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

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

#61

Post by anal_reactor »

mejutoco wrote: post #49
anal_reactor wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except in NL you guys actually have someone sit and think about the flow of traffic, in most other countries the design is usually pretty much random. In my parents' city in Poland they decided to turn off the traffic lights at night and the result is much higher number of accidents. Funnily, my father failed to yield the right of way exactly when talking about the issue. Yes, theoretically all intersections do have…

> Same setup in the Netherlands, there are right of way signs everywhere that apply when the lights don't work. Most places in Poland have this exact setup. And I say most because I have not seen one that does not, but I am guessing they exist. Maybe some of them have bad visibility even? If one does not respect the yield sign that does not seem a signaling problem.

> that does not seem a signaling problem.

Average signaling in Poland be like

https://files.catbox.moe/ipl96o.png

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

#62

Post by A1kmm »

slavik81 wrote: post #24
add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone should have understood that driving requires improvisation in the face of uncommon but inevitable bespoke challenges that this generation of AI is not suited for. Either because it's common sense or because so many people have been shouting it for so long.

What improvisation is required? A traffic light being out is a standard problem with a standard solution. It's just a four-way stop.

In many versions of road rules (I don't know about California), having four vehicles stopped at an intersection without one of the four lanes having priority creates a dining philosophers deadlock, where all four vehicles are giving way to others.

Human drivers can use hand signals to resolve it, but self-driven vehicles may struggle, especially if all four lanes happens to have a self-driven vehicle arrive. Potentially if all vehicles are coordinated by the same company, they can centrally coordinate out-of-band to avoid the deadlock. It becomes even more complex if there are a mix of cars coordinated by different companies.

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

#63

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

sofixa wrote: post #33
Zambyte wrote: 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.

Maybe even put them on steel wheels on steel tracks, to make them more efficient.

Have something like metro (maglev trains) too as they are more efficient than steel wheels on steel tracks.

Public transport for things like metro/trains/trams/buses are honestly underrated.

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

#64

Post by beAbU »

creato wrote: post #34
platevoltage wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds plausible. Humans for the most part can usually navigate that situation to a point. It wouldn't surprise me if Waymo cars weren't even trained for this scenario.

The one time I saw traffic lights go down, it was total chaos. There were two separate crashes that had already happened when I got there, and there would probably be >1 wreck per few minutes with the driving I observed.

I moved from South Africa to Ireland 2 years ago. It was very noticeable to me how drivers in Ireland have no idea what to do when the lights are out. Absolute chaos!

In south africa, traffic lights not working is a daily occurrence. And we've all learned how to navigate a dead intersection wit zero casualties.

Massive 6 way intersections with 2-4 lanes per direction worked perfectly with everyone taking turns to go.

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

#66

Post by rcxdude »

Zambyte wrote: 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.

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

#67

Post by patrick451 »

asdff wrote: post #5

It seems waymo's always fall apart when encountering something that wouldn't be in the training set. Such as a christmas parade: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/NOqK8UEuWjs

Until AVs can deal with OOD scenarios, they should not be on the road.

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

#68

Post by ajmurmann »

terribleperson wrote: post #19

In my experience, humans respond incredibly poorly to traffic lights being out. There's no sense or reason, just people deciding to drive across the intersection when they feel like it's okay. Presumably Waymo will make sure they can handle this situation in the future, but I'm not sure there's a really satisfactory solution. The way you're supposed to handle an intersection with no lights (treat it as a stop sign in…

Treating it like a stop sign also doesn't work very well when there are huge amounts of pedestrians. As a pedestrian that yesterday meant I got the right of way all the time. For cars it was mayhem downtown.

In contrast many years ago I lived at an intersection that had almost no pedestrians back then and a few times for a power outage limited to our building and that intersection. I enjoyed standing on my balcony and watch traffic. It mostly worked well. Cars did treat it like a intersection with stop signs. There two issues happened though. One was when there was no car already stopped and about 10%-20% of drivers didn't realize there was an intersection with lights out and just raced through it. The other ironically were bicyclists. 90% of the just totally ignored there was an intersection. That was especially scary when they arrived at the same time as one of those cars who didn't realize it either.

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

#69

Post by beAbU »

Zambyte wrote: 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.

You can further optimize the setup by not installing engines/motors in all of them. So maybe you have one car providing locomotion, with the rest following behind and designed for carrying.

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

#70

Post by philistine »

beAbU wrote: post #69
Zambyte wrote: 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.

You can further optimize the setup by not installing engines/motors in all of them. So maybe you have one car providing locomotion, with the rest following behind and designed for carrying.

If we do all of that, then we won't need to train them to know how to operate in traffic. Perhaps we can give them a name in honour of that fact?
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