Live data from Hacker News

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

missionlocal.org

451–460 of 468 posts

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

#451
post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its either people complain that they go slow and are too careful, or they will video and complain about every small traffic infringement that they make. Humans never driver 100% within the law and no one really cares. The second a single one of those things steps out of line and its an uproar. they have to drive ultra conservatively. How long have people been complaining about that one cat.

>either people complain that they go slow and are too careful, or they will video and complain about every small traffic infringement that they make. Is there a name for this (and related) effects? Obviously, in a group of several hundred thousand people, there will always be at least a few people that complain about something for the exact opposite reasons. That's not a signal of usefulness. I feel we need a name fo…

The answer to everything in life is always "somewhere in the middle".

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

#452
post #356

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.

No way, it would be such a humongous quality of life improvement for humanity. I don't think we will just give up on it. Car interiors could be reworked once all the controls were gone, throughput on freeways/roads could be optimized, all the parking lots could be closed.

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

#453
post #66
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.

If you're happy to put those tracks on every road, sure. I wonder why no-one's bothered with that before.

> I wonder why no-one's bothered with that before

Streetcars?! In San Francsico?!?

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

#454
post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“10-15 minute walk” A quaintly American complaint. A 10 minute walk being an issue is very a learned helplessness my fellow Americans suffer from. But unfortunately the 10-15 min walk is only possible in a couple cities. most Americans day to day experience of public transit is spaced out buses that don’t work well for single family sprawl and strip malls parking lots where walking is treated as undesirable. Car orie…

It could be 10-15min where I am blasted by -10c wind in Boston or Miami torrential rains Door to door shelter and climate control >>>>>>>>>>>

Because the weather in walking cities is perfect?

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

#455
post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this was a failure. The gold standard should be that the if every human driver was replaced with an AI how well could the system function. This makes it look like things would be catastrophic. Thus, showing how humans continue to be much more versatile and capable than AI. I suppose if you lower the standards for what you hope AI can accomplish it wouldn't be considered a failure.

If every human driver was replaced with AI, this situation would have been fine. All the self-driving cars would have respected the four way stop

But they're exclusively used in areas that allow both human and AI drivers, so this hardly seems relevant.

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

#456
post #356

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…

I'm also curious about this. They're coming to Minneapolis next year, so apparently they're confident in their ability to figure out cold / unpredictable weather (in urban conditions at least).

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

#457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's an example of it doing well: https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/2002699317409186219

The Tesla example is a single oncoming car, clear right of way, and ample time in a simple 4-way intersection. The Waymo video has over a dozen cars, at least 6 pedestrians crossing streets (many more on the sidewalks), and is a 5-way intersection. These are cherry picked examples. Either advertising or propaganda.

[deleted]

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

#458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As long as you're happy that if your property ever blocks the road, you will pay for the damage too. Pretty sure that's always the expectation? It's typical to tow illegally parked cars, smash windows to run hoses through cars blocking hydrants, etc. The only unusual thing here would be holding a corporation to account the way we hold individuals to account.

A broken down car isn't illegally parked.

But none the less, it is the owner who pays to have it towed.

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

#459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LIDAR can't be compared to radarless cars (yes, to Teslas) The car might have a better understanding in low visibility conditions than a person (blizzard)

Wouldn’t LIDAR be completely ineffective in a blizzard?

Severely impaired but still functional.

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9835037

Everyone except Elon Musk think LIDAR helps in severe weather conditions. The level of impairment depends on who you read.

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

#460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps this is by design. Cruise had a failsafe system that detected a collision and decided to pull over but by pulling over it dragged a person underneath the car (or something close to this scenario). Maybe this dumb failsafe was designed not to repeat Cruise's mistakes? Certainly a better way to handle this would have been to pull over. I think stopping where ever it happened to be is only acceptable if the majo…

When I was a young man, I worked at a restaurant, and the lights went off. I being the hero I was, wanted to keep the show running, bought some candles, ovens worked fine, water worked fine (for now). I wanted to charge cash. But eventually big boss came and shut us down since light wasn't coming. And he was right, cooking and working under those conditions is dangerous for the staff, but also for the clients, withou…

> but also for the clients, without light you cannot see the food, cannot inspect its state, whether stale, with visible fungi, etc...

...I have to say, I'm pretty skeptical of this one. I've eaten in lots of dark restaurants, sometimes lit pretty much just by candles on the table. Seems to work fine.

Post reply on HN