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Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

cnbc.com

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Re: Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

#301

Post by bryanlarsen »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #216
wahnfrieden wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NYPD cops don't like enforcing traffic violations: https://i.redd.it/w6es37v1sqpc1.png (License holders and drivers on the road are up in the same period that summonses are down, too. Traffic is up since pre-covid.) Now that I live in Toronto we face the same challenges. Politicians may introduce traffic laws to curb dangers and nuisances from drivers, but police refuse to enforce them. As they don't live in the city…

Police quiet quitting and arbitrarily choosing what laws they feel like enforcing is a huge problem. The most effective fix vis a vis traffic is simply automating so much of it with speed averaging cameras and intersection cameras and taking police out of the equation and retasking them to more important things that only they can do.

Don't police have quotas any more? 40 years ago everybody knew not to speed at the end of the month because a cop that would normally give you a warning for a small speed infraction would give you a ticket instead so they could make this month's quota.

Re: Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

#302

Post by [deleted] »

groggo wrote: post #244
pradn wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Random sampling over time is substantially as effective as having someone enforce the law 100% of the time. It's something like how randomized algorithms can be faster than their purely-deterministic counterparts, or how sampling a population is quite effective at finding population statistics.

It feels less fair though. When everyone is driving x mph over the limit but only you get pulled over, it sucks. So I agree for efficiency of enforcement, but I'd rather see 100% enforcement (automated if possible), with more warnings and lower penalties.

[deleted]

Re: Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

#303

Post by devilbunny »

cellis wrote: post #86
scarmig wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't seem impossible technically to up the assertiveness. The issue is the tradeoffs: you up the assertiveness, and increase the number of accidents by X%. Inevitably, that will contribute to some fatal crash. Does the decision maker want to be the one trying to justify to the jury knowingly causing an expected one more fatal incident in order to improve average fleet time to destination by 25%?

Reinforcement learning is a helluva drug. I'm sure by now Waymos can time yellows in SF to within a nanosecond, whereas humans will only ever drive through so many yellows will never get that much training data.

A human can know the yellows on a few routes. A Waymo can pull over, observe a given intersection for an hour, and tell every other Waymo that exists precisely how long that light lasts.

It's not just collecting the information; it's the ability to spread it.

Re: Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

#304

Post by tverbeure »

vinkelhake wrote: post #25

I live in the bay and occasionally ride Waymo in SF and I pretty much always have a good time. I visited NYC a few weeks ago and was instantly reminded of how much the traffic fucking sucks :) While I was there I actually thought of Waymo and how they'd have to turn up the "aggression" slider up to 11 to get anything done there. I mean, could you imagine the audacity of actually not driving into an intersection when…

I had my second Waymo ride in SF 2 weeks ago and I had to press the support button: it was behind a large bus that was backing up to parallel park. The bus was waiting for the Waymo to get out of the way while the Waymo was waiting for the bus to move forward.

It took only a few seconds for a human to answer the support request and she immediately ordered the Waymo to go to a different lane. Very happy with the responsiveness of support, but there's clearly still some situations that Waymo can't deal with.

Re: Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

#305

Post by thinkingtoilet »

gibolt wrote: post #267
afcool83 wrote: post #239

I live in one of the areas they are actively testing/training in. Their cars consistently behave better and more safely than most human drivers that I’m forced to share the road with. As semi-autonomous and autonomous cars become the norm, I would adore to see obtaining a drivers license ratchet up in difficulty in order to remove dangerous human drivers from the road.

The real issue is all the current bad drivers. A requirement to start re-testing normal people in addition to the elderly would be a large benefit to society.

Everyone agrees to this, the problem is there needs to be a way for this to be done efficiently so it's not another regressive tax on poor people's time and money.

Re: Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

#306

Post by [deleted] »

jedberg wrote: post #200
bananalychee wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia lists two fatal crashes involving Tesla FSD and one involving Waymo.

They key difference is that the Teslas killed their passengers, the Waymo hit someone outside the car (and it wasn't the Waymo's fault, it was hit by another car).

[deleted]

Re: Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

#307

Post by devilbunny »

ithkuil wrote: post #261
hammock wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless there is a warning of how long is left on the yellow light, it’s an unsolvable problem because there is an asymmetric risk of stopping vs accelerating

The lights should be designed so that if you don't have enough space to stop with a mild deceleration you should just go through. If a mild deceleration get you rear ended then of course that's an unsolvable problem

Then they shorten the yellow so that it isn't "with a mild deceleration" but a full-on stomp-on-the-brakes stop.

Re: Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

#308

Post by sensen »

dddddaviddddd wrote: post #294
gibolt wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real issue is all the current bad drivers. A requirement to start re-testing normal people in addition to the elderly would be a large benefit to society.

I would support re-testing on some interval like every 5 years. That said, so much could be done to make the environment safer. Lower speeds, more traffic calming, safer intersections, safer alternatives (public transit, walking, bicycle).

I can't help but think about the failures of basic human-oriented infrastructure when I can't safely ride my bike to the grocery store 2 miles from my home. I don't know what it'll take to change this in our cities, and it feels like an uphill battle when seemingly very few people care about problems like these.

Re: Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

#309

Post by kenhwang »

huhkerrf wrote: post #268
bytemut wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NYC is a new set of challenges. As you already mentioned snow and ice is new. But also missing the high density of people and cars per square area. Behavior of drivers and pedestrians are different and much less polite. I can see it working in NYC but "just fine" is a bit of an over confidence... at least not for the first few years before they learn to deal with these issues that they don't face yet in LA and SF.

Don't forget the unique NYC challenge of people waiting to cross the street not on the sidewalk but just into the street itself.

People in LA wait to jaywalk on the street or even in the suicide lane all the time. The Waymos handle it fine; generally by asserting it has right of way unless collision is obviously imminent. They'll even happily swerve around you if you're too far out.

Re: Waymo granted permit to begin testing in New York City

#310

Post by [deleted] »

rahkiin wrote: post #67
chrisshroba wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This always astounds me about cities who have a reputation for people breaking certain traffic laws. In St. Louis, people run red lights for 5+ seconds after it turns red, and no one seems to care to solve it, but if they'd just station police at some worst-offender lights for a couple months to write tickets, people would catch on pretty quickly that it's not worth the risk. I have similar thoughts on people using t…

In europe we use traffic cameras for this. Going through red light? A bill is in your mailbox automatically. No need for a whole police station.

[deleted]
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