Waymo: Google's self-driving car company • Hacker News Board

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#571

Post by rtx » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 11:41 PM UTC

NolF wrote: post #510

imh wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On their webpage, waymo breaks down that 30k into smaller pieces. 94% of those deaths were due to human choice or human error. At least 71% were due to speeding, alcohol, distraction, and drowsiness. It's probably safe to say that driving like those 94% during your DMV driving test would mean a human wouldn't even get licensed. Why lower the bar to just being better than them? I want my autonomous car to be better th…

But they should be compared. As you indicated and the statistics show the death primarily happen when people are impaired (drugs and alcohol, fatigue, distractions etc), the machines substitute these human errors by fewer and further apart potential engineering faults. With proper Root Cause Analysis of the investigations (helped with all the data collected of all the accidents), overtime fewer and fewer would be exp…

The diffrence is choice.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#572

Post by freyr » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 11:41 PM UTC

yalogin wrote: post #114

joeguilmette wrote: post #49

I'm interested to see where all the major players end up in 5yrs: • Tesla bootstrapping a ride service on the backs of buyers • Waymo directly rolling their own fleet • Uber trying to get a self-driving fleet up, burning mountains of money to maintain their "monopoly" on Uber for rides • Lyft working with GM to get a fleet up • All of the other car manufacturers trying to get autonomous vehicles going, presumably hop…

If I have to bet against anybody it will be Uber. They will be burning cash and given that Google just gave up on building hardware why would one think Uber will succeed?

> why would one think Uber will succeed

Uber hasn't demonstrated a capacity to succeed, but unlike their rivals, they need self-driving cars to succeed for their company to succeed. The CEO has called self-driving cars "existential" to Uber.

Contrast this with Google. Self-driving cars are an expensive hobby to Google, and completely inconsequential to the success of their core business.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#573

Post by walrus1066 » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 11:42 PM UTC

ageofwant wrote: post #554

walrus1066 wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but put a tumbleweed in front of the driverless car and it's stuck. Or wood with a nail sticking out/generic movable obstacle, a human can remove it, the auto-car cannot.

Yea so ? Harping on the 2% issues does not negate the benefit you have the rest of the time: It can swerve in microseconds, you cannot. How many times will your nail removal skills save you or your kids live compared to software that knows that rolling the car to the left have a 87.34 better chance of occupants survival that the head-on collision with the truck that just swerved in 0.4 seconds ago ? Forget it, driver…

My nail removal skill will prevent gridlock on the road. If an auto-car gets confused due to a 2% issue, it becomes a brick, clogging the road. If multiple auto-cars do this in a city, the result is standstill.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#574

Post by brwr » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 11:46 PM UTC

riprowan wrote: post #525

brwr wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you may be experiencing recall bias. How do you get to work every day? How often do you go to the grocery store? What about going out to dinner? For myself, living in the Bay Area, anything related to driving or owning a car is a nightmare -- not that that has stopped me from owning a car. Driving from Mountain View to San Mateo takes about 45 minutes in the morning at 75 minutes in the evening. I went to SF…

I don't think you read my comment clearly. I think autonomous cars are going to be quite popular, but I don't understand how that necessarily leads to shared instead of privately owned autonomous cars.

Ah. We might be talking past each other. Looking back, a number of the advantages I mentioned are inherent in having self-driving cars. But the benefits compound when we have shared self-driving cars.

Example:

Traffic is improved with self-driving cars because most traffic jams are caused by humans. However, traffic is improved even more when carpooling is automated with a shared self-driving fleet.

Shared autonomous cars will become popular as these compounded benefits are realized.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#575

Post by tim333 » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 11:46 PM UTC

grecy wrote: post #443

tim333 wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Level 3: Within known, limited environments (such as freeways), the driver can safely turn their attention away from driving tasks" Volvo have announced shipping that in 2017. I don't think anyone else has. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q00jIBhkq4 )

Based on the videos on YouTube, I would say Tesla are already shipping that.

Tesla say you should look where you're going still.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#576

Post by sandworm101 » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 11:46 PM UTC

walrus1066 wrote: post #339

It feels there's a mountain of hype around autonomous vehicles. I think the core challenges to a fully autonomous vehicle (with no human backup), are still far from solved. They need to reliably deal with an almost infinite number of edge and corner cases, each quite different from the last. For example: - communication with other human drivers. In London, this is required all the time, like when parked cars block th…

>> communication with other human drivers.

I would shorten that to "other humans", to specifically include pedestrians. That 1/2-second eye contact between driver and human is key. Would anyone here dare walk in front of a car without that little nod from the driver?

The other edge case, one that is never discussed, is how these things expect to deal with off-road driving. I regularly use car ferries. Getting on and off those, and negotiating the terminals, stumps many human drives.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#577

Post by imh » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 11:49 PM UTC

NolF wrote: post #510

imh wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On their webpage, waymo breaks down that 30k into smaller pieces. 94% of those deaths were due to human choice or human error. At least 71% were due to speeding, alcohol, distraction, and drowsiness. It's probably safe to say that driving like those 94% during your DMV driving test would mean a human wouldn't even get licensed. Why lower the bar to just being better than them? I want my autonomous car to be better th…

But they should be compared. As you indicated and the statistics show the death primarily happen when people are impaired (drugs and alcohol, fatigue, distractions etc), the machines substitute these human errors by fewer and further apart potential engineering faults. With proper Root Cause Analysis of the investigations (helped with all the data collected of all the accidents), overtime fewer and fewer would be exp…

As rtx said, the difference is choice. We could save a ton of lives where people choose to put themselves in danger, but we'd save them by killing a smaller number of people who choose not to put themselves in danger. I don't think that's ok.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#578

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 11:49 PM UTC

bambax wrote: post #561

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, wait, what if we made the car really long and put in even more passengers per driver? It might even have a pre-determined schedule and be pretty cheap?

Trains won't stop in front of your house.

No, but busses can be pretty close, and shared vans actually will. I suspect those are closer than trains to what the grandparent post was referencing.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#579

Post by brwr » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 11:49 PM UTC

Unklejoe wrote: post #458

It’s going to be interesting watching how local police departments and municipalities handle the widespread adoption of autonomous vehicles. In my town (a suburban town with a low crime rate), the police spend the majority of their time enforcing traffic laws. The municipal courthouse is always filled with people, and if I had to guess, I’d say that 80% of the people are there as a result of a traffic violation, whil…

Anecdotally, one of Google's autonomous cars was pulled over in Mountain View, CA a while back[1]. The car was going 24 MPH in a 35 and the officer didn't realize the car was driving itself.

[1]: http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/13/us/google-self-driving-car-pul...

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#580

Post by marwatk » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 11:50 PM UTC

walrus1066 wrote: post #521

yohui wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.wired.com/2016/12/google-self-driving-car-waymo > By early 2015, Fairfield thought they were getting close: The cars were clocking full days at Google’s testing grounds without needing human takeovers. They had driven 1.2 million miles on public roads and could pull over for emergency vehicles. They could detect and brake for squirrels, and read hand signals from cops and construction workers. They knew w…

The car-human interaction bit isn't from a quote, is there any evidence of this actually happening in the field? Would be great if there was a video or something.

You can see one example at the end of the video on their technology page where the cyclist can't make up his mind. It recognizes the left turn sign from the rider (you can see the sybmol change when he extends his arm).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbWeKhAPMig