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Replaying real life: how the Waymo Driver avoids fatal human crashes

blog.waymo.com

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Re: Replaying real life: how the Waymo Driver avoids fatal human crashes

#111

Post by throwaway0a5e »

T-hawk wrote: post #50
spike021 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The rear-ending problem will be solved as automatic emergency braking becomes standard on cars. Already, it's shipping on almost all high-end cars and 70-80% of midrange cars. There's a US auto industry goal of it being standard by 2022. That's probably the main feature needed for self-driving cars to coexist with human-driven cars. I really wish we could just enforce proper education of being observant. Most times…

That last point isn't a "you could argue" or "most cases", it's literally the law. Rear-ending is always the rear car's fault and it's always their responsibility to leave enough space and time to react and stop safely. If the lead car braked when there was no reason or danger, that driver might also be cited for recklessness or some such, but a rear-end collision is always an error by the rear driver.

> it's literally the law. Rear-ending is always the rear car's fault a

Rear ending being the rear car's fault is a norm of the insurance industry that is used to settle disputes in the absence of other information. Furthermore, in the overwhelming majority of jurisdictions the government specifically does not establish "fault" for routine vehicle accidents (the government generally only decides matters of fault inside a court room) and the paperwork that comes with a police report of an accident usually says something along the lines of "we don't establish fault, just record the facts" prominently on it.

Re: Replaying real life: how the Waymo Driver avoids fatal human crashes

#112

Post by throwaway0a5e »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #44
nsomaru wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No thanks. I drive an aged car and drove a friends recent Mercedes long distance. The thing has a feature where it breaks where it thinks it’s good to break, often just when I need to accelerate to get out of a tight spot. I need the vehicle to respond to my inputs directly, not mix my inputs with what it thinks must be done. It’s extremely unpredictable and it feels like I’m not in control of the car.

If studies show that automatic emergency braking cuts down on deaths overall, I think it's a worthwhile tradeoff -- I'd even be happy to have it be mandatory/non-disableable. It sounds like the car you were driving had some kind of defective implementation of automatic emergency braking. That doesn't invalidate the good that these types of systems do when implemented properly. Also I'm wondering what kind of situatio…

>Also I'm wondering what kind of situations there are where you "need to accelerate to get out of a tight spot?" I'm a pretty experienced driver and I think the number of "must accelerate" situations I've ever encountered could be counted on a hand. Almost universally, you can solve whatever problem you're in by being more patient and decelerating instead.

There are a myriad of situations, often involving merges of some sort, where the moves of various traffic participants have resulted in a situation where an aggressive acceleration up to speed and into traffic or up to the traffic speed of another lane so you can get into it, closer to the car in front of you to make space behind you for someone else, or something else like that results in a better overall situation and a net fewer number of people needing to react to the situation and therefore less opportunities for someone to do it wrong causing a near miss or accident.

Yes, you could likely solve these situations by braking but in doing so you are roping more traffic participants into the situation and making it more dangerous making accelerating and merging the more courteous approach. Braking for everything is definitely more stupid proof heuristic and if followed blindly will yield infinity better results than accelerating for everything but it leaves a heck of a lot of efficiency on the table.

Re: Replaying real life: how the Waymo Driver avoids fatal human crashes

#113

Post by throwaway0a5e »

maccard wrote: post #99
xiphias2 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even in the case of passing on a two lane road (a situation where I doubt emergency braking would trigger erroneously), you've already made a mistake if a rapid acceleration is needed to avoid a dangerous scenario. Are you talking about a road with each lane in one direction? Outside US that is the most common way to travel between cities. It is easy to say that acceleration shouldn't be needed, but that's life rig…

> When somebody starts overtaking, the better acceleration he has, the safer he can do the maneuver. If you overtake someone while driving in an oncoming lane, and cut it close enough that the emergency braking of a modern car cuts in, you didn't have enough room to perform the maneouver in the first place. Even safer than performing the dangerous maneouver is not performing it in the first place. This is coming from…

I think he's talking about AEB engaging on the car you're trying to pass. If you are overtaking on a 2-lane you want to back up, wait for your opportunity and close on the vehicle to be overtaken at a decent rate of speed before pulling into the other lane in order to minimize time in the wrong lane. Also if the other person decides to be a dick and try and prevent you from passing this gives them less of an opportunity to do that.

If AEB forced me to get in the other lane before stepping on it because it thought I was gonna rear end the car about to be passed I would be very annoyed.

Re: Replaying real life: how the Waymo Driver avoids fatal human crashes

#114

Post by throwaway0a5e »

praxulus wrote: post #55
nsomaru wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m getting downvoted for voicing my opinion on a darling HN technology, is that it? Next time I’ll just keep my mouth shut (as I usually do because of the downvote brigade). This time, I’ll bite. I guess you guys have never driven in Africa. Or Asia. Braking is not always the best course of action is actually dangerous in some situations. Like if I can see someone screaming up behind me in the fast lane, there’s a c…

>Like if I can see someone screaming up behind me in the fast lane, there’s a car next to me that means I can’t move out of the way, so I need to accelerate to get past that car and move out of the way. Sounds like that guy's car should have automatic braking.

Even if the car isn't "screaming up behind you" if someone is closing at a decent rate of speed your two non-jerk options are move faster and then move over or move slower then move over. Depending on what's beside you faster might be the obviously better option.

