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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

#101

Post by JumpCrisscross »

MBCook wrote: post #93

From John Ripley on Mastodon: “Thought of the day, and I wish there were a way to get this to legislators: Come the next Big One earthquake, all of San Francisco’s emergency services will be blocked by Waymos.” I’m AMAZED they’re not designed to handle this better. This does indeed seem like a massive problem. “Oops we give up” right when things get the worst? How is this OK? I’ve been very impressed by Waymo’s more…

> Come the next Big One earthquake, all of San Francisco’s emergency services will be blocked by Waymos

Were any emergency vehicles actually blocked?

We have an actual failure here–step one is identifying actual failures so we can distinguish what really happened from what hypothetically could.

Re: Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams

#104

Post by tanvach »

tiahura wrote: post #86

How does Tesla FSD respond to inactive traffic control lights?

Coincidentally we were on the Robotaxi during the black out (didn’t know about it, we were going to Japan town from the Mission). Noticed that it navigated through the non-working traffic lights fine, treated it like a stop sign junction. One advantage of building unsupervised system from public version that had to deal with these edge cases all around the country.

Though the safety driver disengaged twice to let emergency vehicles pass safely.

Re: Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams

#105

Post by JumpCrisscross »

tiahura wrote: post #86

How does Tesla FSD respond to inactive traffic control lights?

> Is this because Tesla has more training data?

Its human takes over. FSD is still Level 3.

(Robotaxi, Tesla's Level 4 product, is still in beta. Based on reports, its humans had to intervene.)

Re: Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams

#106

Post by MBCook »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #101
MBCook wrote: post #93

From John Ripley on Mastodon: “Thought of the day, and I wish there were a way to get this to legislators: Come the next Big One earthquake, all of San Francisco’s emergency services will be blocked by Waymos.” I’m AMAZED they’re not designed to handle this better. This does indeed seem like a massive problem. “Oops we give up” right when things get the worst? How is this OK? I’ve been very impressed by Waymo’s more…

> Come the next Big One earthquake, all of San Francisco’s emergency services will be blocked by Waymos Were any emergency vehicles actually blocked? We have an actual failure here–step one is identifying actual failures so we can distinguish what really happened from what hypothetically could.

I don’t know. But if human drivers are having to go around them, they’re not doing the right thing.

They need to drive or pull over. Never just stop there in the road and wait.

Re: Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams

#107

Post by JumpCrisscross »

MBCook wrote: post #106
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Come the next Big One earthquake, all of San Francisco’s emergency services will be blocked by Waymos Were any emergency vehicles actually blocked? We have an actual failure here–step one is identifying actual failures so we can distinguish what really happened from what hypothetically could.

I don’t know. But if human drivers are having to go around them, they’re not doing the right thing. They need to drive or pull over. Never just stop there in the road and wait.

> if human drivers are having to go around them, they’re not doing the right thing

They're not. But it's also not a disaster. Pretending it is on Twitter is pandering, not policymaking.

> They need to drive or pull over. Never just stop there in the road and wait

Agreed. Waymo has a lesson to learn from. Sacramento, and the NHTSA, similarly, need to draw up emergency minimums for self-driving cars.

There are productive responses to this episode. None of them involve flipping out on X.

Re: Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams

#108

Post by gertlex »

GMoromisato wrote: post #102
tiahura wrote: post #86

How does Tesla FSD respond to inactive traffic control lights?

https://x.com/edgecase411/status/2002630953844552094 Looks like it treats it as a 4-way stop. Is this because Tesla has more training data?

I'd default to assuming it's the respective roadmaps for Waymo and Tesla differed on which things to implement when, not training data, that results in the two behaving different.

Re: Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams

#109

Post by Wowfunhappy »

Neither a lack of traffic lights nor cell service should cause the Waymos to stop in the middle of the road, that’s really troubling. I can understand the system deciding to pull over at the first safe opportunity, but outright stopping is ridiculous.

Re: Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams

#110

Post by jerlam »

laweijfmvo wrote: post #88

So basically no answer from Waymo other than to boast about their numbers? Why not just be transparent?

The "boast about numbers" wasn't from Waymo, it was from their investors, and it was earlier this month and not during the service suspension.
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