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Waymo in Dallas

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Re: Waymo in Dallas

#211

Post by SR2Z »

runarberg wrote: post #190
cortesoft wrote: post #60

I live very close to LAX, and we have hundreds of Waymos in our area. At first i was a little weary, and kinda weirded out by all of them. They have become completely normal, and cause WAY fewer traffic incidents than human drivers. They are very predictable, and will always let you pull in front of them when changing lanes (unlike a lot of other LA drivers). I have seen a few incidents where they seem 'stuck', and i…

Whenever I visit San Francisco I get the sense that these robo-taxis are nothing but public transit for those who are willing and able to spend extra money. I would not compare the user experience to drivers, or the safety record to private cars. I would compare the user experience and the safety record to human driven taxis, buses, light rail, and metro. I am curious if the rider experience is actually any better th…

If the train goes exactly where you want to go, I would always say take the train. It's spacious and clean.

But if where you're going is only served by bus or requires some walking... it really depends on how you feel. Waymo is pretty expensive, but I have had some truly miserable bus rides in SF.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#212

Post by [deleted] »

slg wrote: post #180
WarmWash wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and cause WAY fewer traffic incidents than human drivers. Ironically the best way to verify this is that when they do cause traffic issues, it becomes national news. Imagine breaking down and blocking an intersection in Edgewood Georgia, and then getting a call that night from your Uncle in Oregon saying he saw your breakdown on the news...

Would we apply this same logic to Tesla Autopilot? As a disclaimer, this is neither an anti-Waymo comment or a pro-Tesla comment, I just find in interesting how these small sample size incidents are both covered and perceived in the absence of actual verifiable safety statistics.

[deleted]

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#213

Post by Fogest »

jackp96 wrote: post #198
slg wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would we apply this same logic to Tesla Autopilot? As a disclaimer, this is neither an anti-Waymo comment or a pro-Tesla comment, I just find in interesting how these small sample size incidents are both covered and perceived in the absence of actual verifiable safety statistics.

I'm under the impression (worth a check) that we do have verifiable safety statistics and that Waymos are significantly safer than Teslas at this point? That's not to say that Tesla's autopilot isn't safer than the average human driver—it might be—but I thought it was settled territory that Waymos are better on safety.

Not really a fair comparison between Tesla's autopilot and Waymo though. You'd have to compare Tesla's Robotaxi but I believe they have been running for a far shorter period and I'm not sure how much data is out yet or how reliable it would be at this stage. The Robotaxi runs I believe a different version of autopilot meant to not have a human driver and has a lot more work that goes into making sure it's highly tested in the area it is being deployed. Whereas the Tesla Autopilot I believe can work in pretty much any area, so it may have more potential issues that come up.

Also a common thing I see happening with the Tesla Autopilot for an accident is that it's often not the fault of the autopilot. It's often the fault of the human driver who takes over last second. Naturally the driver will lie or not even realize they were the problem as they may have had auto pilot active 1 second before the crash. I think it's that natural human instinct when you see something happening to crap the wheel or hit the pedal in that "oh shit" kind of reflex. And that sometimes causes the driver to make a mistake.

I actually was in a crash with a person driving a Tesla vehicle where I think this was the cause. 3 lane highway, they were in the center lane, I was in the left lane, transport truck in the right lane. The transport truck slightly drift towards the edge of their lane and the Tesla driver freaked out and over corrected their steering wheel to the left and came swerving into my lane and was losing control of their car between both lanes until they suddenly slammed on their brakes in front of me. I gotta say, the Tesla brakes combined with the regenerative braking have some impressive stopping power. Unfortunately that also meant they stopped way faster and so suddenly that I hit their rear a bit. I got very lucky that insurance ruled in my favour and had them 100% at fault.

Apologies for the tangent, just trying to illustrate a point via a personal story of how even when the system is working well and keeping the driver safe, they can still make a human-like overreaction which overrides the autopilot and leads to a crash.

I get pretty annoyed when I see news articles with the headlines "Tesla crashed while auto pilot activated", but then there has yet to be an investigation and we actually don't know whether autopilot was in fact active or not yet. It's a clickbait style headline that I think makes people more hesitant about the progress of Waymo and Robotaxi vehicles.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#214

Post by heaney-555 »

pyaamb wrote: post #141

Elon may have been technically correct about 'if humans can do it with vision only then theres no reason why vision-only cannot work' but turned out to be the wrong strategy for learning how to get there. lidar gives you a constant stream of data to check your vision yourself against and interatively learn. Once trained you turn it off. whereas teslas strategy ended up having to rely on human drivers for error feedba…

It's far far too early to say whether it turned out to be wrong.