Re: Replaying real life: how the Waymo Driver avoids fatal human crashes

#115

Post by lambda_obrien »

walrus01 wrote: post #32
spike021 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The rear-ending problem will be solved as automatic emergency braking becomes standard on cars. Already, it's shipping on almost all high-end cars and 70-80% of midrange cars. There's a US auto industry goal of it being standard by 2022. That's probably the main feature needed for self-driving cars to coexist with human-driven cars. I really wish we could just enforce proper education of being observant. Most times…

> I really wish we could just enforce proper education of being observant. If I had a dollar for every person I see driving around in thick rain, or in full darkness with their lights off, I could probably buy a nice new macbook air. It's truly shocking how many people are far from alert and observant while driving. Either because they really don't care, or they've been conditioned to take driving very casually. I us…

I don't know, I was trained in the navy to drive ships and sometimes I have a near accident when driving my car, and a car is way easier to drive. I think people are just imperfect and sometimes have accidents, so we should allow for that when engineering tech.

Re: Replaying real life: how the Waymo Driver avoids fatal human crashes

#116

Post by a_imho »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #45
spike021 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The rear-ending problem will be solved as automatic emergency braking becomes standard on cars. Already, it's shipping on almost all high-end cars and 70-80% of midrange cars. There's a US auto industry goal of it being standard by 2022. That's probably the main feature needed for self-driving cars to coexist with human-driven cars. I really wish we could just enforce proper education of being observant. Most times…

Any solution that relies on "let's just make humans beings better" is basically doomed to failure and little more than hand wringing and virtue signalling. Cars have been pervasive for over a century and virtually none of the actual improvements in safety have come from "hoping humans do better".

I argue the opposite, humans adjust their driving depending on what is expected. The current bar is too low. If we were to raise the bar, people would adapt. I would be very interested in some data from places with draconian traffic laws.

Re: Replaying real life: how the Waymo Driver avoids fatal human crashes

#117

Post by _nalply »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #111
T-hawk wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That last point isn't a "you could argue" or "most cases", it's literally the law. Rear-ending is always the rear car's fault and it's always their responsibility to leave enough space and time to react and stop safely. If the lead car braked when there was no reason or danger, that driver might also be cited for recklessness or some such, but a rear-end collision is always an error by the rear driver.

> it's literally the law. Rear-ending is always the rear car's fault a Rear ending being the rear car's fault is a norm of the insurance industry that is used to settle disputes in the absence of other information. Furthermore, in the overwhelming majority of jurisdictions the government specifically does not establish "fault" for routine vehicle accidents (the government generally only decides matters of fault insid…

As everybody knows who have looked at traffic accidents on Youtube this has been misused in Russia. You want a new car for free? Stop then reverse into the car behind you. And that's why dash cams became ubiquitous in Russia and other countries.

Re: Replaying real life: how the Waymo Driver avoids fatal human crashes

#118

Post by mindvirus »

hardtke wrote: post #35
mindvirus wrote: post #17

This is really cool. I suspect that when we have self driving cars, it's going to take off very quickly due to insurance. In particular, if you are in a non self driving car and in an accident with a self driving one, it'll be hard to not be shown as at fault. So insurance I would guess go up based on the percentage of self driving cars, and likely be really cheap for self driving cars. I wonder if there's a period t…

I suspect the adoption process will be slow because consumers really don't want this product. Self driving cars will drive the speed limit and infuriate both other motorists and their owners who are getting passed by speeding human driven cars. There will also be well publicized stories of the few times that self driving cars perform worse than humans. All drivers think they are above average and therefore the statis…

I think people will want it. They'll get to watch netflix or read or take meetings on their commutes. They'll get to live further from the city in a bigger place than they could otherwise.

I also suspect we'll see cars looking more like living rooms or offices.

The other thing is that as we have more self driving cars, speed limits will be able to be relaxed. Most humans can't safely drive at 100mph, but on a road of only self driving cars that seems very possible. So that 1 hour commute radius gets bigger and bigger.

Re: Replaying real life: how the Waymo Driver avoids fatal human crashes

#119

Post by javagram »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #98
freddie_mercury wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any solution that relies on "let's just make humans beings better" is basically doomed to failure and little more than hand wringing and virtue signalling. Cars have been pervasive for over a century and virtually none of the actual improvements in safety have come from "hoping humans do better".

> Cars have been pervasive for over a century and virtually none of the actual improvements in safety have come from "hoping humans do better". I disagree, given how standards for getting a driver's license are different between countries and getting more and more tighter. In the US, unless things are different from TV, you can get trained by someone else with a license in a regular car and do an exam. Over here, you…

> In the US, unless things are different from TV, you can get trained by someone else with a license in a regular car and do an exam.

Be cautious about believing TV drama is realistic. States I’m familiar with require 30 hours of licensed classroom instruction and 6 hours of licensed driving instruction beyond the training via a parent or other adult.

In any case, no amount of training seems to stop people from using their phone while driving.

Re: Replaying real life: how the Waymo Driver avoids fatal human crashes

#120

Post by LockAndLol »

imtringued wrote: post #107
bumbada wrote: post #76

They can use it to start fixing the roads, not the cars. Just look at the cross intersection they use as an example, typical of the US. The ROAD is the death trap there. People are crossing each other at high speed, this is the BUG, and should be fixed. The proper solution is putting there a roundabout, and you will have instantly less fatal accidents. The US was the first to use roundabouts, but those early designs…

I wonder who the insane engineer is that thought a 8 lane cross intersection is a good idea.

The one paid and told to: make an 8 lane intersection there.
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