We should put self driving cars on tracks so they are always out of the way and have easily predictable behavior. Maybe we can even link the cars together for efficiency or something like that.
Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams
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Re: Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams
#12I'm surprised that either: 1. Nobody at Waymo thought of this, 2. Somebody did think of it but it wasn't considered important enough to prioritize, or 3. They tried to prep the cars for this and yet they nonetheless failed so badly
Everyone should have understood that driving requires improvisation in the face of uncommon but inevitable bespoke challenges that this generation of AI is not suited for. Either because it's common sense or because so many people have been shouting it for so long.
Re: Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams
#13It seems waymo's always fall apart when encountering something that wouldn't be in the training set. Such as a christmas parade: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/NOqK8UEuWjs
I don't understand how these cars keep getting stalled for half an hour or something. Surely there must be a team of teleoperators ready to jump in at any time?
The power outage probably knocked out the infra those operators needed to control the cars.
Re: Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams
#14I for one welcome our robot slow-verlords.
Re: Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams
#15I'm surprised that either: 1. Nobody at Waymo thought of this, 2. Somebody did think of it but it wasn't considered important enough to prioritize, or 3. They tried to prep the cars for this and yet they nonetheless failed so badly
Everyone should have understood that driving requires improvisation in the face of uncommon but inevitable bespoke challenges that this generation of AI is not suited for. Either because it's common sense or because so many people have been shouting it for so long.
But a citywide blackout isn’t that uncommon.
Re: Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams
#16Prior to reading the article, I assumed Waymos were stuck due to an Internet connectivity issue. However, while the root cause is not explicitly stated, it sounds like the Waymos are “confused” by traffic lights being out.
I miss the time when "confused" for a computer program was meant in a humorous way.
Re: Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams
#17We should put self driving cars on tracks so they are always out of the way and have easily predictable behavior. Maybe we can even link the cars together for efficiency or something like that.
Slot cars at the grown-up level.
Re: Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams
#18Prior to reading the article, I assumed Waymos were stuck due to an Internet connectivity issue. However, while the root cause is not explicitly stated, it sounds like the Waymos are “confused” by traffic lights being out.
I miss the time when "confused" for a computer program was meant in a humorous way.
> miss the time when "confused" for a computer program was meant in a humorous way
Not sure what about this isn’t funny. Nobody died. And the notion that traffic lights going down would not have otherwise caused congestion seems silly.
Re: Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams
#19In my experience, humans respond incredibly poorly to traffic lights being out. There's no sense or reason, just people deciding to drive across the intersection when they feel like it's okay.
Presumably Waymo will make sure they can handle this situation in the future, but I'm not sure there's a really satisfactory solution. The way you're supposed to handle an intersection with no lights (treat it as a stop sign intersection) doesn't work very well when no one else is behaving that way.
Re: Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams
#20In my experience, humans respond incredibly poorly to traffic lights being out. There's no sense or reason, just people deciding to drive across the intersection when they feel like it's okay. Presumably Waymo will make sure they can handle this situation in the future, but I'm not sure there's a really satisfactory solution. The way you're supposed to handle an intersection with no lights (treat it as a stop sign in…
I saw this recently when the lights were out at an intersection in Manhattan. People kept on driving and almost hitting pedestrians and cars. I called 911 and then directed traffic for 15 minutes until DoT came out and put up a temporary stop sign.