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Locals reportedly frustrated with Waymo's self-driving cars

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Re: Locals reportedly frustrated with Waymo's self-driving cars

#101

Post by spike021 »

Meekro wrote: post #56

I've been in situations where I'm waiting to make a tricky left turn safely while people behind me literally yell at me to go faster. Now those same people have to contend with cars that can't be intimidated into making risky turns by the driver behind them yelling, honking, or tailgating. I hope it plays out like this: 1. Driver tailgates at an intersection or stop sign to try to intimidate the driverless car in fro…

While relatively ideal, that ignores potential edge cases like the real driver driving with enough momentum to cause the driverless car he/she rear-ends to hit the car or curb or some other obstacle in front of them.

Hopefully by that point the driverless system's smart enough to apply all emergency braking to reduce the chance of that, but it's one possible scenario.

Re: Locals reportedly frustrated with Waymo's self-driving cars

#102

Post by weaksauce »

snowwrestler wrote: post #49
zamalek wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who attempts to follow the letter of the law, I experience quite a few incidents of aggressive driving. The complaints here are really just demonstrating how bad humans are at driving - the frustration probably arises due to the fact that they are unable to intimidate the driver in front of them with aggressive behavior. > One woman said that she almost hit one of the company's minivans because it suddenly…

Why do you attempt to follow the letter of the law? Not even traffic officers follow the letter of the law; it's rare to get pulled over for going 60mph in a 55mph zone, for example. Do you ever find yourself on a road getting passed by all the other cars? Isn't that annoying? Why not just speed up a few mph and join the herd? I'm honestly asking; I just do not get the appeal.

Is it not annoying to stop at every traffic light? The traffic lights are tuned to the speed limit. I stopped going faster than the speed limit(maybe 5 over sometimes max) and it’s a smoother experience.

Re: Locals reportedly frustrated with Waymo's self-driving cars

#103

Post by dsfyu404ed »

cgriswald wrote: post #64
dfsegoat wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Totally incorrect: I say it all the time when I am driving my kids around -- or when idiot teenagers rip through my neighborhood where my kids are playing at 35-45 mph (1).. before kids? - Maybe not. (1) - It's official: I am now a crotchety old man.

I'm not sure if you're crotchety. I had a grandma frantically signal me to slow down when she was out walking with her grandchildren. I was doing 12 mph in a 25mph zone. The road is sketchy in spots, but this stretch is perfectly straight and fairly wide and I gave them about 15 feet of clearance by essentially driving as far as I could on the opposite side of the road. She's definitely crotchety. That said, I think…

Pedestrians generally judge speed by noise.

Re: Locals reportedly frustrated with Waymo's self-driving cars

#104

Post by earleybird »

vorpalhex wrote: post #14
klodolph wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also wondering what part of this is due to them being programmed to follow the letter of the law, instead of driving like other drivers.

That is a real problem that I'm curious to see how Alphabet solves. In many areas of the country, the posted speed limit is often much lower than the realistic speed cars are going - following the letter of the law becomes unsafe behavior when you're going 15mph slower than everyone else. Of course, the answer here is probably the most boring: following the letter of the law ensures the least liability.

When a self driving vehicle is ticketed for going too slow when it was doing the posted speed limit as happened with a Google vehicle; Googles' response should be "please post the appropriate speed".

Re: Locals reportedly frustrated with Waymo's self-driving cars

#105

Post by spike021 »

snowwrestler wrote: post #38
jrockway wrote: post #16

I don't think I've ever heard anyone say they like conservative driving. "I would have risked that left turn, so you should have too. The person with the green light would have slowed down to avoid an accident, probably, and I would have gotten to the next red light 10 seconds sooner!" You will also hear this when talking about less-capable drivers ("get off the road, grandma!") or less-capable vehicles ("I hate havi…

> As a result, traffic accidents are the leading cause of death for people from 8-24. "As a result" is a pretty big stretch. Traffic accidents result from unexpected situations. People who drive a lot learn to read the environment and the drivers around them and anticipate what will happen next. When those anticipations are violated, it runs the risk of creating a surprise that can't be managed. That is just as true…

>So I'm not surprised that self-driving cars are disliked.

