How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business • Hacker News Board

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

#371

Post by HarHarVeryFunny » Fri, May 31, 2024, 12:28 AM UTC

CharlieDigital wrote: post #361

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends how quickly it happens, and how well they are paying attention. We all know those accident prone drivers who are never "at-fault" - just very bad at avoiding them! However, the human has the major advantage of having a brain and being able to understand the consequences and potential outcomes of something in real-time as it is unfolding. I doubt most autopilots would understand the situations I mentioned -…

Here's the thing: the technology will get faster and better. Your average driver is already at the limits of human capabilities with no room for improvement unless they go train to drive like F1 racers. So comparing humans to the current state of tech seems silly given that the tech will assuredly one day be faster than a human.

I don't think response time is the issue here - at the moment the computer doesn't have the intelligence or ability to learn of the human, so the human is going to be safer in situations the computer was not programmed to handle. I expect we will eventually get human level AI (but maybe not very soon), and if that is used for autopilot then the computer could have the safety edge with faster reaction time if in-car hardware is fast enough.

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

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Post by Animats » Fri, May 31, 2024, 12:37 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #122

greenthrow wrote: post #28

Waymos are not full robotaxis. It's an illusion provided by having the humans responsible for the cars in a remote location. We don't have transparency on how that system runs and how often the humans intervene. We also sweep under the rug many, many non-crash traffic incidents. Watch videos on Youtube of peoplr taking Waymos and you will see the cars do lots of dumb stuff. If there were lots more of them it would ma…

Waymo says they do not do remote controlled driving. The remote operators can only give hints to the self-driving system, such as "make a U-turn and take a different route". They don't trust the data connection to have good enough latency for remote control. Baidu, which has some self-driving cars in China, reportedly does use remote manual driving when necessary. Probably more than they admit, because it was a big t…

Correction: BYD recently announced that they will not be using Baidu's technology.

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

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Post by wilsonnb3 » Fri, May 31, 2024, 1:09 AM UTC

maxdo wrote: post #320

swsieber wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While true, if you go to page 1 of the article you find this: > During a 45-minute test drive in a Tesla Model X, I had to intervene twice to correct mistakes by the FSD software. In contrast, I rode in driverless Waymo vehicles for more than two hours and didn’t notice a single mistake. That seems pretty significant.

While Waymo is only trying to enable itself on 1-2 particular highways in western America, Tesla's FSD can work hours with no interventions on the highways, do exits, and automate pretty much the entire trip on a highway in any place in the US, Canada, and China. Again, it's just different approaches to solve the problem.

For the record Waymo taxis are not limited to highways in Phoenix, not sure about how they operate elsewhere.

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

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Post by Spooky23 » Fri, May 31, 2024, 1:45 AM UTC

CharlieDigital wrote: post #310

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's still plenty that can go wrong in a hurry even if you are just streaming along in lane. All it takes is for something non-routine to happen such as a car ahead reacting to an animal, or swerving as the driver reaches for something or spills coffee on themself, or a wheel come off a car (I've seen it happen to a car in front of me), or a car crosses the center median in opposite direction (which left my ex-bos…

> All it takes is for something non-routine to happen such as a car ahead reacting to an animal, or swerving as the driver reaches for something or spills coffee on themself, or a wheel come off a car (I've seen it happen to a car in front of me), or a car crosses the center median in opposite direction (which left my ex-boss hospitalized for 6 months) Inherent in this statement is the assumption that in such types o…

People tend to muddle through.

If we had the same lawyers available that Tesla does, humans too would be not responsible for much of anything.

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

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Post by coolspot » Fri, May 31, 2024, 2:05 AM UTC

mavhc wrote: post #147

hnav wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The olfactory problem with waymos is that if someone gets in one dirty or foul smelling there isn't a driver to kick them out. Waymos are starting to get more ridership and some of those people are going to be absolute pigs. I gave feedback to Waymo about a recent ride where the entire car smelled like a fat, unwashed ass and the best case scenario there is that they took the car out of rotation immediately, the ride…

Need to add some smell sensors to the inside of the car, as well as the cameras

They do have always on cameras inside.

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

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Post by coolspot » Fri, May 31, 2024, 2:11 AM UTC

choppaface wrote: post #11

webel0 wrote: post #2

Waymo is currently under investigation for multiple incidents, not all of which it had previously disclosed to the NHTSA [0]. The recent light pole incident also doesn't help [1]. If they are doing 50k rides a day, then they would appear to have a remarkable safety record. It will be interesting to see if these investigations lead to a repeat of the Cruise debacle or if this will become the price of doing business. […

Waymo has notably escaped any investigation of the "Prius vs Camry" crash induced during unsafe testing done in pursuit of a demo https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/22/did-uber-steal... > The car went onto a freeway, where it travelled past an on-ramp. According to people with knowledge of events that day, the Prius accidentally boxed in another vehicle, a Camry. A human driver could easily have handled the s…

> causing Taylor to injure his spine so severely that he eventually required multiple surgeries

I recognize accident lawyer work when I see one :) They charged Waymo’s insurance to the max.

