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Waymo to customers: “Completely driverless Waymo cars are on the way”

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Re: Waymo to customers: “Completely driverless Waymo cars are on the way”

#201

Post by BurningFrog »

beerandt wrote: post #152
BurningFrog wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like someone said, driverless cars will save thousands, and kill hundreds. It's obviously the best choice to adapt a technology like that, but I'm not sure our society has the fortitude to do it.

>save thousands, and kill hundreds Seriously. Why does everyone assume this? Because Tesla's marketing department says so?

Because the overwhelming majority of traffic deaths are due to human errors (A) a computer could easily avoid.

It would of course introduce a class of errors (B) that humans would not have made, but those can be iteratively improved until they're substantially lower than the category they're replacing.

My point is that once B is substantially lower than A, the tech should be deployed. But I fear people will demand B = 0.

Re: Waymo to customers: “Completely driverless Waymo cars are on the way”

#202

Post by gpm »

catalogia wrote: post #157
gpm wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many cars can one employee be "inside of"? If that number is an order of magnitude higher than 1 the cost of these employees is probably relatively negligible.

If it's an order of magnitude larger than one, then it's probably a pointless exercise anyway. What mortal can honestly say they're attentively watching 10 streams at once? A car accident can happen in the blink of an eye, if you're dividing your attention between several streams it would be very easy to have a slow reaction time to a child jumping out into the street, for instance.

If the goal is to react to children jumping into the street, you're right, it wouldn't work.

If the goal is to have the car be able to ask for help when it's confused though, it would likely be fine.

Re: Waymo to customers: “Completely driverless Waymo cars are on the way”

#203

Post by volkk »

rayiner wrote: post #137
rubicon33 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nearly 1.25 million people die in road crashes each year. Think about that. Self driving cars aren't just a solution to nuisance of driving. They're a solution to one of the leading causes of DEATH and INJURY in the country. Sure there are going to be edge cases where we as humans will be able to point at the car and say "damnit, we could have prevented that"! But I sure hope when we do that, the car points right bac…

> Sure there are going to be edge cases where we as humans will be able to point at the car and say "damnit, we could have prevented that"! This is a meaningless assertion unless you account for how often "edge cases" arise. If unpredictable pedestrians, unplanned road construction, etc., is an "edge case" the car basically won't work in DC or New York.

i would assume that for the first X years, aka a long time, the SDCs would operate mostly on highways/very rural areas.

Re: Waymo to customers: “Completely driverless Waymo cars are on the way”

#204

Post by rubicon33 »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #198
rubicon33 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nearly 1.25 million people die in road crashes each year. Think about that. Self driving cars aren't just a solution to nuisance of driving. They're a solution to one of the leading causes of DEATH and INJURY in the country. Sure there are going to be edge cases where we as humans will be able to point at the car and say "damnit, we could have prevented that"! But I sure hope when we do that, the car points right bac…

>> Self driving cars aren't just a solution to nuisance of driving. They're a solution to one of the leading causes of DEATH and INJURY in the country. If reducing DEATH and INJURY are the motivation for self-driving cars, we can achieve a larger reduction with technology that is available right now: public transport. And there is even a no-technology solution: a drastic reduction of road traffic that passes through…

I don't think anyone is debating that the #1 factor driving the innovation of self driving cars is profit.

That said, the benefits of self driving cars aren't precluded by the motives for developing them.

While I hear your points about removing cars from the road, and generally agree with them, there are definite benefits to cars which are arguably not replaced by things like public transit. There will always be a need for cars, so lets make them as safe as possible. If self driving is a step in that direction, sign me up.

Re: Waymo to customers: “Completely driverless Waymo cars are on the way”

#205

Post by bryan_w »

beerandt wrote: post #149
jonplackett wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just for automated braking, not autonomous cars. Not the same thing at all.

Honest question. Are they fundamentally different, design wise? Or is it merely a measure of confidence & reliability?

Self driving cars have more sensors

Re: Waymo to customers: “Completely driverless Waymo cars are on the way”

#206

Post by rubicon33 »

air7 wrote: post #174
rubicon33 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nearly 1.25 million people die in road crashes each year. Think about that. Self driving cars aren't just a solution to nuisance of driving. They're a solution to one of the leading causes of DEATH and INJURY in the country. Sure there are going to be edge cases where we as humans will be able to point at the car and say "damnit, we could have prevented that"! But I sure hope when we do that, the car points right bac…

That's a misleading statistic. The death rate is around 1 per a billion kms driven. One might argue that humans are actually very good at driving.

It's not really a misleading stat.

Sure, humans drive a lot. The idea is that self driving cars will also, drive a lot.

Nobody is saying humans are terrible drivers (well, some maybe are). But if there's something better...

Re: Waymo to customers: “Completely driverless Waymo cars are on the way”

#207

Post by themoat »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #193
p1necone wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not making promises you can't keep is being a bullshit artist?

Talking extensively about how wonderful your product will be without ever making any promises whatsoever is the work of a bullshit artist. If you can't keep promises, and don't want to bullshit, then talk more about what the product already does.

I can have this major feature done for you, but I'm not sure if it can be done in 2 months, so I say 3 to be conservative.

OR

I can have many small sub-features that relate to this major feature done in 2 months, but I might know exactly which features make the cut in those 2 months.

Seems congruous to me

Re: Waymo to customers: “Completely driverless Waymo cars are on the way”

#208

Post by WhompingWindows »

jonplackett wrote: post #42

I have very mixed feelings about autonomous cars. One side of me is so excited about the prospect and finds it all amazing and futuristic. I love reading about how Tesla and Waymo approach it differently. The other side of me is absolutely not ready to trust my life to a machine - even though I know I do that all the time in other ways in modern life. I think it will be people's emotional evaluation that will matter…

People already die in VAST numbers on the roads. This is all a question of which deaths are reported/discussed. If some technology leads to death, it will undoubtedly get way more media coverage than if human error leads to death.

~50 people died when a compounding pharmacy had mold in its spinal injections. ~300 died in SK when a ferry sank. Over a hundred people died due to Boeing's software issues. Hell, look at Uber killing that single pedestrian in Arizona -- how many traffic fatalities occur during Uber rides overall? This is all since 2010 with "advanced" technologies. With scale of tech, comes fringe/rare events, which will be reported on.

The important question is: will less people die with Waymo cars than without them? All logic and reason point towards "less people will die," but evidence is needed.

The one thing we can be sure of: when people DO die with SDCs, it will be HEAVILY reported on, even though thousands die daily on the roads due to preventable, human error, which is rarely reported on.

Re: Waymo to customers: “Completely driverless Waymo cars are on the way”

#209

Post by whyaduck »

xxxtentachyon wrote: post #116
whyaduck wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lyft has been dispatching Waymo self-driving vans (with safety drivers) in Chandler AZ for a while now. I've opted out of Waymo for my occasional rides with Lyft, so I can't say how frequently they show up. But I can say there are lots of the vans running in the service area.

Why did you opt out?

All I can say is NDAs are a hell of a thing.

Re: Waymo to customers: “Completely driverless Waymo cars are on the way”

#210

Post by Dylan16807 »

themoat wrote: post #207
Dylan16807 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talking extensively about how wonderful your product will be without ever making any promises whatsoever is the work of a bullshit artist. If you can't keep promises, and don't want to bullshit, then talk more about what the product already does.

I can have this major feature done for you, but I'm not sure if it can be done in 2 months, so I say 3 to be conservative. OR I can have many small sub-features that relate to this major feature done in 2 months, but I might know exactly which features make the cut in those 2 months. Seems congruous to me

Both of those are promising specific things with a specific timeframe.
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