Assuming you're implying that self-driving cars won't have behavior that's easy to learn, I'm not so sure.

Even self-driving cars should fall into certain patterns (maybe those will vary with the tech, depending on if they're run on Waymo or some other company's version of it).

Re: Locals reportedly frustrated with Waymo's self-driving cars

#106

Post by jcranmer »

gizmo686 wrote: post #69
Pxtl wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yellow doesn't mean "you can go through if you can beat the red". It means "stop if it is safe to do so". If it's just firm braking and not actual tires-squealing stop? The driver probably did the right thing.

Safe is relative. If he almost got rear ended, it probably wasn't safe. Of course, the other driver should have given ample distance himself and have been paying attention, but people often don't do that. At the margin, I think it is safer to err on the side of running a yellow then stopping abrubtly. I have never seen someone run a yellow and think they were being unsafe (even when the yellow turned red), but have s…

> I have never seen someone run a yellow and think they were being unsafe (even when the yellow turned red)

I have seen people who have so egregiously missed the yellow that the cross-signal turned green before they entered the intersection. Saying that running a yellow is safer than not trains people to be entitled to running yellow lights, and that is going to make their actions much less safe.

If there is someone in front of you, do not plan on running a yellow light. That is a very simple rule to follow and is going to be safe to follow. If you planned on running the light, and the driver in front of you did not plan on doing so, it is you who is going to be at fault.

Re: Locals reportedly frustrated with Waymo's self-driving cars

#107

Post by thisacctforreal »

mc32 wrote: post #4
syntaxing wrote: post #3

I'm really curious whether this frustration is truly because of the limitation of the technology(which is totally possible) or because of some sort of cognitive bias/confirmation. Would they feel the same frustration if the van had no decals or visible sensors? Are they more frustrated at the cars more than the other drivers? Community "anger" can be really perplexing like how a community of people were complaining a…

I’m guessing people see them as surplus unnecessary vehicles adding to the congestion they already experience. The alternative is that they are anti-automation, perhaps.

Or the cars suck at driving.

Disclosure: I've never seen one in action, just stating a possibility.

Re: Locals reportedly frustrated with Waymo's self-driving cars

#108

Post by jandrese »

kthejoker2 wrote: post #54
jstanley wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people are honking at you, are you sure you're being safe and not just being annoying ?

I find the vaaaast majority of honking is driven by impatience not any actual practical consideration (alerting others to your presence, trying to get someone's attention.) Honking to provoke someone into taking risks you don't have to incur the consequences of yourself is mild sociopathy.

Most of the time I honk it is because someone is playing on their phone and have not noticed that the light turned green 5 seconds ago.

Re: Locals reportedly frustrated with Waymo's self-driving cars

#109

Post by alasdair_ »

zamalek wrote: post #12
klodolph wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also wondering what part of this is due to them being programmed to follow the letter of the law, instead of driving like other drivers.

As someone who attempts to follow the letter of the law, I experience quite a few incidents of aggressive driving. The complaints here are really just demonstrating how bad humans are at driving - the frustration probably arises due to the fact that they are unable to intimidate the driver in front of them with aggressive behavior. > One woman said that she almost hit one of the company's minivans because it suddenly…

>By following the correct speed limit and following distance, you will have ample time to react to any silly behavior.

The problem is that in heavy traffic (e.g. middle of many large cities at 5pm), it's not actually possible to both follow the law and actually make progress towards your destination in a given hour.

One example: Try to make a left turn in gridlocked traffic. You're supposed to avoid moving across an intersection until there is enough room for your vehicle, so that if a light changes, you will not block traffic. The problem is that in rush hour traffic, if you actually do that, you will sit there for an hour or more as other cars see the gap and take a right turn, never giving you a spot to turn into.

Re: Locals reportedly frustrated with Waymo's self-driving cars

#110

Post by solarkraft »

zamalek wrote: post #81
rhacker wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do safe, illegal things too, so good point in mentioning this. I should have clarified that I was mostly talking about speed limits, tailgaiting etc.. I was just picking up the above poster's phrase. I don't think I could accurately sum up my driving style in a phrase, but that's probably the best short way to do it.

Agreed, I definitely do illegal things - especially when there are cyclists on the road.

Uh, you run them over?
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