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

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Post by m348e912 » Fri, May 31, 2024, 2:28 AM UTC

ra7 wrote: post #366

m348e912 wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This stuff is not even a little bit ready for fully supervised operation. https://youtu.be/fpoXr_z_6a4?t=565 Thanks for sharing. I skimmed through the video and watched a fair amount of it. I got a different impression. I thought it was impressive how FSD 12 navigated narrow winding roads with parked cars and oncoming traffic and flaggers holding signs that alternate between stop and slow. My impression was while it…

Here’s a Tesla failing to detect a train and crashing into a railroad crossing gate: https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/s/AghLi791rO This isn’t just “a few iterations away”. Most of what you said has been repeated for years from people who just watch curated YouTube videos. I’ve driven on FSD v12 and I’ve intervened multiple times almost every single drive. It’s nowhere near ready and will likely never be with…

I'll have to take your word for it. I don't have a Tesla and have no experience with FSD. The only thing I can say is that the videos I have watched are recent with no jump cuts or editing. Were they curated trips among many other trips that weren't posted? I have no way of knowing. The feedback seems to be that FSD 12 is noticeably better than previous versions.

I suspect that Tesla is paying attention to the disengagement events and working hard to minimize them in the future, but I truly have no idea.

Also I am sure this question has been asked before but what is good enough for FSD? Perfect in every situation? Better than the average human driver? At par or better than an expert professional driver? I don't have an answer personally but I am curious what others think.

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

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Post by ra7 » Fri, May 31, 2024, 2:46 AM UTC

m348e912 wrote: post #377

ra7 wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s a Tesla failing to detect a train and crashing into a railroad crossing gate: https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/s/AghLi791rO This isn’t just “a few iterations away”. Most of what you said has been repeated for years from people who just watch curated YouTube videos. I’ve driven on FSD v12 and I’ve intervened multiple times almost every single drive. It’s nowhere near ready and will likely never be with…

I'll have to take your word for it. I don't have a Tesla and have no experience with FSD. The only thing I can say is that the videos I have watched are recent with no jump cuts or editing. Were they curated trips among many other trips that weren't posted? I have no way of knowing. The feedback seems to be that FSD 12 is noticeably better than previous versions. I suspect that Tesla is paying attention to the diseng…

Not everyone records themselves using FSD like YouTubers do. So you’re not seeing drives where it screws up.

What’s good enough for FSD is being able to do it without a driver present like Waymo does. Their crowdsourced reliability data in https://www.teslafsdtracker.com/ suggests they need at least 3 orders of magnitude improvement to remove the driver.

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

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Post by Staple_Diet » Fri, May 31, 2024, 5:21 AM UTC

tzs wrote: post #245

Staple_Diet wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Once it seemed to change its mind about the optimal route a few times over the course of 10 seconds, switching safely between two lanes back and forth a few times before committing. It used its turn signal fine, and the lanes were clear, so it wasn't a problem, but this isn't something humans do. Oh, I disagree, this is something I observe and in fact do myself quite a lot. We all run it through our minds which rout…

> We all run it through our minds which route might be the quickest spending on certain factors. The difference is Waymo (or any tech) will base this on actual data (i.e., getting there quicker) vs humans who will be more emotionally driven [...] I expect that robot taxis will be both consumers and producers of that actual data. They will likely report the traffic conditions they experience back to the company that r…

Yes! I dream of traffic that moves and integrates seamlessly almost like a school of fish, because of near-instant communication between vehicles - an automotive hive mind. Imagine not needing traffic lights because each car at the intersection knows when it is their turn...but I know we'll f it up somehow.

Still, a person can dream.

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

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Post by telotortium » Fri, May 31, 2024, 5:34 AM UTC

Gibbon1 wrote: post #347

tialaramex wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where can I buy these roads that don't require maintenance ? Cars that never break down ? Road traffic signals that never fail ? For the first I'm asking for a friend as the road outside her front door is currently torn open for a whole month and it sure seems like "Just magically never do that" would have been a better option if you insist it's so easy. The lines near me have freight on them (I live in a port city,…

One thing I try to do is read stuff from people whose job it is to do stuff. What I read from transportation people is that for dense urban areas cars are inefficient at loading and unloading. And self driving cars are the worst. My rando observation is the few times something has gone really wrong on BART traffic is bad enough that it'd be better to take the day off. Ditto if a truck overturns on one of the bridges.…

By “transportation people” do you mean rail fans or avid cyclists? It’s an easy mistake to make - civil engineers with a more favorable attitude to cars (or even to rail) are more likely to be employed and therefore relatively quiet than rail fans or cyclists, who spend their time doing advocacy.