Tesla also has a robotaxi service in Dallas, FWIW, in testing.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#215

Post by inigyou »

SR2Z wrote: post #205
inigyou wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're also covered in cameras the police have access to, which have been used to track down legal protestors in the past. That's why there was a spate of people setting them on fire a few months ago. Basically, every Waymo car is a Flock camera.

Stop spreading FUD. The police do not in any meaningful way "have access" to Waymo cameras. They can subpoena recordings and Waymo will call the cops on you if you commit a crime in one of their cars, but your statement implies Flock-like access which the police simply don't have.

https://gizmodo.com/waymos-driverless-cars-revealed-to-be-na...

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#216

Post by Zambyte »

arjie wrote: post #58

Surprisingly low hype for a company running perhaps the most advanced consumer-interactive robots. I’m quite fond of these machines and will periodically rescue them when someone has misused them (door not closed, most commonly). Hope they do well. Very good road participants.

I want trains.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#217

Post by SR2Z »

johngalt wrote: post #170
whack wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think you can just look at the statistics though. What I mean is that, the main issue is that the category of mistakes they make are going to be inherently different from the category of mistakes that humans make Would you rather have a X% chance of a loved one dying from a human-category mistake? Or a 0.5X% chance of a loved one dying from a ML-category mistake? I would take the latter in a heartbeat. Why…

That is not the way human beings typically evaluate risks. 'Acceptable risks' are more about psychology and not a statistical calculation. A self driving car that is twice as safe as the human average would be considered an unacceptable risk. Add something that is new/unknown + lack of control, and you will have to clear a very high threshold to be considered 'acceptably safe'. My guess is a minimum of a 0.1x.

I don't think that human beings factor the rate of injury or death in at all, because human beings are notoriously bad with expected values from extreme conditions.

Once people get used to taking robotaxis, they won't care. The bar is "safe enough for very few people to have a bad experience." If you take 10 robotaxi rides in a row and they all go flawlessly your subjective interpretation of the risk will be that there isn't any.

I feel confident saying this because if you die in the US to anything other than old age, it was almost certainly a car crash. Despite this, most people don't think twice before getting in a car.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#218

Post by lokar »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #188
runako wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boston, according to Waymo[1], is dependent on the legislature making autonomous vehicles legal. Apparently NY state laws also require a human driver at the wheel. The only surprising thing about this is that other states did not require changes in law. It's Good, Actually, that big companies are (sometimes) bound by the same laws that bind the rest of us. In any case, there are more than 2-3 "blue" states. We can no…

> that big companies are (sometimes) bound by the same laws that bind the rest of us Not if they’re stupid laws!

Even then. There is value in uniform rule of law.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#219

Post by SR2Z »

vb-8448 wrote: post #209
skybrian wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be the same as for any public transport: it's the service operator's responsibility to run the system. The rider doesn't need insurance. I imagine Google has enough money that they can self-insure. Particularly since it's a very low accident rate.

What about criminal implications? PS: i guess the insurance on self diving cars is a little bit different and the accident rate is only part of the picture. Just an example: humans don't get hacked.

I would imagine that criminal liability for hacking a Waymo falls on the hacker, and on Waymo only if they are negligent.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#220

Post by Fogest »

dylan604 wrote: post #122
epolanski wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very interesting, because on one side we have clear data showing that autonomous cars at the Waymo level are safer than humans. On the other hand we don't give technology the same pass we give to humans, meaning that we don't tolerate machine incidents the same way we tolerate human ones. Which means that self-driving cars need to be a magnitude of order safer than humans. And even though a self-driving car will…

When a human driver messes up, there's a person to hold responsible. When a robot car messes up, who is held responsible? If the human messes up to the point they are no longer allowed to drive, that person is no longer on the streets to cause more mistakes. When a robot car messes up, are all of the other cars pulled off the streets as well until the glitch is fixed? Every robot car is essentially the same driver.

Don't we have automated systems all around the world with the same element at play? Elevators? Trains/Subways that are autonomous, robotic lawn mowers, self-driving little delivery vehicles on sidewalks, all kinds of automated machines in factories that kill people, etc...

I feel like you could come up with long lists of cases where there is no direct human to blame. Someone may be at fault down the chain, but nobody who was directly controlling the machine. Just like if a mechanic screws up my brakes and I end up crashing, it wasn't directly me who caused the crash, even though I was sitting in the seat.

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