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> In July, a Waymo in Tempe, Arizona, braked to avoid hitting a downed branch, leading to a three-car pileup. > In August, a Waymo at an intersection “began to

by nlh 3y ago

> In July, a Waymo in Tempe, Arizona, braked to avoid hitting a downed branch, leading to a three-car pileup. > In August, a Waymo at an intersection “began to proceed forward” but then “slowed to a stop” and was hit from behind by an SUV. > In October, a Waymo vehicle in Chandler, Arizona, was traveling in the left lane when it detected another vehicle approaching from behind at high speed. The Waymo tried to accelerate to avoid a collision but got hit from behind. It’s worth noting that all 3 of these incidents involve a Waymo getting hit from behind, which is the other driver’s fault even if the Waymo acted “unexpectedly”. This is very very good news for them.

jmckib 3y ago
That last one is impressive, most humans probably wouldn’t pull it off. And just imagine when all the cars on the road are self-driving, probably none of these accidents would’ve happened.
- x86x87 3y ago
  Not if we have teslas!!!
  - shepherdjerred 3y ago
    Why not? Has Tesla had similar incidents?
    - JoshCole 3y ago
      I've been in a self-driving Tesla vehicle. After hours on the interstate, the person ahead of me slammed on their brakes suddenly. I was caught off guard, not expecting it, and may have crashed by not reacting in time. The Tesla braked. So I have anecdotal experience that the person you're asking for an answer isn't well informed on how Tesla's respond to this type of accident. Of course, anecdotal evidence isn't a very high standard. Thankfully, statistics on this sort of thing are tracked. Statistically, the Tesla self-driving features reduce accidents per mile. They have for years now and as the tech has progressed the reduction has grown as the technology has matured. So statistical evidence also indicates that the person you are asking the question to is also uninformed. What is probably happening is that it makes for good clickbait to involve Elon and Tesla into discussions. Moreover, successful content online often provokes emotion. The resulting preponderance of negativity, especially about each driving accident Teslas were involved in or caused, probably tricked them into misunderstanding the reality of the Tesla safety record.
      - jryan49 3y ago
        90% of new cars can do this, it's called AEB. It's not a Tesla self driving feature.
      - bluGill 3y ago
        > Statistically, the Tesla self-driving features reduce accidents per mile While that is the claim, I've never seen an independent analysis of the data. There are reasons to believe that Tesla drivers are not average. I don't know if what claims are true, which is why I want independent analysis of the data so that factors I didn't think of can be controlled for.
      - x86x87 3y ago
        My Subaru from 2018 can do this. It's not rocket system and most cars nowadays have a collision detection system. This is not a slef-driving capability by any means.
    - mrguyorama 3y ago
      Teslas keep ramming into parked vehicles on the side of the road, including emergency vehicles. So when a waymo car stops because it doesn't know how to safely proceed, the Teslas might just plow into it.
    - x86x87 3y ago
      Nope. We'll keep having accidents if everything is self driving as long as we keep Tesla in the mix.
globular-toast 3y ago
I don't even get why these count as negatives against Waymo. There's nothing it can do to stop idiot humans driving too closely or just driving into it.
- cj 3y ago
  Before jumping to conclusions, are we sure these Waymos hit from behind didn't awkwardly and randomly stop in the middle of a busy intersection (where no sane human driver would)? I know YouTube videos aren't always representative of reality, but there are some videos of these cars randomly driving extremely slowly in very busy intersections which might be a contributing factor to getting rear-ended, even if it's not Waymo's "fault" from an insurance perspective.
  - globular-toast 3y ago
    Doesn't matter. If you drive into a slow-moving or stationary object then it's your fault in every sense. If you are driving too closely and are not ready to react to the vehicle in front doing an emergency stop for any reason then it's your fault in every sense. Most human drivers I observe are taking huge chances every single day. I see them drive at speed around corners they can't see around fully, driving far too closely to cars front, using their phone etc. They get lucky but it's only a matter of time before they have accidents. The three incidents recorded here are simply due to three humans' luck running out.
  - mikestew 3y ago
    Before jumping to conclusions... Nah, I'm jumping straight to this conclusion: if you hit something in front of you that didn't leap out in front of you at the last second, you fucked up. The object that you hit was erratically slowing and speeding up? You should have left more room to allow for the unpredictability. It was raining, can't see, the roads are slick? Leave more room in front of you. Yes, I way too often don't do that, either. But if there's something in the road ahead of me, and I hit it? Man, there are few scenarios where I can claim that there was nothing I could do. And in the case of a full-sized vehicle in front of me, I don't care how erratically it's driving, don't run into the back of it.
dataflow 3y ago
I feel like that doesn't paint the whole picture. I'm guessing incidents like [1] don't make it into those stats: > The safety driver unwittingly turned off the car’s self-driving software by touching the gas pedal. He failed to assume control of the steering wheel, and the Pacifica crashed into the highway median. Why are these not counted? Are they really looking at their car crashes, or just autonomous driving software being in control during those car crashes? Maybe they want to argue the software is safe, but that doesn't change the fact that I'd still be scared of getting into that car. [1] https://qz.com/1410928/waymos-self-driving-car-crashed-because-its-human-driver-fell-asleep https://qz.com/1410928/waymos-self-driving-car-crashed-becau...
- NoahKAndrews 3y ago
  I believe these stats only cover the miles where there was no safety driver.
  - 5- 3y ago
    i.e., every accident where a split second before the collision the control system yields control to the safety driver is not accounted for in these stats?
    - londons_explore 3y ago
      Correct, but they also aren't including self driving miles where there is a safety driver in the driving seat, so it's fair.
    - lillecarl 3y ago
      Waymo is not Tesla, they're actually building self-driving cars.
- HALtheWise 3y ago
  This seems like an argument that you should be more worried about getting in a Waymo if there is a safety driver than if there isn't. If so, that would definitely be an interesting conclusion.
