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I saw a Waymo come to a screeching halt in a split second as a... less than intelligent individual... skateboarded in front of a bus, into the extremely busy ro
by pbarnes_1 3y ago
I saw a Waymo come to a screeching halt in a split second as a... less than intelligent individual... skateboarded in front of a bus, into the extremely busy road.
If it was a human that person would have been dead, no question.
Sometimes I'm riding in a Waymo (which I do every single day, 4x) and it does something, and I double take. Then a second later I see whatever it was it reacted to, and I'm like "dang, why did I doubt you, robotic overload?"
The best part is that it works the same way in the day time vs the night time.
Magic.
- mike_d 3y agoWaymo is amazing, knowing some of the stuff they do behind the scenes to ensure safety - I would feel safer riding in a Waymo than driving myself. My biggest fear has always been that Cruise or Tesla would shit the bed so bad we don't get any self-driving, either because of regulatory constraints or ruining the public perception of them.
- qeternity 3y ago> knowing some of the stuff they do behind the scenes to ensure safety Any info on this? I would love to learn more about what they're doing.
- xnx 3y agohttps://waymo.com/safety/ https://waymo.com/safety/ is probably your best resource. You can follow the links from there to learn about all the things they're doing with simulation, etc.
- ehsankia 3y agoAbsolutely. Glad California DMV is taking the more level headed approach here and evaluating them case by case based on merit.
- startupsfail 3y agoIn the case of that particular incident, it seems that the pedestrian was “thrown” into the lane with Cruise when it was hit by another (human) driver.
- yterdy 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- filoleg 3y agoAh yeah, when something doesn’t conform to your narrative, it surely is an astroturf. All coming from accounts that are many years old and have thousands of karma points that leave meaningful posts on all types of topics. But the second they post about Waymo in a positive light, that instantly means astroturfing and not their true opinion based on their lived experiences.
- BoorishBears 3y agoRealistically, there are a lot of Googlers and Xooglers on Hacker News. One of the messages in this thread is literally stating they have special knowledge of the behinds the scene workings of Waymo. I work in the AV space and I honestly don't think there's much of a competitive mentality between the companies in the space, but at the same time there is a tendency of people to psudeo-astroturf these brands: where they know someone working at the company and take great personal pride because "I know so and so who works on self-driving cars!"
- austhrow743 3y agoPeople taking it upon themselves to talk up a brand is the opposite of astroturfing, not pseudo-astroturfing.
- BoorishBears 3y agoWhen you're indirectly related to the brand and that's affecting your eagerness, it's something akin to astroturfing in why astroturfing is looked down on: ie. you're biased But it doesn't have the malice/intent of astroturfing.
- TuringNYC 3y agoCan any engineers in the field comment on whether the [very cool!] Waymo vs Cruise performance anecdotes being discussed here would have been the result of Google's millimeter-level scanning of SF? Or is it just better algos only? Or both?
- AustinDev 3y agoCruise vehicles have sufficient sensor payloads to produce a 'milimeter-level scanning of SF' with many fewer hours than they've been on the road there. I doubt that provides the biggest difference. It's all down the software at this point. Especially because they're not trying to do anything crazy like vision only.
- kbos87 3y agoWe keep hearing this is crazy, but is there evidence to back that up? At this point with hundreds of thousands of Tesla vehicles logging millions of miles a month, I feel like we’d be hearing non-stop reports of destruction on the highways if it really is as crazy as the average HN reader has been led to believe.
- trogdor 3y ago>with hundreds of thousands of Tesla vehicles logging millions of miles a month, I feel like we’d be hearing non-stop reports of destruction Why do you believe that Tesla vehicles are driving millions of miles a month on autopilot? I suspect that autopilot accounts for a vanishingly small percentage of Tesla miles-driven. Mostly because it sucks, but also because of how hard it is to not miss a nag on a long road trip, with the result that you are locked out of autopilot until your next stop. (Yes, even when paying attention to the road, with your hands on the wheel. Hell, autopilot locks you out if you exceed 85 mph for more than a few seconds by pressing the accelerator, such as when passing. This is true even in places where the speed limit is 85 mph, and the slower end of the flow of traffic is 95 mph.) I love the performance of my Model S Plaid. Autopilot, however, is a joke.
- 3y ago
- nonethewiser 3y ago> Waymo is amazing, knowing some of the stuff they do behind the scenes to ensure safety Such as?
- littlestymaar 3y ago> My biggest fear has always been that Cruise or Tesla would shit the bed so bad we don't get any self-driving, either because of regulatory constraints or ruining the public perception of them Exactly this. When I saw Tesla releasing their half-backed crap I feared they will damage the public perception so badly that we wouldn't have self-driving cars for years.
- coding123 3y agoI know most of it was PR but the stuff Waymo did about showing a test course they built and actually having "unit tests" related to driving showed me they're not dumping these things on the road to make money, they're trying to get it right. The competition: Uber kills someone and turns out they disabled "breaking due to objects in the way" because it makes it jerkier. Tesla is often killing the drivers because they marketed it as "auto-pilot" Cruise rolled over someone for 20 seconds. I would have to agree. I honestly hate regulatory capture in most industries, but perhaps Waymo's "unit tests" should be turned over to the DMV and made as the gold standard driving test for AI drivers.
