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US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

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Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#51

Post by programjames »

themafia wrote: post #42
krisoft wrote: post #4

To be honest. I think this is one of the strengths of autonomous cars. With humans when they do this at max we can punish that individual. To increase population wide compliance we can do a safety awareness campaign, ramp up enforcement, ramp up the fines. But all of these cost a lot of money to do, take a while to have an effect, need to be repeated/kept up, and only help statistically. With a robot driver we can de…

> we can develop a fix and roll it out on all of them. You have to know what you're fixing first. You're going to write a lot of code in blood this way. It's not that people are particularly bad at driving it's that the road is exceptionally dynamic with many different users and use cases all trying to operate in a synchronized fashion with a dash of strong regulation sprinkled in.

The human traffic code is also written in blood. But humans are worse at applying the patch universally.

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#52

Post by username223 »

RaftPeople wrote: post #41
izacus wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, how does that work? Every person in your city needs to know the exact calendar of that school?

In the area I live, the wording is frequently "when children present" so you don't need to know school schedule.

This is the one most familiar to me. Usually the signs have flashing orange lights to indicate when they're active, but sometimes not. You generally know roughly when the kids are in school (maybe look at the school?), and follow what other drivers are doing. Things like this are why I think fully autonomous driving basically requires AGI.

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#53

Post by trollbridge »

d4mi3n wrote: post #31
whimsicalism wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the discourse around “corporations” has gotten absolutely ridiculous at this point, especially on this website.

It’s not an unreasonable take given historic behavior. Rather than decrying the cynicism, what steps can we take to ensure companies like Tesla/Waymo/etc are held accountable and incentivized to prioritize safety? Do we need hasher fines? Give auto regulators as much teeth as the FAA used to have during accident investigations? Genuinely curious to see how addressing reasonable concerns in these areas can be done.

Right. We have a precedent for how to have an ridiculously safe transportation system: accidents are investigated by the NTSB, and every accident is treated as an opportunity to make sure that particular failure never happens again.

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#54

Post by SoftTalker »

"approached the school bus from an angle where the flashing lights and stop sign were not visible"

I call bullshit on that. Yes the stop sign is only on the left side but the flashing lights are on all four corners of the bus. You'd need to be approaching the side of the bus from a direct right angle to not see the flashing lights.

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#55

Post by [deleted] »

themafia wrote: post #49
jefftk wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're going to write a lot of code in blood this way. Waymo has been doing a lot of driving, without any blood. They seems to be using a combination of (a) learning a lot from close calls like this one where no one was hurt even through it still behaved incorrectly and (b) being cautious so that even when it does something it shouldn't the risk is very low because it's moving slowly.

Waymo operates in a very limited scope and area. I would not attempt to extrapolate anything from their current performance.

[deleted]

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#56

Post by Animats »

There's a video of the actual incident.[1] (Yahoo posted some file photo). The Waymo was entering from a side street, in front of the school bus. It clearly recognized that it was in an iffy situation and slowed to creeping speed, rather than blocking the intersection. No children are visible.

If the school bus has a dashcam, much better info may be available. This video starts too late.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSjwolFxvpc

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#57

Post by 05 »

dangus wrote: post #44
krisoft wrote: post #4

To be honest. I think this is one of the strengths of autonomous cars. With humans when they do this at max we can punish that individual. To increase population wide compliance we can do a safety awareness campaign, ramp up enforcement, ramp up the fines. But all of these cost a lot of money to do, take a while to have an effect, need to be repeated/kept up, and only help statistically. With a robot driver we can de…

As a counterpoint, a large fine or jail time as a deterrent actually has meaning.to an individual. For a company, it's a financial calculation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimshaw_v._Ford_Motor_Co . (Add the period to the end of the link, HN won't do it)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimshaw_v._Ford_Motor_Co%2E

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#58

Post by trhway »

SoftTalker wrote: post #54

"approached the school bus from an angle where the flashing lights and stop sign were not visible" I call bullshit on that. Yes the stop sign is only on the left side but the flashing lights are on all four corners of the bus. You'd need to be approaching the side of the bus from a direct right angle to not see the flashing lights.

there have been increase of "aggressiveness" of autonomous cars. My earlier comment - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45609139 . May be that aggressiveness is sold internally as some optimization enabled by the higher skills of the robot-driver.

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#59

Post by hamdingers »

programjames wrote: post #51
themafia wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we can develop a fix and roll it out on all of them. You have to know what you're fixing first. You're going to write a lot of code in blood this way. It's not that people are particularly bad at driving it's that the road is exceptionally dynamic with many different users and use cases all trying to operate in a synchronized fashion with a dash of strong regulation sprinkled in.

The human traffic code is also written in blood. But humans are worse at applying the patch universally.

We don't even try. In the US you demonstrate that you know the rules at one point in time and that's it, as long as you never get a DUI you're good.

For instance, the 2003 California Driver's Handbook[1] first introduced the concept of "bike lanes" to driver education, but contains the advice "You may park in the bike lane unless signs say “NO PARKING.”" which is now illegal. Anyone who took their test in the early 2000s is likely unaware that changed.

It also lacks any instruction whatsoever on common modern roadway features like roundabouts or shark teeth yield lines, but we still consider drivers who only ever studied this book over 20 years ago to be qualified on modern roads.

1. https://dn720706.ca.archive.org/0/items/B-001-001-944/B-001-...

Re: US probes Waymo robotaxis over school bus safety

#60

Post by 1970-01-01 »

krisoft wrote: post #4

To be honest. I think this is one of the strengths of autonomous cars. With humans when they do this at max we can punish that individual. To increase population wide compliance we can do a safety awareness campaign, ramp up enforcement, ramp up the fines. But all of these cost a lot of money to do, take a while to have an effect, need to be repeated/kept up, and only help statistically. With a robot driver we can de…

It's a strength if you catch the bug and fix it before it injures anyone. If anything, this proves edge-cases can take years to manifest.
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