After 50 million miles, Waymos crash a lot less than human drivers
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They work great in parking lots.
Source: Ridden in several Waymos
Genuinely a relief to hear, thank you!
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Just fine the one time I rode in one. It had a problem with a moving truck blocking the entire street, where it sat trying to wait to see if the moving truck was just stopped and going to move or if it was parked for good. The Waymo executed a 3 point turn and then had two construction trucks pull into the street the other direction, and they refused to back up. So the Waymo was stuck between not going forward and not going back... it just pulled forward toward the trucks and then reversed toward the moving truck. Back and forth. Then I yelled out the window for the fucking trucks to move out of the fucking road, which they couldn't drive down anyway. After that it was smooth, even getting into the parking lot.
My buddy said at his office the Waymos have an issue with pulling too far forward at the pick up spots, which makes it impossible for cars to go around them, but humans do dumb shit like that, too.
Yyyep, that sounds pretty standard fare (no pun intended), I've lived mostly in abstract neighborhoods in terms of infrastructure and had to chase rides in a grand majority of cases.
Plus, honestly, even the way it handled the construction jam sounds acceptable, reminds me of my first days of learning to drive. As long as they stop and stay stopped, that's way better than deciding to ignore the sensor data and just go for it, like... some other models...
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Considering the sort of driving issues and code violations I see on a daily basis, the standards for human drivers need raising. The issue is more lax humans than it is amazing robots.
"You don't have to be faster than the bear, you just have to be faster than the other guy"
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They're super conservative. I rode just once in one. There was a parked ambulance down a side street about 30 feet with it's lights one while paramedics helped someone. The car wouldn't drive forward through the intersection. It just detected the lights and froze. I had to get out and walk. If we all drove that conservatively we'd also have less accidents and congest the city to undrivability.
Back in February, I took a Waymo for the first time and was at first amazed. But then in the middle of an empty four lane road, it abruptly slammed the brakes, twice. There was literally nothing in the road, no cars and because it was raining, no pedestrians within sight.
If I had been holding a drink, it would have spelled disaster.
After the second abrupt stop I was bracing for more for the remainder of the ride, even though the car generally goes quite slow most of the time. It also made a strange habit of drifting lanes through intersections while the turning indicators went from left to right alternatively like it had no idea what it was doing.
Honestly it felt like being in the car with a first time driver.
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We always knew good quality self-driving tech would vastly outperform human skill. It's nice to see some decent metrics!
My drive to work is 8 minutes. This morning i almost had a crash because a guy ran a stop sigh. I don't think the bar is very high at this point.
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There's already an autonomous metro.
Now let's do intercity trains and tramways then
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Considering the sort of driving issues and code violations I see on a daily basis, the standards for human drivers need raising. The issue is more lax humans than it is amazing robots.
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Back in February, I took a Waymo for the first time and was at first amazed. But then in the middle of an empty four lane road, it abruptly slammed the brakes, twice. There was literally nothing in the road, no cars and because it was raining, no pedestrians within sight.
If I had been holding a drink, it would have spelled disaster.
After the second abrupt stop I was bracing for more for the remainder of the ride, even though the car generally goes quite slow most of the time. It also made a strange habit of drifting lanes through intersections while the turning indicators went from left to right alternatively like it had no idea what it was doing.
Honestly it felt like being in the car with a first time driver.
Maybe the reason they crash less is because everyone around them have to be extremely careful with these cars. Just like in my country we put a big L on the rear of the car for first year drivers.
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You are completely ignoring the under ideal circumstances part.
They can't drive at night AFAIK, they can't drive outside the area that is meticulously mapped out.
And even then, they often require human intervention.If you asked a professional driver to do the exact same thing, I'm pretty sure that driver would have way better accident record than average humans too.
Seems to me you are missing the point I tried to make. And is drawing a false conclusion based on comparing apples to oranges.
I specifically didn’t ignore that. My entire point was that a driver that refuses to drive under anything except “ideal circumstances” is still a safer driver.
I am aware that if we banned driving at night to get the same benefit for everyone, it wouldn’t go very well, but that doesn’t really change the safety, only the practicality.
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driving might not produce the mountain of corpses it does today.
And people wouldn't be able to drive anywhere. Which could very well be a good thing, but still
True enough, it would not be a wise economic or political move
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Bro I saw a video of their car drive through a wall and hand the controls back to the driver. No, it absolutely is not.
When was the last time you saw a "wall" erected on a freeway that was perfectly painted to mimic the current time of day, road, weather, etc. I'm not talking about for that example, i'm talking about in the real world.
The answer is never
Yes, the optical sensors are fooled by an elaborate ruse that doesn't exist in real world operating conditions on a highway.
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But it's not like that. There's some kind of ML involved but also like they had to map put their entire service area, etc. If something goes wrong, a human has to come up and drive your driverless car lmao
Most trips require remote intervention by one of their employees at at least some point.
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:Looks at entire midwest and southern usa:
The bar is so low in these regions you need diamond drilling bits to go lower.
What's a zipper merge?
Screams in Midwestern
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it's hard to change humans. It's easy to roll out a firmware update.
Raising the standards would result in 20-50% of the worst drivers being forced to do something else. If our infrastructure wasn't so car-centric, that would be perfectly fine.
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What's a zipper merge?
Screams in Midwestern
I have spent many years in both the midwest and the south.
In some areas of the south, people drive extremely aggressively and there are lots of issues with compliance to various traffic laws but it is usually not difficult to get over if you need to. People will let you in. The zipper merge is a well-honed machine and almost everyone uses it and obeys it.
In the midwest, drivers tend to me more docile, cautious, and lawful overall but have an extreme sense of entitlement over their place in line. "How dare that person use that completely empty lane to get ahead of me! Can they not see there is a line!" They will absolutely not let you in. It does not matter if the zipper merge would improve traffic flow. It just is not going to happen.
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Evolution took a billion years too, so it's kinda fair to say "well, vehicles need some training".
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Why are we still doing this? Just fucking invest in mass transit like metro, buses and metrobuses. Jesus
Also, Note that this is based on waymo's own assumptions, that's like believing a 5070 gives you 4090 performance...
people in america don't want to ride with public transport because they're incredibly isolationistic and have a fear of other human beings; so they prefer to drive within "their own 4 walls", in their own chassis. It's really about psychology much more than practical feasibility.
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Yes it does, if done properly. I have stops for four bus lines within walking distance. During peak hours, buses come once every 15 minutes. Trolleys in the city centre, every 10 minutes. Trams, every two minutes, and always packed. Most of the surrounding villages have bus stops. A lack of perspective is not an excuse.
Public transport (with acceptable intervals) is only (practically) feasible in densely populated areas, like cities and maybe the immediate surroundings. There's no chance every tiny village in the middle of bumfuck nowhere is gonna have even a resemblance of acceptable public transport. You'd need a driver to drive around all day where most trips are completely or mostly empty.
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My drive to work is 8 minutes. This morning i almost had a crash because a guy ran a stop sigh. I don't think the bar is very high at this point.
That's the beauty of it - we've only just begun to improve the situation. It's going to get better and better until eventually traffic accidents are a rarity.
