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A school district tried to help train Waymos to stop for school buses

wired.com

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Re: A school district tried to help train Waymos to stop for school buses

#51

Post by foota »

So.. it sounds like they're doing a lot better to me? 19 cases in the fall, 4 between the recall in Novemberish and Jan, and 1 between them and now that occurred in Jaunary?

Also lol at this quote in the article "Six vehicles passed the school bus while it was stopped, the agency said. It is still investigating." What it doesn't note is that the other 5 seem to have been human driven passenger vehicles. From the NTSB report: "located in Novi, Michigan, replied “No” to the prompt. The ADS-equipped vehicle then resumed travel and passed the school bus while its stop arms were still extended. A passenger vehicle following the ADS-equipped vehicle similarly passed the school bus. In total, six vehicles passed the school bus while it was stopped. A crash did not occur.", so it sounds to me like 4 people passed it, waymo was like wtf I'm pretty sure that's a stopped bus, a human incorrectly identified it as not a bus, waymo passed it, and then one more person passed after the waymo.

Re: A school district tried to help train Waymos to stop for school buses

#52

Post by foota »

olyjohn wrote: post #23
bpodgursky wrote: post #10

> A preliminary report by the NTSB published in early March found that one ensuing incident, on January 12, occurred after a Waymo remote assistant, a Michigan-based human tasked with “helping” the software when it was struggling on the road, incorrectly told the robotaxi that the school bus ahead of it didn’t have active signals on. Six vehicles passed the school bus while it was stopped, the agency said. It is stil…

Stop making bad human drivers an excuse for these machines to also be bad drivers. We're striving to do better, that's the whole point.

And they are doing better.

Re: A school district tried to help train Waymos to stop for school buses

#53

Post by threetonesun »

kube-system wrote: post #45
threetonesun wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IDK if it's draconian but speed cameras or simply forcing cars to have modules that report speeds at certain points and issue fines automatically should be standard by now. What's the point of having smarter cars if they can't be forced to stay below the legal speed limit.

I don't think building enforcement into cars would be a good idea, or even effective, but a few speed cameras work wonders for changing the overall 'temperature' of driving in an area.

How would setting the max speed of a car to the speed limit be a bad idea.

Re: A school district tried to help train Waymos to stop for school buses

#54

Post by ocdtrekkie »

sahila wrote: post #29
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #2

So I assume Waymo will be immediately banned from any residential areas until they can demonstrate the ability to follow the laws of the road? The problem is there is zero enforcement. We know the vehicle is not safe around schoolchildren so the appropriate incentive needs to be applied to get the issue addressed.

> So I assume Waymo will be immediately banned from any residential areas until they can demonstrate the ability to follow the laws of the road? Why do you apply a different standard to waymos than to humans?

I don't. If a human repeatedly violates the traffic laws they loose their license. Waymo apparently doesn't.

Re: A school district tried to help train Waymos to stop for school buses

#55

Post by kube-system »

ronsor wrote: post #31
ceejayoz wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never been stuck behind someone doing 45 in a 55? Really? You don’t have to speed. It’s a choice. You shouldn’t make the choice in the passing lane, though.

I'm fairly certain "slower traffic keep right" is part of the expected flow. Maybe the Waymo is technically speeding, but so is everyone else, because speed limits aren't magic, and if the de-facto limit ends up being 50 when the posted limit is 40 or 45, going slower creates extra conflict points for accidents.

Just slightly over half of US states require you to move right to yield to faster traffic. In some places it is completely allowable to drive the speed limit in the left lane.

https://www.mit.edu/~jfc/right.html

Re: A school district tried to help train Waymos to stop for school buses

#56

Post by SoftTalker »

threetonesun wrote: post #39
SoftTalker wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a road that's labeled as 45MPH zone, but is treated as a 65 If this is the case, then the speed limit is too low. To control speed on such a road you either need draconian enforcement or you need to change the road so people aren't comfortable driving that fast. Make the lanes narrower, introduce lane shifts or reduce the number of lanes, etc.

IDK if it's draconian but speed cameras or simply forcing cars to have modules that report speeds at certain points and issue fines automatically should be standard by now. What's the point of having smarter cars if they can't be forced to stay below the legal speed limit.

I would call speed cameras draconian.

There's a road near me that just dropped the speed limit to 40. This is a divided road, two 12-foot lanes in each direction, good visibility, with turning lanes at intersections. It's highway-class. Most people drive 55 or 60, because that speed feels appropriate and reasonably safe (search the "85th percentile" rule in setting speed limits to read more about this).

By reducing the speed limit to 40 the road is IMO less safe, because there are always some people who very conscientiously do not exceed the posted speed limit. So now you have some people driving 40, while most people still want to go 55 or 60. This creates an unsafe mix of vehicle speeds.

Re: A school district tried to help train Waymos to stop for school buses

#57

Post by thereisnospork »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #54
sahila wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So I assume Waymo will be immediately banned from any residential areas until they can demonstrate the ability to follow the laws of the road? Why do you apply a different standard to waymos than to humans?

I don't. If a human repeatedly violates the traffic laws they loose their license. Waymo apparently doesn't.

Humans. Humans repeatedly violate traffic laws. Humans behind the wheel are killing 10's of thousands every year. Yet we keep giving these drugged up meatbags licenses.

Re: A school district tried to help train Waymos to stop for school buses

#58

Post by kube-system »

threetonesun wrote: post #53
kube-system wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think building enforcement into cars would be a good idea, or even effective, but a few speed cameras work wonders for changing the overall 'temperature' of driving in an area.

How would setting the max speed of a car to the speed limit be a bad idea.

Falsehoods programmers believe about speed limits:

1. The speed limit of a road is always marked by a sign

2. The speed limit of a road is in a database

3. You can look up the GPS location of a vehicle to determine what road it is on

4. Roads have exactly one speed limit at any one moment in time

5. Speed limits rarely change

6. Well, maybe speed limits do change, but only during certain fixed times

7. Roads have speed limits

8. Cars are only driven on roads

9. There are no exceptions for following speed limits

10. Well maybe there are but we can safely ignore those without any real consequences

[...]

I've personally done some software experimentation with speed limit detection in vehicles. The combined accuracy of automatic-traffic-sign recognition and speed limit databases + GPS is far less than 100% in real world driving conditions.

Re: A school district tried to help train Waymos to stop for school buses

#60

Post by pavel_lishin »

SoftTalker wrote: post #34
pavel_lishin wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are highways in the US where drivers regularly go 10-20 over the speed limit, if not more; maintaining the speed limit on a road that's labeled as 45MPH zone, but is treated as a 65, will be dangerous for everyone involved, both the cars approaching the slowpoke at 20+ miles an hour, and the slowpoke itself. I don't know how Waymo is going to square that circle.

> a road that's labeled as 45MPH zone, but is treated as a 65 If this is the case, then the speed limit is too low. To control speed on such a road you either need draconian enforcement or you need to change the road so people aren't comfortable driving that fast. Make the lanes narrower, introduce lane shifts or reduce the number of lanes, etc.

> If this is the case, then the speed limit is too low.

I don't disagree with you, but it's still a problem if there are drivers on that road who are driving so slowly as to be unsafe, robot or human.

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