fdr 3y ago
It seems like these accidents could have been prevented by humans driving cars with collision avoidance. I'm a big fan of this feature on my relatively late-model Subaru, which tends to come part-and-parcel with adaptive cruise control, which is also quite a positive change in experience driving. I recently rented an even later-model Malibu that only had collision warning auditory alert. Better than nothing, but I'm surprised cars are still made without automatic braking.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  Or just human drivers leaving enough room to brake in.
  - shepherdjerred 3y ago
    Human drivers being poor at driving is why self-driving cars exist. See: driving under the influence, distracted driving, aggressive drivers.
- closewith 3y ago
  > Better than nothing, but I'm surprised cars are still made without automatic braking. In the EU, at least, since May 2022, all new cars do have automatic emergency braking, along with intelligent speed assistance; alcohol interlock installation facilitation; driver drowsiness and attention warning; advanced driver distraction warning; emergency stop signal; reversing detection; and event data recorder (“black box”). Other features like eCall – a built-in automated emergency call for assistance in a road accident – have been mandatory since March 2018.
  - nightski 3y ago
    Sigh, EU cares about your privacy until it doesn't. These are data collection and monitoring nightmares. Big brother here we come.
    - closewith 3y ago
bumby 3y ago
>Waymo getting hit from behind, which is the other driver’s fault even if the Waymo acted “unexpectedly”. Yes, but...there is something else to be said here. One of the things we have evolved to do, without necessarily appreciating it, is to intuit the behavior of other humans through the theory-of-mind. If AVs consistent act "unexpectedly", this injects a lot more uncertainty into the system, especially when interacting with other humans. "Acting unexpectedly" is one of the aspects that makes dealing with mentally ill people anxiety-producing. I don't think most of us would automatically want to share the roads with a bunch of mentally ill drivers, even if, statistically, they were better than neurotypical drivers. There's something to be said about these scenarios regarding trust being derived from understanding what someone else is likely thinking. Edit: the other aspect that needs to be said is that tech in society is governed by policy. People don't generally just accept policy based on statistical arguments. If you think that you can expect people to accept policies that allow AVs without addressing the trust issue, it might be a painful ride.
- closewith 3y ago
  > I don't think most of us would automatically want to share the roads with a bunch of mentally ill drivers, even if, statistically, they were better than neurotypical drivers. I've got some bad news for you.
  - kelseyfrog 3y ago
    Is it that 1 in 5 adults in the US live with mental illness[1]? 1. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/mental-illness https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/mental-illness
- sounds 3y ago
  Try replacing "acting unexpectedly" in your thought process (which superficially I agree with) with the words "acting safely." It remains to be seen if autonomous driving systems are actually safe. But if the other driver does something that is safe, there's then an onus on the first driver to have accounted for that.
dsizzle 3y ago
All this focus on Waymo supposedly acting "unexpectedly" but I don't see that word in the original article, and the statistics here implies the opposite -- Waymo gets in fewer accidents overall! Also, only the 2nd item is even consistent with Waymo behaving unexpectedly (we're not given enough info to know why it stopped). In the first item, the "unexpected" thing is the branch, not the behavior (stopping), and in the third Waymo's behavior didn't contribute to the accident at all -- instead it nearly avoided it despite the other car's bad driving.
raible 3y ago
Getting rear-ended is almost always the other driver's fault, but 7 years ago I was involved in a serious accident (minor injuries, both cars totaled) when the driver in the fast lane decided to pull over and pick up a hitchhiker. Crossed over two lanes, hard on the brakes, and I had no chance to even get off the gas. The responsibility was 100% his because of "an unsafe lane change".
- LorenPechtel 3y ago
  Yup, this is the primary case where the rear vehicle isn't at fault. You change lanes into a lane that's moving faster and get hit, you were wrong even if they hit you from behind.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    If it can be proven. 25 years ago a scam was where someone would suddenly change lanes to be rear ended like that, then claim "back pain" and sue for a lot of $$$. I don't know how common it was, but when there are not witnesses the courts tend to side with the person being rear ended.
    - zirgs 3y ago
      And this is why you should have a dashcam in your car.
    - seadan83 3y ago
      Often there were two cars in that scam. One to first follow really close so you are both distracted and reluctant to stop hard.
throwaway2037 3y ago
Hit from behind is a classic blunder. Almost always, it means the other driver was following too closely or not paying attention. Since all of these accidents happened in the US, is the driver that hits from behind normally responsible for the accident? (For a moment, let's exclude predatory behavior where the front driver is doing something toxic, like intentionally pump-breaking on a high speed road to induce a hit-from-behind accident.)
pritambarhate 3y ago
It “is” the drivers fault who hits from behind. It’s their responsibility to maintain a safe distance required for breaking in such situations.
photonbeam 3y ago
That makes the waymo sound like a moving bollard, fault or not, I will smash into the back of you if you brake-test me
- sagarm 3y ago
  Typically, you would be considered responsible for damages for not keeping a safe following distance.
lelanthran 3y ago
> It’s worth noting that all 3 of these incidents involve a Waymo getting hit from behind, which is the other driver’s fault even if the Waymo acted “unexpectedly”. This is very very good news for them. How so? If human drivers did unexpected stuff like brake for no reason, we'd have a lot more accidents. I think this just highlights how much better humans are at cooperating on the road compared to automated systems.
tdsanchez 3y ago
I've watched Waymo cars, multiple times, from a traffic-lighted intersection, as the lead vehicle, from the left lane, stop 100% when the light it green until other cars pass in frustration and then cross 4 lanes to make the next RIGHT turn. Traffic disruption with Waymos is UNDOCUMENTED and a real thing.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

