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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

#31

Post by ianstormtaylor »

terribleperson wrote: post #19

In my experience, humans respond incredibly poorly to traffic lights being out. There's no sense or reason, just people deciding to drive across the intersection when they feel like it's okay. Presumably Waymo will make sure they can handle this situation in the future, but I'm not sure there's a really satisfactory solution. The way you're supposed to handle an intersection with no lights (treat it as a stop sign in…

That wasn’t my experience, having just driven across the city and back during tonight’s outage. It was actually weirdly inspiring how well people coordinated at so many of the powerless intersections.

There was a lot of confusion, and some people took advantage of it to rush through, but for the most part it was pretty orderly. Which makes sense because in many parts of the world where there are no traffic lights or stop signs, people get on just fine.

The Waymo’s, on the other hand, were dropping like flies. While walking from Lower to Upper Haight I spotted a broken Waymo every handful of blocks. The corner of Haight & Fillmore was particularly bad, with 3 of them blocking traffic in both directions — in the path of both the 7 and 22 bus lines.

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

#32

Post by pokstad »

Zambyte wrote: post #11

We should put self driving cars on tracks so they are always out of the way and have easily predictable behavior. Maybe we can even link the cars together for efficiency or something like that.

Maybe we can do away with the expensive battery if we feed power to these cars using overhead cables.

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

#33

Post by sofixa »

Zambyte wrote: post #11

We should put self driving cars on tracks so they are always out of the way and have easily predictable behavior. Maybe we can even link the cars together for efficiency or something like that.

Maybe even put them on steel wheels on steel tracks, to make them more efficient.

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

#34

Post by creato »

platevoltage wrote: post #7
rwoll wrote: post #3

Prior to reading the article, I assumed Waymos were stuck due to an Internet connectivity issue. However, while the root cause is not explicitly stated, it sounds like the Waymos are “confused” by traffic lights being out.

That sounds plausible. Humans for the most part can usually navigate that situation to a point. It wouldn't surprise me if Waymo cars weren't even trained for this scenario.

The one time I saw traffic lights go down, it was total chaos. There were two separate crashes that had already happened when I got there, and there would probably be >1 wreck per few minutes with the driving I observed.

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

#35

Post by t0mas88 »

morsch wrote: post #28
terribleperson wrote: post #19

In my experience, humans respond incredibly poorly to traffic lights being out. There's no sense or reason, just people deciding to drive across the intersection when they feel like it's okay. Presumably Waymo will make sure they can handle this situation in the future, but I'm not sure there's a really satisfactory solution. The way you're supposed to handle an intersection with no lights (treat it as a stop sign in…

In Germany most traffic lights have a full set of traffic signs that are in effect in the rare occasion that the light is out.

Same setup in the Netherlands, there are right of way signs everywhere that apply when the lights don't work.

One interesting effect is that there are also often pedestrian crossings that have priority over everyone. Normally those are limited by lights, but without lights a steady stream of pedestrians stops all traffic. Seen that happen in Utrecht near the train station recently, unlimited pedestrians and bikes, so traffic got completely stuck until the police showed up.

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

#36

Post by joshribakoff »

This was very annoying, and made things feel unsafe. Having vehicles stopped blocking visibility when there is no light. Its bad enough we tolerate them stopping and waiting for a pickup and blocking lanes under normal conditions. I had a hard time seeing if there are pedestrians when they’re literally in the cross walk stopped.

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

#37

Post by voidfunc »

Zambyte wrote: post #11

We should put self driving cars on tracks so they are always out of the way and have easily predictable behavior. Maybe we can even link the cars together for efficiency or something like that.

Rugged American Individualism and Capitalism doesn't allow us to have things like that. We must always be in our individual bubbles away from the filthy poors.

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

#38

Post by edbaskerville »

eurleif wrote: post #29
srdjanr wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say driving only requires not to handle uncommon situation dangerously. And stopping when you can't handle something fits my criteria. Also I'm not sure it's entirely AI's fault. What do you do when you realistically have to break some rules? Like here, I assume you'd have to cut someone off if you don't want to wait forever. Who's gonna build a car that breaks rules sometimes, and what regulator will approve it?

In practice, no one treats it as a four-way stop, which makes it dangerous to treat it as one.

Drove through SF this evening. Most people treated it as a four-way stop! I was generally impressed.

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

#40

Post by yen223 »

lelanthran wrote: post #25
raldi wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But a citywide blackout isn’t that uncommon.

> But a citywide blackout isn’t that uncommon. I think too many people talk past each other when they use the word common , especially when talking about car trips. A blackout (doesn't have to be citywide) may not be periodic but it's certainly frequent with a frequency above 1 per year. Many people say "common" meaning "frequent", and many people say "common" meaning "periodic".

Even among people who mean "common" as in "frequent", they aren't necessarily talking about the same frequency. That's why online communication is tricky!
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