351–360 of 468 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
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.
1: streetlight with no lights
2: streetlight with blinking red
2.5: streetlight with blinking yellow
That is to say, they are not edge cases.
Dealing with other drivers in those settings is much harder to do but that's a different problem and you should be simulating your car in a wide variety of other driver dynamics. From everyone being very nice to everyone being hyper aggressive and the full spectrum in between.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Waymo has been quite good about responsibly learning and improving imo. I do hope and think they’ll learn from this.
Have they implemented a cat-friendly update since the incident a few months ago?
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/05/us/waymo-kit-kat-san-fran...
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…
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.
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…
One of the biggest issues with current state of tech I see is, where these cars usually are. They're in cities, and most often in very dense ones, and ones in the south. These are effectively perfect conditions.
From my perspective, I wonder how these cars will behave with ice on the road, with snow, or a typical Montreal Wednesday of "It's a blizzard, you can't see 10 feet, there is snow on the road and ice, it's slippery, all the lines and street markings are obscured completely, oh and the power is out and there are no traffic lights."
Some of this can be resolved by snow tires, or even studded tires which are legal in Quebec. It should be noted that Quebec plows the roads less, and uses less dirt and salt on the road, and also enforces a law that snow tires are on cars in the winter. Of course studded tires give insane grip on ice, but have reduced grip on rain.
And it can 10C and rain, then freeze, then be a blizzard, then move to -40C, all in a few days.
But anyhow, my point is if a Waymo is slow with a missing traffic light, how will it act with a missing traffic light, and 10ft visual range of reflective snow in the air, no ability to see lines on the street, and so on. Humans are great at peering and seeing mostly obscured indications of an intersection, but this is still challenging for a car with a top priority of safety.
Here's another example. The cameras in my car are constantly obscured by slush, dirt, and such on the windshield and all over the car. All the roads are coated with dirt to help with slipping on ice. I often have my car absurdly complaining that cameras are covered, and there's no assist this and that, just because the entire car is coated in dirt.
How will a Waymo operate with all sensors covered in dirt?
There are probably solutions. But it feels like it will be a long while before such cars treat a normal day in winter, as usual.
It should be noted that I've simply discussed downtown Montreal. What of a rural area? And by rural, I mean houses 1 km apart, also with a blizzard, all lines obscured on the road, and meanwhile Canadians just intuitively know where and how to drive it. We just slow down a bit (from 120km/hr to maybe 70km/hr) and just drive on our merry way. If we try to stop, distances are greatly extended, and of course in some places without care you'll just slide into the ditch.
Of course that's just a Wednesday, and you can read the 'signs of the road', and sort of tell where to slow down more. Where to take more care.
Sometimes, you'll see a bunch of cars in the ditch, and think 'Ah, must be particularly slippery here', and slow down a bit more.
Waymo will get better at this. But even without them getting better, as far as I know there were zero waymo fatalities due to this. That's more than I can say about Helene, where there was at least one fatality due to traffic light outages. Lets not forget that a big part of why we want Waymo is that it has already lead to a dramatic decrease in fatal accidents. They are a great company that will do a lot of good for…
"Hey guys what are you complaining about? We didn't (directly) kill anyone!"
Even if every US city had Waymos blocking the street for every single disaster, as they did here. I find it extremely unlikely that even the indirect deaths would come close to that number. And that's assuming Waymo learn from this lesson. Which they will.
[1] https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/nhtsa-estimates-39345-t... [2] https://storage.googleapis.com/waymo-uploads/files/documents...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The lights out should be treated as all way red, including pedestrians.
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…
Obviously things will continue to improve, so this is a point in time criticism. One of the biggest issues with current state of tech I see is, where these cars usually are. They're in cities, and most often in very dense ones, and ones in the south. These are effectively perfect conditions. From my perspective, I wonder how these cars will behave with ice on the road, with snow, or a typical Montreal Wednesday of "I…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Obviously things will continue to improve, so this is a point in time criticism. One of the biggest issues with current state of tech I see is, where these cars usually are. They're in cities, and most often in very dense ones, and ones in the south. These are effectively perfect conditions. From my perspective, I wonder how these cars will behave with ice on the road, with snow, or a typical Montreal Wednesday of "I…
It’s entirely possible we only ever get them in major cities where feasible, and that seems ok.