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US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

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Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#221

Post by standardUser »

platevoltage wrote: post #137
standardUser wrote: post #84

San Francisco is the crucible (by US standards) of dealing with pedestrians and I'm still shocked they launched there so early. But with something as distinct and vulnerable as school busses, it's time to think about hardware installation so automated vehicles can "see" farther ahead.

I'm sure it's only a matter of time before the tax payers get to subsidize these hardware installations instead of our own public transit.

The state of California has a knack for this kind of light extortion when it comes to the local megacorps. I also wonder what kind of mass transit you envision for the vast rural regions that make up half of this country that are spectacularly ill-suited for any known modes of public transit.

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#222

Post by Spooky23 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #209
Spooky23 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real cap is the operator ultimately is accountable. When a software defect kills a bunch of people, the robot operator’s owners will subject to a way lower level of liability. Airlines have international treaties that do this. An objectively safer future is common carriers operating mass transit. Robot taxi will creating a monster that will price out private ownership in the long term. Objectively safer remains t…

> real cap is the operator ultimately is accountable Which is in practice lower than what a large operator would pay, particularly if they also write the software. > will require a nationwide government regulatory body It doesn’t require any such thing. That would be nice. But states are more than capable of regulating their roads.

Spoken by someone without knowledge of motor carrier regulation. That’s not a dig, few people are.

States are incredibly bad at regulating commercial entities. The Federal DOT contracts with a few universities (or at least they did) use evidence based sampling and enforcement, fulfilled by state authorities for trucks and buses in their scope. Only states like California, New York, Texas would have the resources to do it, and it would be really difficult to do anything effective when there’s 53 or more flavors.

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#223

Post by jmpman »

isodev wrote: post #150
daemonologist wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GP is saying that reading the sign is insufficient to determine whether it is a school day. You have to either guess based on the presence of students or busses, the lights being on, etc., or you have to source the school calendar somehow.

I don't know how it is there, but here those signs near schools light up and blink during school hours (really can't miss it). And for signs that do not, I think school days are pretty fixed, shouldn't be difficult to program... and a default of just slowing down would be just fine too.

This sign doesn’t have a flashing light.

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#224

Post by llsf »

beeflet wrote: post #156
llsf wrote: post #69

I cannot wait for the school bus to be a waymo, that could tell the other waymos around that it is full of vulnerable and unpredictable little humans, and to be on the watch out.

I can't wait until every car on the road is required by law to be self driving. You could have cars with no adults in them just driving puppers around, and it can tell the other cars hey watch out I've got a couple of good pupperinos inside so watch out! The future is gonna be awesome. I fricking love science! Once we unlock self driving car technology, we will finally be able to move people and things from one place…

I love science and technology too. I am a bit concerned though that number of people knowing how technology actually works, is shrinking. And with AI, it is going to accelerate that shrinking. How does it end when only an handful of people know how technology effectively works ?

Are we heading to another dark age after a peak technology ?

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#225

Post by phendrenad2 »

whimsicalism wrote: post #78
terminalshort wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer the risk of death over constant surveillance

probably the minority on HN, but i don't. i think traffic enforcement cameras are good and should be expanded

I agree. People are welcome to go live "off-grid" if they want to live like we don't have 8.1 billion people on the planet. The rest of us are going to try to find ways to make it work.

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#226

Post by paxys »

terminalshort wrote: post #47
lotsofpulp wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With how cheap high definition cameras are, I don’t see why society needs a person to be physically present.

I prefer the risk of death over constant surveillance

The child you hit might not share the same opinion.

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#227

Post by atleastoptimal »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #199
atleastoptimal wrote: post #125

On net, Waymos are safer than human drivers. Really all that matters is deaths per passenger mile, and weighted far less, injury/crash per passenger mile. Waymos exceed human drivers on both metrics, thus it is reasonable to say that Waymos have reduced crashes compared to the equivalent average human driver covering the same distance. Mistakes like this are very rare, and when they do happen, they can be audited, an…

>> Really all that matters is deaths per passenger mile, and weighted far less, injury/crash per passenger mile. That's not exactly right. You need to take into account how likely it is for accidents to happen, not just the number of miles travelled. If the low probability of accidents is taken into account it turns out it takes many more millions or even billions of miles than already travelled for self-driving cars…

>Study from 2016

Waymo hit 100 million driven miles in July so far without a death (in the US the death rate per 100 million miles in cars is 1.26). Likewise the crash rate is lower across the board

https://www.theavindustry.org/blog/waymo-reduces-crash-rates...

I assume that study based its assumptions on the limited testing performed so far on the extant self-driving cars of the day, which of course if you have only 10 test cars would take many decades, but at scale that isn't relevant anymore given Waymo's success.

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#228

Post by atleastoptimal »

blub wrote: post #178
atleastoptimal wrote: post #125

On net, Waymos are safer than human drivers. Really all that matters is deaths per passenger mile, and weighted far less, injury/crash per passenger mile. Waymos exceed human drivers on both metrics, thus it is reasonable to say that Waymos have reduced crashes compared to the equivalent average human driver covering the same distance. Mistakes like this are very rare, and when they do happen, they can be audited, an…

Actually, your assumptions that human drivers cannot be improved are wrong. Modern cars have a lot of safety features to help avoid accidents: * lane keeping with optional steering * pedestrian and obstacle detection at the front * pedestrian and obstacle detection when reversing with automatic braking * assisted driving with lane keeping and full stop / driving on in case of traffic jam Waymos are just fancy taxis.…

Those features are all still essentially making normal cars more like self-driving cars by removing the human factors that lead to accidents.

> And taxis haven’t replaced all human drivers or solved traffic accidents.

That comparison is irrelevant. The point is that Waymos are superior to human drivers with respect to safety, thus they would also be superior to taxis in that dimension and would be a justifiable replacement. Also self-driving tech, if deployed in all cars, would offer benefits beyond taxis since the car belongs to the user of the tech itself.

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#229

Post by atleastoptimal »

tencentshill wrote: post #198
atleastoptimal wrote: post #125

On net, Waymos are safer than human drivers. Really all that matters is deaths per passenger mile, and weighted far less, injury/crash per passenger mile. Waymos exceed human drivers on both metrics, thus it is reasonable to say that Waymos have reduced crashes compared to the equivalent average human driver covering the same distance. Mistakes like this are very rare, and when they do happen, they can be audited, an…

It just looks really bad when that one in a million death is caused by something stupid a human would never do. So far these Waymos are only replacing taxi and Uber drivers, which have a lower rate of accidents than the general population. "Uber reported 0.87 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled (VMT) in 2021–2022" https://insurify.com/car-insurance/insights/rideshare-driver...

Waymos are still safer than that (so far 0 deaths with well over 100 million vehicle miles traveled)

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#230

Post by hamdingers »

Detrytus wrote: post #114
hamdingers wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This only happens if you get a traffic ticket, which is rare and getting rarer. Ironically this means the people with the cleanest driving record are least likely to know the current ruleset.

Which, ironically, would mean that knowing the current rule set is not needed to drive safe.

Not getting tickets does not mean you are a safe driver. No amount of crashing results in traffic school, just certain kinds of tickets.
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