Waymo updates 3,800 robotaxis after they 'drive into standing water'

Post by [deleted] » Sat, May 16, 2026, 2:31 AM UTC

doright wrote: post #160

Animats wrote: post #2

That's a tough problem - distinguishing wet pavement from deep water. Humans make that mistake frequently. Autonomous vehicles should probably be equipped with a water sensor. (We did that in our DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle back in 2005). Then they can enter water very cautiously and see if it's too deep. This may make them too cautious about shallow puddles on roads, though.

Reminds me of all the Waymo vehicles stalled during that San Francisco blackout a while ago. I have always believed that when people cite statistics on Waymos beating human drivers on safety statistics, that is only in the case of the happy path, or "happy road". The safety statistics could plummet in specific scenarios that lack training data or forethought, and they could crop up at any time.

Post by selimthegrim » Sat, May 16, 2026, 2:34 AM UTC

blueskies1029 wrote: post #39

They are rolling these out in New Orleans soon. Standing water is everywhere, and sometimes you have big hidden potholes. You just need to know the roads. Should be fun.

Post by nostrebored » Sat, May 16, 2026, 2:42 AM UTC

doright wrote: post #160

Animats wrote: post #2

That's a tough problem - distinguishing wet pavement from deep water. Humans make that mistake frequently. Autonomous vehicles should probably be equipped with a water sensor. (We did that in our DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle back in 2005). Then they can enter water very cautiously and see if it's too deep. This may make them too cautious about shallow puddles on roads, though.

Reminds me of all the Waymo vehicles stalled during that San Francisco blackout a while ago. I have always believed that when people cite statistics on Waymos beating human drivers on safety statistics, that is only in the case of the happy path, or "happy road". The safety statistics could plummet in specific scenarios that lack training data or forethought, and they could crop up at any time.

Post by fragmede » Sat, May 16, 2026, 2:46 AM UTC

flutas wrote: post #55

filoleg wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Granted, I am not sure exactly how Waymo operates, but I thought that the extensive testing was mostly for legal reasons+just handling edge cases. I am saying this, because I noticed that they typically start with a low-tier restrictive permit to operate (with a rather small number of cars in the fleet). Then they run it for a year or two, iron out edge cases particular to a given city (e.g., climate particularities,…

Waymo explicitly lidar scans and "HD maps" the area: https://waymo.com/blog/2020/09/the-waymo-driver-handbook-map... Tesla is less "HD", they have standard maps like we all think of, and a lane level "see-ahead" system where they basically just grab a satellite image tile, and align it with what the car sees for "FSD".

Post by ishtanbul » Sat, May 16, 2026, 2:52 AM UTC

cesarb wrote: post #132

That's the promise of self-driving cars. Every time an issue is found, no matter how minor, it's fixed and updated everywhere. From now on, every car of that model (and future models, and related models) will no longer have that problem. Several passes of that improvement cycle, and self-driving cars become safer (and more efficient/comfortable/etc) than human drivers. At least, that's how it's supposed to work.