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A disengagement doesn't necessarily mean that the car would have crashed. There are amusing disengagement stories such as a cyclist doing a track stand, causing

by chroma 7y ago

A disengagement doesn't necessarily mean that the car would have crashed. There are amusing disengagement stories such as a cyclist doing a track stand, causing the car to get stuck.[1] Many disengagements are false positives. Think of how often you've had to do the equivalent to human drivers by telling them to slow down or watch out. For me it's certainly more often than every 11,000 miles. Given that humans aren't great drivers, you'd think that after 10 million miles Waymo would be at fault for some crashes. But only one of Waymo's crashes was even partially their fault. One of their cars was moving at 2mph to get around some sandbags in the road and hit a muni bus that was trying to squeeze by at 15mph.[2] Waymo has since tweaked their software to account for aggressive bus drivers. That's over 10 million miles and only one collision that was even partially their fault. That sounds pretty safe to me. And regarding weather: Though their pilot program is in Phoenix, Waymo doesn't just drive in places with nice weather. They've been testing in Michigan for the past 2 winters. 1. https://forums.roadbikereview.com/general-cycling-discussion/encounter-google-car-today-349240.html https://forums.roadbikereview.com/general-cycling-discussion... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waymo#Crashes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waymo#Crashes

rayiner 7y ago
A disengagement generally measures when a human test driver had to take control. It’s not just telling a human driver to watch out—it’s taking the wheel from them. They wouldn’t necessarily lead to a crash, but there is a pretty good chance they would. If even 10% of disengagement’s would’ve led to a collision, you’re still not close to a good human driver. One crash in 10 million miles isn’t as great as it sounds. First, it’s a meaningless number because a human is intervening every 11,000 miles. It’s not a true measurement of what a purely autonomous collision rate would be. Second, humans crash once in every 500,000 miles, and that’s under the full gamut of circumstances (drunk drivers, unfamiliar roads, teenagers, etc). Waymo is running with trained drivers on thoroughly mapped test areas in a place with easy traffic and weather. You’d expect humans doing nothing but running the same routes over and over in that carefully geofenced area to do better than one collision per 500,000 miles. (Especially with someone looking over their shoulder, like the self driving car is doing!) If you look at the improvement in disengagement rates it’s not particularly compelling: https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*oX-ykZtxiMiuguSowQgGwg.png https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*oX-ykZtxiMiuguSow.... They’ve improved by a factor of 6-7 since 2015, but most of that was 2015-2016. That suggests the pace of improvement is getting slower.
YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago
>> A disengagement doesn't necessarily mean that the car would have crashed. Conversely, lack of disengagement doesn't mean that the car is driving safely. There is simply no way to know how close to an accident a car came, without the human driver having to take control. Like I say above, disengagements don't really tell us anything about the car's real world driving ability. They're just a silly proxy mandated by bureaucracy, and only a very weak measure of real progress.

by chroma 7y ago

rayiner 7y ago

A disengagement generally measures when a human test driver had to take control. It’s not just telling a human driver to watch out—it’s taking the wheel from them. They wouldn’t necessarily lead to a crash, but there is a pretty good chance they would. If even 10% of disengagement’s would’ve led to a collision, you’re still not close to a good human driver. One crash in 10 million miles isn’t as great as it sounds. First, it’s a meaningless number because a human is intervening every 11,000 miles. It’s not a true measurement of what a purely autonomous collision rate would be. Second, humans crash once in every 500,000 miles, and that’s under the full gamut of circumstances (drunk drivers, unfamiliar roads, teenagers, etc). Waymo is running with trained drivers on thoroughly mapped test areas in a place with easy traffic and weather. You’d expect humans doing nothing but running the same routes over and over in that carefully geofenced area to do better than one collision per 500,000 miles. (Especially with someone looking over their shoulder, like the self driving car is doing!) If you look at the improvement in disengagement rates it’s not particularly compelling: https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*oX-ykZtxiMiuguSowQgGwg.png https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*oX-ykZtxiMiuguSow.... They’ve improved by a factor of 6-7 since 2015, but most of that was 2015-2016. That suggests the pace of improvement is getting slower.

YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago

>> A disengagement doesn't necessarily mean that the car would have crashed. Conversely, lack of disengagement doesn't mean that the car is driving safely. There is simply no way to know how close to an accident a car came, without the human driver having to take control. Like I say above, disengagements don't really tell us anything about the car's real world driving ability. They're just a silly proxy mandated by bureaucracy, and only a very weak measure of real progress.