by nlh 3y ago

jmckib 3y ago

That last one is impressive, most humans probably wouldn’t pull it off. And just imagine when all the cars on the road are self-driving, probably none of these accidents would’ve happened.

x86x87 3y ago
Not if we have teslas!!!
- shepherdjerred 3y ago
  Why not? Has Tesla had similar incidents?
  - JoshCole 3y ago
    I've been in a self-driving Tesla vehicle. After hours on the interstate, the person ahead of me slammed on their brakes suddenly. I was caught off guard, not expecting it, and may have crashed by not reacting in time. The Tesla braked. So I have anecdotal experience that the person you're asking for an answer isn't well informed on how Tesla's respond to this type of accident. Of course, anecdotal evidence isn't a very high standard. Thankfully, statistics on this sort of thing are tracked. Statistically, the Tesla self-driving features reduce accidents per mile. They have for years now and as the tech has progressed the reduction has grown as the technology has matured. So statistical evidence also indicates that the person you are asking the question to is also uninformed. What is probably happening is that it makes for good clickbait to involve Elon and Tesla into discussions. Moreover, successful content online often provokes emotion. The resulting preponderance of negativity, especially about each driving accident Teslas were involved in or caused, probably tricked them into misunderstanding the reality of the Tesla safety record.
    - jryan49 3y ago
      90% of new cars can do this, it's called AEB. It's not a Tesla self driving feature.
    - bluGill 3y ago
      > Statistically, the Tesla self-driving features reduce accidents per mile While that is the claim, I've never seen an independent analysis of the data. There are reasons to believe that Tesla drivers are not average. I don't know if what claims are true, which is why I want independent analysis of the data so that factors I didn't think of can be controlled for.
    - x86x87 3y ago
      My Subaru from 2018 can do this. It's not rocket system and most cars nowadays have a collision detection system. This is not a slef-driving capability by any means.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    Teslas keep ramming into parked vehicles on the side of the road, including emergency vehicles. So when a waymo car stops because it doesn't know how to safely proceed, the Teslas might just plow into it.
  - x86x87 3y ago
    Nope. We'll keep having accidents if everything is self driving as long as we keep Tesla in the mix.

