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While it’s still a drop in the bucket compared to human driven taxis, it’s remarkable that Waymo will like reach 50 million passenger only miles this year. And

While it’s still a drop in the bucket compared to human driven taxis, it’s remarkable that Waymo will like reach 50 million passenger only miles this year. And will surpass 100 million passenger only miles sometime in 2025. With that much data the safety case should become very clear.

greenthrow 2y ago
Except that they have remote humans monitoring every vehicle so the whole thing is an illusion and we don't know the truth of how safe truly autonomous vehicles are (since they don't exist.)
- kajecounterhack 2y ago
  1:1 remote human monitoring would not scale from a unit economics perspective, and even if they did that, the remote operators can't drive the car, only offer small feedbacks. So the car is really driving itself. The safety story is an interesting one. Companies like Cruise and Waymo are not forthcoming with their incident data. They share infrequently and through spreadsheets that do not capture every incident. It's pretty ass, and I'd be wary of trusting their self-reported data. I imagine their insurance companies have slightly better data than the gov't, but even then maybe not.
  - jessriedel 2y ago
    Spreadsheets are the best and most open way to share data because it lets other people analyze it. But they put out plenty of their own research if you want to read that. I'm really not sure what you mean by "infrequently". They release new raw data every 3 or 6 months or something, and every single accident is trumpeted in the news. What other industry has more publicly accessible safety data?
    - kajecounterhack 2y ago
      Every software release is a totally new driver. If they release software at a cadence of say, 6 or 8 weeks, would you feel comfortable riding? You don't know how safe the car was during that time -- any part of the driver can regress. You're basically trusting that they know how to do simulation, that they bore the cost of running that simulation, and that their simulator is realistic enough to yield trustworthy statistics. Sadly, our regulatory agencies are currently set up for very delayed decisionmaking. Since every company can release software at any time, you could imagine a regulatory platform that tracks software releases and their corresponding safety statistics in real time.
      - jessriedel 2y ago
        I’m quite confident in it and personally ride it monthly. Happy to bet it will turn out to be no more than twice as dangerous as the median driver today, ie, as dangerous as driving in the 1980s. In the long term it will be vastly safer, obviously.
        kajecounterhack 2y ago
        I'm glad you feel that way (and I mostly feel the same / ride Waymos frequently), but it doesn't change the reality that you're putting all your faith in a self-regulating company that does not cooperate with regulators more than it absolutely needs to, and where a change in leadership / safety culture / process can cause a catastrophe overnight. And this isn't hyperbole; 1 software push is all that separates a car that crashes in scenario X from one where it was found to not crash in that same scenario. Do you trust the code to be bug free? Do you trust the bugs to be discovered before they maybe kill you? I have a vested interest in the success of AVs (worked in the industry for the better part of a decade) but the companies building them are far from perfect in terms of how they conduct themselves wrt safety. There needs to be some development in terms of the supporting tech. The way I think about this is: planes came before the FAA and key technologies that we use to manage flights, such as radar and radio being used in conjunction. AVs are in their "just learned to fly" era.
        2y ago
- irjustin 2y ago
  > Except that they have remote humans monitoring every vehicle so the whole thing is an illusion I think this argues the opposite of what you think it does. Monitoring != driving and if you had humans pesudo driving, the experience would be insanely bad cuz the human would be interjecting way too much.
  - greenthrow 2y ago
    We don't know how often the humans interject. That's my whole point. It's an illusion that the car is operating alone. When I drive a Tesla on FSD i only need to interject periodically, but it's enough that the car cannot be called autonomous IMHO. How many remote human supervisors are needed for Waymo vehicles? How often do they interject? Without that data it is absurd to call Waymo autonomous.
    - foota 2y ago
      Waymo operators do not ever drive the vehicle. My understanding is that Waymo operators can specify things like "take this path" (e.g., by drawing on a map or something) or "yes that's safe" but this doesn't correspond to the actual driving inputs.
      - greenthrow 2y ago
        I'd appreciate if they were open and honest about the reality of how they operate. But since they keep it very secret, I have no choice but to assume the worst. If it was impressive rathee than detrimental to their valuation, they'd be open about it.
        the-rc 2y ago
        Except that they don't keep it very secret: https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response/ https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response/ "the autonomous driver can reach out to a human fleet response agent for additional information to contextualize its environment. The Waymo Driver does not rely solely on the inputs it receives from the fleet response agent and it is in control of the vehicle at all times. As the Waymo Driver waits for input from fleet response, and even after receiving it, the Waymo Driver continues using available information to inform its decisions. This is important because, given the dynamic conditions on the road, the environment around the car can change, which either remedies the situation or influences how the Waymo Driver should proceed. In fact, the vast majority of such situations are resolved, without assistance, by the Waymo Driver." But let's assume they're lying and you're right: what kind of throughput and latency do you expect to be required between the car and the remote driver for this to work safely? How does the car know if the remote driver is actually looking at the data and acting on that? What happens if the connection stutters? Does the car take control again? How would it decide when to alternate between remote and local control? What if the two sides disagree on what to do?
jessriedel 2y ago
If you mean actual taxis in San Francisco, it's not a drop in the bucket. There are 1,800 taxis and compared to 300 Waymos, and the latter have a much higher duty cycle. It's true that the number of Uber/Lyft is a lot higher, something like 40k drivers (who work a widely varying number of hours per week). Yes, the 100M miles scale is very important, because that's about how many miles humans drive until they cause a death.