- unshavedyak 3y agoI can't wait till those are generally available. I'd go out more if i could have a nice night and not have to deal with coming home later. Hell i live about 1.5h from Seattle and i never go because it's just awful (to me) dealing with cars there. If i could get a cab all the way there and back? Oh man, amazing. Or even park and ride would be nice. Cities seem so much more approachable to me if i don't need to drive them. It's a me-issue, for sure, but still.
- bhelkey 3y agoDoes Uber not fill this need today?
- unshavedyak 3y agoNo, at least not for me. As my other comment[1] mentions, there's enough friction with ubers that it's not an enjoyable experience. I'll use them in a pinch, but i avoid them if possible. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38012649 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38012649
- fhub 3y agoThe current ride pricing feels about 10-20% less than an Uber in SF - but I haven't really checked properly. So don't expect the rideshare product (Waymo One) to be a super cheap option.
- gmassman 3y agoThis morning my coworkers rode in together in a Waymo. One told me it was $16 while an Uber would have been $35.
- fhub 3y agoFrom my personal experience they are priced cheaper for all rides. But rarely that much cheaper - perhaps a surge time? The variable that differs is time to pickup. I've found Waymo is generally pretty good for me in off-peak times - perhaps on average 2-3 minutes further away on average. But I have got the odd "20 minutes away" and I then just order an Uber. But I will always pick a Waymo over an Uber if they are the same distance away. I love playing my own music and just being in my own world without another human to consider. It is truly a relaxing commute.
- gerdesj 3y agoGood grief, two skateboarders lives saved by a Waymo in two consecutive comments. A couple of weeks ago I came across a biker partially lying in the road, trapped by his bike. I parked my van at an angle, so if it was hit from behind it should roll past him. I jumped out and performed an assessment (I'm a qualified, OK: certificated first aider). I diagnosed "pissed" and ascertained he was unharmed. We got his bike in the back of the van with the help of some concerned pedestrians who initially thought I'd hit him. I drove him home. I'm not sure a machine would have noticed an odd lump next to a lamppost, with a civic rubbish bin next to it, in the rain. What sort of sensors do these Waymo things have? They will have to be really, really clever and seriously expensive. I don't deny that eventually a vehicle with enough decent sensors and some fancy processing will outperform me but I've managed 30+ years on the road with just a few scratches, a broken wing mirror and a rear ending from an articulated lorry. I've managed to return a hire car around Napoli (Italy) after a couple of weeks without any issues! That may not sound too impressive but have a look at the state of vehicles around St Antonio Abate etc - it looks like the locals play bumper cars. May I also note that I'm a Brit and we drive on the left. Italians don't. So I can adapt to local conditions. I have also driven across large parts of the rest of Europe and the north Americas. I can adapt to local driving styles from the "use your entire car as the indicator" as seen in the Amalfi coastal area (int al) to "no after you" as you tend to see in large parts of the UK and Eire. I can deal with all the different regulations. A classic European one you don't see elsewhere is the white diamond sign with a yellow centre that indicates that you have right of way until it is cancelled with black stripes. Then there is the French "priority to the right" thing (which has also pervaded the UK somewhat wrt roundabouts). I can negotiate this with ease: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5628345,-1.7713341,110m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5628345,-1.7713341,110m/da... and this on a wing and a prayer: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@48.8654026,2.3222455,464m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@48.8654026,2.3222455,464m/dat... I'd love to see a Weymo navigate those.
- fhub 3y agoI do want to clarify that my comment: the skateboarder would not have died. Waymo provided a larger margin of error for the board rider than a human could possibly have.
- mlcrypto 3y agoOr maybe they know they can do anything in front of the car because it will always yield. It will be interesting to see the game theory develop when most of the roads are full of driverless cars so you can gain an edge on the road risk free
- kbos87 3y agoI don’t know about “do anything in front of the car”… it’s still a several thousand pound mass that isn’t exempt from the laws of physics… but I for one would be MUCH more willing to be a cyclist on the road if most of the cars were autonomous vehicles behaving within the letter of the law.
- ramblerman 3y agoI wonder if this will become new pedestrian behavior? Once people learn that waymo will stop for them no matter what they can just cross in front of it.
- CalRobert 3y agoHuman drivers are supposed to stop too.
- alfla 3y agos/overload/overlord
- Zetobal 3y agoYou are on a technology forum you should know better than call it magic, it's talent and sweat.
- bumby 3y agoYes, but. Attributing every great outcome to "talent and sweat" is dangerous in safety critical domains. Often it's (at least partly) luck, and missing that distinction (combined with a lot of human biases) can make a team confuse "being lucky" with "being good". The problem with luck is it tends to eventually run out.
- HumblyTossed 3y agoSurely, some of those "double take(s)" are because you're not driving and thus, not on alert like you would/should/better be if you were driving.