globular-toast 3y ago

I don't even get why these count as negatives against Waymo. There's nothing it can do to stop idiot humans driving too closely or just driving into it.

cj 3y ago
Before jumping to conclusions, are we sure these Waymos hit from behind didn't awkwardly and randomly stop in the middle of a busy intersection (where no sane human driver would)? I know YouTube videos aren't always representative of reality, but there are some videos of these cars randomly driving extremely slowly in very busy intersections which might be a contributing factor to getting rear-ended, even if it's not Waymo's "fault" from an insurance perspective.
- globular-toast 3y ago
  Doesn't matter. If you drive into a slow-moving or stationary object then it's your fault in every sense. If you are driving too closely and are not ready to react to the vehicle in front doing an emergency stop for any reason then it's your fault in every sense. Most human drivers I observe are taking huge chances every single day. I see them drive at speed around corners they can't see around fully, driving far too closely to cars front, using their phone etc. They get lucky but it's only a matter of time before they have accidents. The three incidents recorded here are simply due to three humans' luck running out.
- mikestew 3y ago
  Before jumping to conclusions... Nah, I'm jumping straight to this conclusion: if you hit something in front of you that didn't leap out in front of you at the last second, you fucked up. The object that you hit was erratically slowing and speeding up? You should have left more room to allow for the unpredictability. It was raining, can't see, the roads are slick? Leave more room in front of you. Yes, I way too often don't do that, either. But if there's something in the road ahead of me, and I hit it? Man, there are few scenarios where I can claim that there was nothing I could do. And in the case of a full-sized vehicle in front of me, I don't care how erratically it's driving, don't run into the back of it.

dataflow 3y ago

I feel like that doesn't paint the whole picture. I'm guessing incidents like [1] don't make it into those stats: > The safety driver unwittingly turned off the car’s self-driving software by touching the gas pedal. He failed to assume control of the steering wheel, and the Pacifica crashed into the highway median. Why are these not counted? Are they really looking at their car crashes, or just autonomous driving software being in control during those car crashes? Maybe they want to argue the software is safe, but that doesn't change the fact that I'd still be scared of getting into that car. [1] https://qz.com/1410928/waymos-self-driving-car-crashed-because-its-human-driver-fell-asleep https://qz.com/1410928/waymos-self-driving-car-crashed-becau...

NoahKAndrews 3y ago
I believe these stats only cover the miles where there was no safety driver.
- 5- 3y ago
  i.e., every accident where a split second before the collision the control system yields control to the safety driver is not accounted for in these stats?
  - londons_explore 3y ago
    Correct, but they also aren't including self driving miles where there is a safety driver in the driving seat, so it's fair.
  - lillecarl 3y ago
    Waymo is not Tesla, they're actually building self-driving cars.
HALtheWise 3y ago
This seems like an argument that you should be more worried about getting in a Waymo if there is a safety driver than if there isn't. If so, that would definitely be an interesting conclusion.

fdr 3y ago

It seems like these accidents could have been prevented by humans driving cars with collision avoidance. I'm a big fan of this feature on my relatively late-model Subaru, which tends to come part-and-parcel with adaptive cruise control, which is also quite a positive change in experience driving. I recently rented an even later-model Malibu that only had collision warning auditory alert. Better than nothing, but I'm surprised cars are still made without automatic braking.

robertlagrant 3y ago
Or just human drivers leaving enough room to brake in.
- shepherdjerred 3y ago
  Human drivers being poor at driving is why self-driving cars exist. See: driving under the influence, distracted driving, aggressive drivers.
closewith 3y ago
> Better than nothing, but I'm surprised cars are still made without automatic braking. In the EU, at least, since May 2022, all new cars do have automatic emergency braking, along with intelligent speed assistance; alcohol interlock installation facilitation; driver drowsiness and attention warning; advanced driver distraction warning; emergency stop signal; reversing detection; and event data recorder (“black box”). Other features like eCall – a built-in automated emergency call for assistance in a road accident – have been mandatory since March 2018.
- nightski 3y ago
  Sigh, EU cares about your privacy until it doesn't. These are data collection and monitoring nightmares. Big brother here we come.
  - closewith 3y ago

