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It sounds like you've never lived in the southeast US? These conditions can occur on a daily basis in the summer, especially in Florida. "Pull over and stop" is
by Niten 8y ago
It sounds like you've never lived in the southeast US? These conditions can occur on a daily basis in the summer, especially in Florida. "Pull over and stop" isn't realistic advice here.
Humans can and do drive safely in these conditions, however, and it's a valid concern to point out that Waymo's West Coast-centric models might not yet be trained to handle these cases.
(To be clear, I don't doubt that machines will eventually surpass humans in whatever weather conditions, if they haven't already.)
- xapata 8y ago> safely I've seen people do all sorts of foolish things. When the rain is so hard that I can't see more than 15 feet, I pull over and stop.
- Retra 8y agoHow does a car know it can't see well?
- adrianN 8y agoIt uses its sensors. If the LIDAR shows only white noise it knows that it can't see well.
- Retra 8y agoWhite noise certainly isn't the only indicator that one can't see well.
- wool_gather 8y agoHow does a human know it can't see well?
- Retra 8y agoWell, that's a great question. It's also basically equivalent to the one that I asked. My point would be that I don't have an answer to that question, and given your response, I bet you don't either. Which leaves either of us at a loss when we try to create a safe and reliable autonomous vehicle. It's certainly not an unanswerable question. It's just quite hard to verify that they answer you have is a sufficiently correct one.
- xapata 8y ago> It's just quite hard to verify that they answer you have is a sufficiently correct one. Why? It seems to me that estimating the confidence of a prediction by the quality of measurements is not an infrequent machine learning task. It'd be more complex for a driving algorithm than calculating the confidence interval of a linear regression, but it's in the same theme.
- Retra 8y agoA computer can predict with 100% confidence if you give it few enough measurements. That doesn't mean it will make the correct decisions. You have to already know you're measuring the right things.
- xapata 8y agoIf you don't want it to do that, don't program it that way. Code it to assume some and to estimate the degree of mismeasurement.
- wool_gather 8y agoFair enough! You're absolutely right: I don't know the answer. I misinterpreted your post as suggesting/implying that there is no answer for a computer.
- pathseeker 8y agoNobody said anything about 15 feet but you. If you're pulling over in a normal heavy downpour with 500 ft of visibility, you're less safe than the people who continue to drive. Being pulled over to the side of any high-speed road is an unsafe condition that should be avoided. Self-driving cars would be putting lives at risk if they just pulled over and shutdown on every summer thunderstorm.
- xapata 8y agoWith 500 ft of visibility, the auto-steering/auto-propelled car shouldn't have any trouble either.
- josefresco 8y ago"These conditions can occur on a daily basis in the summer, especially in Florida" Can confirm, just spent 30 summer days in Florida. People don't pull over and stop, they just put on their "hazards" and slow down, sometimes to 25-30 MPH depending on the intensity of rain. This happens every single day.