post by CalRobert »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #362
CalRobert wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, if 5% of drivers cause 95% of crashes then the average driver is still terrible. The median one might be better, but does it even matter? The average driver is still wreaking havoc.

>To be fair, if 5% of drivers cause 95% of crashes then the average driver is still terrible. >The median one might be better, but does it even matter? The average driver is still wreaking havoc. Yes it matters. To be acceptable this technology needs to be at least in the same ballpark as a median-ish person on a median-ish day. Not some nonexistent average that is pulled down by the 1/X people who are drunk and the…

I was just making a point re: average versus median. We’re not very good at getting bad drivers off the road

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#399

Post by necovek »

CalRobert wrote: post #398
cucumber3732842 wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>To be fair, if 5% of drivers cause 95% of crashes then the average driver is still terrible. >The median one might be better, but does it even matter? The average driver is still wreaking havoc. Yes it matters. To be acceptable this technology needs to be at least in the same ballpark as a median-ish person on a median-ish day. Not some nonexistent average that is pulled down by the 1/X people who are drunk and the…

I was just making a point re: average versus median. We’re not very good at getting bad drivers off the road

But the point is if we get all the median and better drivers off the road and replace them with autonomous vehicles, yet keep the worst 5% on the roads too, we are potentially worse off.

Re: Waymo Safety Impact

#400

Post by 0x3f »

sublinear wrote: post #387
0x3f wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I do talk to them and I do have this skill, but it's a skill that I only ever seem to employ in talking to Uber drivers, so I'm not sure it's of any great benefit. If anything the fact that most of them are immigrants puts the conversation on easy mode if you're a native speaker. They're doing twice the mental work you are so it's easy to orchestrate the conversation. Not really transferrable to native-speaki…

That's interesting. Cultural differences and language barriers aren't what I would consider weird. I was thinking of those people who have wild stories and/or mountains of narcissism to overcome. They have a fascinating worldview like an artist would if they had those ambitions. They get bonus points in my book the more genuinely unhinged and confused they seem to be. They got that way by questioning things into absu…

Well there's a virtuous cycle for immigrants whereby if you integrate, you improve the language, you get a better job, and you integrate more, thus often ironing out any weirdness wrt to the host culture. Uber driver is pretty dead-end and isolated. You work constant hours but all your interactions tend to be very surface level.
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