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I would be curious to know what the car thought the situation was, something must have gone really wrong here. It ignored the double lines and crossed them to o

I would be curious to know what the car thought the situation was, something must have gone really wrong here. It ignored the double lines and crossed them to overtake and then stayed in the wrong lane for a really long time. If the car understood the state of the world around this, this is kind of a huge mistake in behaviour. And if it didn't it is concerning as well as it would mean it can end up in the opposite lane without knowing it. I would suspect maybe a bit of both, that it misunderstood the world when it started to overtake, and then was unable to abort the process safely. In that case I probably would have expected it to stop driving forwards and put on hazard warning lights as long as it is in the wrong lane.

axpy 3y ago
Everyone seems to be an expert on what to do in this situation. I would argue that it's not as trivial as it seems. Yes the waymo cars seems to be on the wrong side of the road for far too long but when surrounded with erratic uniwheeler, stopping is not necessarly the right thing to do either. As a human driver, i got into some strange situation where I had to play damage control because of an early bad decision. In a big city, not crossing the double yellow line mean you will probably end up stuck every block. I personally see this as a good example to learn from but not necessarly a reason to stop testing. I would also restrain from making any decision before seeing the actual data from the car cameras/lidar/radar system.
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Timshel 3y ago
What I find revealing is it utter inability to reset to a safe position. It stays in the wrong lane; is it because it can't rejoin because the lane is occupied by the unicyclist (looking at the video it does not appear to make efforts to go back) ? or because it has already forgotten the context and is now driving happily in a lane ... It only stopped when its path is blocked ...
gus_massa 3y ago
My guess is that the police car in the wrong lane confused the system. If a car is going in a direction, 99% of the time it's safe to follow the car and go in the same direction.
- GJim 3y ago
  This is the mentality that leads to multiple pile ups in fog, because every idiot is looking at the tail lights in front of them. FWIW: The driving test (at least in Blighty) teaches you to look as far down the road as you can, never to just do what the bloke in front is doing.
  - fallingknife 3y ago
    The problem with fog is that you can't see much past the person in front of you?
mchanson 3y ago
It’s kinda funny that the Waymo car is so impatient. I’m pretty sure in this situation I would have just waited until the group ride cleared out to ahead of me and then continued. I would not want to crowd or find my way around them. If I wanted to get past such a big group ride I would probably reroute onto another block since they would keep catching me at stop lights.
- tmearnest 3y ago
  Once I saw that Waymo rage pass all of those bicyclists, I knew we finally solved self driving cars.
  - ryandrake 3y ago
    Yea, I felt the same way. Even though that was an unsafe overtake, I think the Waymo definitely passed the Turing Test with flying colors there.
- steveBK123 3y ago
  What's weird is that Waymo seems generally biased to very conservative driving so see it do a random aggressive move is strange.
jfim 3y ago
One possible explanation would be that it detected the unicyclists as pedestrians, assumed that it would be able to overtake them, and was unable to do but kept trying to overtake them. Seems like a failure of their path planning in this case, the same way if someone were to try to overtake on a two lane road, one would have to abort the overtake if the vehicle one is trying to pass keeps on accelerating such that overtaking isn't safe anymore.

axpy 3y ago

Everyone seems to be an expert on what to do in this situation. I would argue that it's not as trivial as it seems. Yes the waymo cars seems to be on the wrong side of the road for far too long but when surrounded with erratic uniwheeler, stopping is not necessarly the right thing to do either. As a human driver, i got into some strange situation where I had to play damage control because of an early bad decision. In a big city, not crossing the double yellow line mean you will probably end up stuck every block. I personally see this as a good example to learn from but not necessarly a reason to stop testing. I would also restrain from making any decision before seeing the actual data from the car cameras/lidar/radar system.

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Timshel 3y ago

What I find revealing is it utter inability to reset to a safe position. It stays in the wrong lane; is it because it can't rejoin because the lane is occupied by the unicyclist (looking at the video it does not appear to make efforts to go back) ? or because it has already forgotten the context and is now driving happily in a lane ... It only stopped when its path is blocked ...

gus_massa 3y ago

My guess is that the police car in the wrong lane confused the system. If a car is going in a direction, 99% of the time it's safe to follow the car and go in the same direction.

GJim 3y ago
This is the mentality that leads to multiple pile ups in fog, because every idiot is looking at the tail lights in front of them. FWIW: The driving test (at least in Blighty) teaches you to look as far down the road as you can, never to just do what the bloke in front is doing.
- fallingknife 3y ago
  The problem with fog is that you can't see much past the person in front of you?

mchanson 3y ago

It’s kinda funny that the Waymo car is so impatient. I’m pretty sure in this situation I would have just waited until the group ride cleared out to ahead of me and then continued. I would not want to crowd or find my way around them. If I wanted to get past such a big group ride I would probably reroute onto another block since they would keep catching me at stop lights.

tmearnest 3y ago
Once I saw that Waymo rage pass all of those bicyclists, I knew we finally solved self driving cars.
- ryandrake 3y ago
  Yea, I felt the same way. Even though that was an unsafe overtake, I think the Waymo definitely passed the Turing Test with flying colors there.
steveBK123 3y ago
What's weird is that Waymo seems generally biased to very conservative driving so see it do a random aggressive move is strange.

jfim 3y ago

One possible explanation would be that it detected the unicyclists as pedestrians, assumed that it would be able to overtake them, and was unable to do but kept trying to overtake them. Seems like a failure of their path planning in this case, the same way if someone were to try to overtake on a two lane road, one would have to abort the overtake if the vehicle one is trying to pass keeps on accelerating such that overtaking isn't safe anymore.