greenthrow 2y ago

Except that they have remote humans monitoring every vehicle so the whole thing is an illusion and we don't know the truth of how safe truly autonomous vehicles are (since they don't exist.)

kajecounterhack 2y ago
1:1 remote human monitoring would not scale from a unit economics perspective, and even if they did that, the remote operators can't drive the car, only offer small feedbacks. So the car is really driving itself. The safety story is an interesting one. Companies like Cruise and Waymo are not forthcoming with their incident data. They share infrequently and through spreadsheets that do not capture every incident. It's pretty ass, and I'd be wary of trusting their self-reported data. I imagine their insurance companies have slightly better data than the gov't, but even then maybe not.
- jessriedel 2y ago
  Spreadsheets are the best and most open way to share data because it lets other people analyze it. But they put out plenty of their own research if you want to read that. I'm really not sure what you mean by "infrequently". They release new raw data every 3 or 6 months or something, and every single accident is trumpeted in the news. What other industry has more publicly accessible safety data?
  - kajecounterhack 2y ago
    Every software release is a totally new driver. If they release software at a cadence of say, 6 or 8 weeks, would you feel comfortable riding? You don't know how safe the car was during that time -- any part of the driver can regress. You're basically trusting that they know how to do simulation, that they bore the cost of running that simulation, and that their simulator is realistic enough to yield trustworthy statistics. Sadly, our regulatory agencies are currently set up for very delayed decisionmaking. Since every company can release software at any time, you could imagine a regulatory platform that tracks software releases and their corresponding safety statistics in real time.
    - jessriedel 2y ago
      I’m quite confident in it and personally ride it monthly. Happy to bet it will turn out to be no more than twice as dangerous as the median driver today, ie, as dangerous as driving in the 1980s. In the long term it will be vastly safer, obviously.
      - kajecounterhack 2y ago
        I'm glad you feel that way (and I mostly feel the same / ride Waymos frequently), but it doesn't change the reality that you're putting all your faith in a self-regulating company that does not cooperate with regulators more than it absolutely needs to, and where a change in leadership / safety culture / process can cause a catastrophe overnight. And this isn't hyperbole; 1 software push is all that separates a car that crashes in scenario X from one where it was found to not crash in that same scenario. Do you trust the code to be bug free? Do you trust the bugs to be discovered before they maybe kill you? I have a vested interest in the success of AVs (worked in the industry for the better part of a decade) but the companies building them are far from perfect in terms of how they conduct themselves wrt safety. There needs to be some development in terms of the supporting tech. The way I think about this is: planes came before the FAA and key technologies that we use to manage flights, such as radar and radio being used in conjunction. AVs are in their "just learned to fly" era.
        2y ago
irjustin 2y ago
> Except that they have remote humans monitoring every vehicle so the whole thing is an illusion I think this argues the opposite of what you think it does. Monitoring != driving and if you had humans pesudo driving, the experience would be insanely bad cuz the human would be interjecting way too much.
- greenthrow 2y ago
  We don't know how often the humans interject. That's my whole point. It's an illusion that the car is operating alone. When I drive a Tesla on FSD i only need to interject periodically, but it's enough that the car cannot be called autonomous IMHO. How many remote human supervisors are needed for Waymo vehicles? How often do they interject? Without that data it is absurd to call Waymo autonomous.
  - foota 2y ago
    Waymo operators do not ever drive the vehicle. My understanding is that Waymo operators can specify things like "take this path" (e.g., by drawing on a map or something) or "yes that's safe" but this doesn't correspond to the actual driving inputs.
    - greenthrow 2y ago
      I'd appreciate if they were open and honest about the reality of how they operate. But since they keep it very secret, I have no choice but to assume the worst. If it was impressive rathee than detrimental to their valuation, they'd be open about it.
      - the-rc 2y ago
        Except that they don't keep it very secret: https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response/ https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response/ "the autonomous driver can reach out to a human fleet response agent for additional information to contextualize its environment. The Waymo Driver does not rely solely on the inputs it receives from the fleet response agent and it is in control of the vehicle at all times. As the Waymo Driver waits for input from fleet response, and even after receiving it, the Waymo Driver continues using available information to inform its decisions. This is important because, given the dynamic conditions on the road, the environment around the car can change, which either remedies the situation or influences how the Waymo Driver should proceed. In fact, the vast majority of such situations are resolved, without assistance, by the Waymo Driver." But let's assume they're lying and you're right: what kind of throughput and latency do you expect to be required between the car and the remote driver for this to work safely? How does the car know if the remote driver is actually looking at the data and acting on that? What happens if the connection stutters? Does the car take control again? How would it decide when to alternate between remote and local control? What if the two sides disagree on what to do?

jessriedel 2y ago

If you mean actual taxis in San Francisco, it's not a drop in the bucket. There are 1,800 taxis and compared to 300 Waymos, and the latter have a much higher duty cycle. It's true that the number of Uber/Lyft is a lot higher, something like 40k drivers (who work a widely varying number of hours per week). Yes, the 100M miles scale is very important, because that's about how many miles humans drive until they cause a death.