bumby 3y ago

>Waymo getting hit from behind, which is the other driver’s fault even if the Waymo acted “unexpectedly”. Yes, but...there is something else to be said here. One of the things we have evolved to do, without necessarily appreciating it, is to intuit the behavior of other humans through the theory-of-mind. If AVs consistent act "unexpectedly", this injects a lot more uncertainty into the system, especially when interacting with other humans. "Acting unexpectedly" is one of the aspects that makes dealing with mentally ill people anxiety-producing. I don't think most of us would automatically want to share the roads with a bunch of mentally ill drivers, even if, statistically, they were better than neurotypical drivers. There's something to be said about these scenarios regarding trust being derived from understanding what someone else is likely thinking. Edit: the other aspect that needs to be said is that tech in society is governed by policy. People don't generally just accept policy based on statistical arguments. If you think that you can expect people to accept policies that allow AVs without addressing the trust issue, it might be a painful ride.

closewith 3y ago
> I don't think most of us would automatically want to share the roads with a bunch of mentally ill drivers, even if, statistically, they were better than neurotypical drivers. I've got some bad news for you.
- kelseyfrog 3y ago
  Is it that 1 in 5 adults in the US live with mental illness[1]? 1. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/mental-illness https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/mental-illness
sounds 3y ago
Try replacing "acting unexpectedly" in your thought process (which superficially I agree with) with the words "acting safely." It remains to be seen if autonomous driving systems are actually safe. But if the other driver does something that is safe, there's then an onus on the first driver to have accounted for that.

dsizzle 3y ago

All this focus on Waymo supposedly acting "unexpectedly" but I don't see that word in the original article, and the statistics here implies the opposite -- Waymo gets in fewer accidents overall! Also, only the 2nd item is even consistent with Waymo behaving unexpectedly (we're not given enough info to know why it stopped). In the first item, the "unexpected" thing is the branch, not the behavior (stopping), and in the third Waymo's behavior didn't contribute to the accident at all -- instead it nearly avoided it despite the other car's bad driving.

raible 3y ago

Getting rear-ended is almost always the other driver's fault, but 7 years ago I was involved in a serious accident (minor injuries, both cars totaled) when the driver in the fast lane decided to pull over and pick up a hitchhiker. Crossed over two lanes, hard on the brakes, and I had no chance to even get off the gas. The responsibility was 100% his because of "an unsafe lane change".

LorenPechtel 3y ago
Yup, this is the primary case where the rear vehicle isn't at fault. You change lanes into a lane that's moving faster and get hit, you were wrong even if they hit you from behind.
- bluGill 3y ago
  If it can be proven. 25 years ago a scam was where someone would suddenly change lanes to be rear ended like that, then claim "back pain" and sue for a lot of $$$. I don't know how common it was, but when there are not witnesses the courts tend to side with the person being rear ended.
  - zirgs 3y ago
    And this is why you should have a dashcam in your car.
  - seadan83 3y ago
    Often there were two cars in that scam. One to first follow really close so you are both distracted and reluctant to stop hard.

throwaway2037 3y ago

Hit from behind is a classic blunder. Almost always, it means the other driver was following too closely or not paying attention. Since all of these accidents happened in the US, is the driver that hits from behind normally responsible for the accident? (For a moment, let's exclude predatory behavior where the front driver is doing something toxic, like intentionally pump-breaking on a high speed road to induce a hit-from-behind accident.)

pritambarhate 3y ago

It “is” the drivers fault who hits from behind. It’s their responsibility to maintain a safe distance required for breaking in such situations.

photonbeam 3y ago

That makes the waymo sound like a moving bollard, fault or not, I will smash into the back of you if you brake-test me

sagarm 3y ago
Typically, you would be considered responsible for damages for not keeping a safe following distance.

lelanthran 3y ago

> It’s worth noting that all 3 of these incidents involve a Waymo getting hit from behind, which is the other driver’s fault even if the Waymo acted “unexpectedly”. This is very very good news for them. How so? If human drivers did unexpected stuff like brake for no reason, we'd have a lot more accidents. I think this just highlights how much better humans are at cooperating on the road compared to automated systems.

tdsanchez 3y ago

I've watched Waymo cars, multiple times, from a traffic-lighted intersection, as the lead vehicle, from the left lane, stop 100% when the light it green until other cars pass in frustration and then cross 4 lanes to make the next RIGHT turn. Traffic disruption with Waymos is UNDOCUMENTED and a real thing.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]