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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

#331

Post by renewiltord »

markus_zhang wrote: post #267
cjsplat wrote: post #193

I was driving across the east side of SF and hit a patch of lights that were out. The Waymo's were just going really slow through the intersection. It seemed that the "light is out means 4-way stop" dynamic caused them to go into ultra-timid mode. And of course the human drivers did the typical slow and roll, with decent interleaving. The result was that each Waymo took about 4x as long to get through the intersectio…

I’m curious what’s the regulation in this scenario? In Canada I think light off means 4-way stop signs so everyone obeys that, or at least most of everyone. What’s the situation in SF?

SF drivers mostly don’t stop at stop signs. Many do not stop at red lights either.

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

#332

Post by ziml77 »

philipallstar wrote: post #212
blibble wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if google's property is blocking the road, google can pay for the damage

As long as you're happy that if your property ever blocks the road, you will pay for the damage too.

No I won't be happy about it, but yes if I block emergency services and they need to damage my property then I am absolutely the one who should have to pay.

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

#333

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

ianstormtaylor wrote: post #31
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…

There have been some experiments that suggest that traffic flow is both safer and more efficient if you just turn disable the signals entirely. I doubt it applies to all, or even most, situations but it's definitely food for thought: https://www.npr.org/2008/01/19/18217318/german-towns-traffic...

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

#334

Post by bsder »

ycombobreaker wrote: post #314
bsder wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Did they? They chose their safety. I suspect the net effect of their behavior made the safety of everyone worse. There is no viable choice other than prioritizing the safety of your rider. Anything less would be grounds for both lawsuits and reputational death. The fact that everybody else chose throughput over safety is not the fault of Waymo. Will you also complain when enough Waymo cars start running on the free…

> Will you also complain when enough Waymo cars start running on the freeways that a couple of them in a row can effectively enforce following distances and speed limits, for example? In my state, that would itself be a traffic violation, so yes I would. The leftmost lane on an interstate highway is reserved for passing. An autonomous vehicle cruising in that lane (regardless of speed) would therefore be programmed i…

> The leftmost lane on an interstate highway is reserved for passing.

Sadly, in most states, this is not true anymore. Most of those laws have been repealed.

I was very pleasantly surprised when I was in Colorado that they had explicit signs saying that if you had 5 (I think) or more cars behind you that you were supposed to pull right and let them pass.

However, I wasn't really thinking about a Waymo cruising in the left lane but simply 4 or 5 Waymo's in the right lane going right at the speed limit with proper following distance. That's going to effectively lock the right lane to the speed limit which then means that even a single other car would lock the left lane to the speed limit as well. Basically, even a couple of Waymos in the right lane would drop freeway speeds dramatically.

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

#335

Post by amonroe805-2 »

cjsplat wrote: post #287
markus_zhang wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m curious what’s the regulation in this scenario? In Canada I think light off means 4-way stop signs so everyone obeys that, or at least most of everyone. What’s the situation in SF?

Yes, that is the same law in California, but so many people drift through stop signs that the guidance is close to meaningless. In addition, there are 4-way stop signs all over SF and tourists regularly comment on how they work here. The law is clear - yield to the right, but that is a pretty slow system in congested roads. The local custom in SF is that someone is usually obviously first, rightmost, or just most agg…

Is this not how four way stops work everywhere? I live in Kansas and have previously lived in Chicago, and I feel like both places follow this custom. Only thing that’s different is the laws are followed slightly more rigorously in low traffic areas, but the customary rules are definitely still in play.

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

#336

Post by cruffle_duffle »

cjsplat wrote: post #287
markus_zhang wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m curious what’s the regulation in this scenario? In Canada I think light off means 4-way stop signs so everyone obeys that, or at least most of everyone. What’s the situation in SF?

Yes, that is the same law in California, but so many people drift through stop signs that the guidance is close to meaningless. In addition, there are 4-way stop signs all over SF and tourists regularly comment on how they work here. The law is clear - yield to the right, but that is a pretty slow system in congested roads. The local custom in SF is that someone is usually obviously first, rightmost, or just most agg…

Your local custom seems to describe 4 way intersections everywhere.

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

#337

Post by pinkmuffinere »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #327
smugma wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Failed pretty badly but no reported injuries or even accidents so not that badly. And if you’re Waymo, it’s a short-term reputation hit but great experience to learn from and improve.

>to learn from and improve. Okay, let's see if they actually do it this time.

Waymo has been quite good about responsibly learning and improving imo. I do hope and think they’ll learn from this.

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

#338

Post by necovek »

MBCook wrote: post #242
macintux wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Effectively they’ve turned any edge case into a potential city-wide problem and PR nightmare. One driver doesn’t know how to handle a power outage? It’s not news. Hundreds of automated vehicles all experience the same failure? National news.

Right. You know there are humans somewhere in the city who got confused or scared and mess up too. Maybe a young driver who is barely confident in the first place on a temporary permit, or just someone who doesn’t remember what you do and was already over-stressed. Whatever, it happens. This was a (totally unintentional) coordinated screw up causing problems all over as opposed to one small spot. The scale makes all…

Definitely. The question then becomes how do they respond on the stimulus of other, more experienced drivers?

Eg. if they see 5 cars going around them and "solving" the intersection, do they get empowered to do the same? Or do some annoying honkers behind them make them bite the bullet and try their hand at passing it (and not to worry, other drivers will also make sure no harm comes to anyone even if you make a small mistake)? Human drivers, no matter how inexperienced, will learn on the spot. Self-driving vehicles can "learn" back in the SW department.

Yes, driving is a collaborative activity which requires that we all partner on finding most efficient patterns of traffic when traffic lights fail. Self-driving cars cannot learn on the spot, and this is the main difference between them and humans: you either have them trained on every situation, or they go into weird failure modes like this.

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

#339

Post by necovek »

dmix wrote: post #213
wiml wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already have a solution, it's written down in the traffic laws. If the signals fail, treat the intersection roughly like a four-way stop. Everybody learns this in drivers' ed. It's not obscure. If the cars can't follow traffic rules maybe they're not ready to be on the streets unsupervised.

That may be the rules for humans, particuarly people who are always in a rush and won't stay still anyway. With a major intersection turned four-way stop you have lots of humans making very complex decisions and taking a lot of personal risk. If multiple self driving cars make the choice at the wrong time you could jam up an intersection and create a worse traffic issue, or kill a passenger. It's all a careful risk c…

In a traffic jam situation, getting into a collision that "kills a passenger" is usually very hard (10-20mph collision between cars won't get anyone dead, except maybe for someone who gets another health condition triggered). With large cars in the road today, pedestrians are at a great risk, but similarly have more time to react due to slower speeds.

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

#340

Post by Dylan16807 »

scoofy wrote: post #309
Dylan16807 wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Locking down the roads creates a lot of potential injuries too. And "don't blow through an intersection with dead lights" is super easy to program. That's not enough for me to forgive them of all that much misbehavior.

> is super easy to program What?!? We’re talking about autonomous vehicles here.

The cars already know those are intersections with lights. I'm not talking about that part. Just the basic logic that you don't go through at speed unless there is a green (or yellow) light.
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