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The Waymo that drives on the wrong side of the road in broad daylight on a clear day? Https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1dvsod6/phoenix_po

The Waymo that drives on the wrong side of the road in broad daylight on a clear day? Https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1dvsod6/phoenix_police_officer_pulls_over_a_driverless/

morsch 2y ago
That is a remarkably different dynamic than a cop pulling over a human.
- modeless 2y ago
  "This call may be recorded for quality assurance" at a traffic stop feels like something from Idiocracy.
dageshi 2y ago
Sometimes humans knowingly drink and drive into oncoming traffic... What's your point?
- PostOnce 2y ago
  My point is that Waymo isn't a good example of Google's success considering that after decades of development it still can't drive on the right side of the road in broad daylight on a clear day.
  - dageshi 2y ago
    Which is no different to a whole host of bad human driving as well. Mistakes are inevitable in something like driving, they happen to even the best human drivers. All that matters is that over time the self driving mistakes decrease to the point they are far below the human average. I don't see the point of picking one example of a mistake and pretending it's indicative of a failing endeavour when literally no other company is even close to what Waymo is doing right now.
    - PostOnce 2y ago
      Several different comments in this sub-thread call this a "mistake". Machines don't make mistakes. If a crane collapses, it didn't make a mistake. If a robot car drives into oncoming traffic, it's not a mistake, it's an engineering failure, a bad design. This wasn't a fuckup in a prototype, this was a life-critical fuckup 15-20 years into the project which is still confined to a small number of well-mapped cities with good weather. So my point stands, major fuckups decades into a project when conditions are fairly close to ideal are not acceptable and are indicative of a failed project. As an aside, it's also not the case that "better than human" is all that matters. The kind of fuckup also matters because people vote, and votes change regulations. If people don't like it, it won't be legal. Driving into oncoming traffic in broad daylight with 20 years of engineering progress is not something people are going to say "oh okay well sometimes my grandma does that too" to. You guys are wearing rose-tinted glasses.
  - dekhn 2y ago
    The car almost certainly made a reasonable decision based on the information available. They have all the technology and logic required to make decisions based on ambiguous and vague signage, and if they hadn't done this, we'd be reading articles about how Waymos would stop in situations where humans would figure out what to do. There is a lot of press trying to "gotcha" Waymo but from what I can tell, their systems are actually quite good.
  - Workaccount2 2y ago
    Waymo is a failed experiment because this one time one of the cars made a mistake. Do you hear how naive you sound?
rty32 2y ago
This is very unfair. If you look at how competitors are doing, Waymo is already very successful. Even if they can never replace human drivers in all scenarios, they have already set new standards for automated driving.
- PostOnce 2y ago
  It's as unfair as complaining that an airplane company's airplanes lose a wing when their competitors often lose both wings. The standard isn't good enough and probably never will be, they've been restricted to super-well-mapped, mostly-good-weather cities without a lot of adverse real-world conditions they're going to encounter. In fact, performance may not improve, it may worsen as they expand geographically, and/or encounter "new" conditions (other robot drivers, who knows?) Humans are remarkable at coping with new conditions, machines are not.

The Waymo that drives on the wrong side of the road in broad daylight on a clear day? Https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1dvsod6/phoenix_police_officer_pulls_over_a_driverless/

morsch 2y ago

That is a remarkably different dynamic than a cop pulling over a human.

modeless 2y ago
"This call may be recorded for quality assurance" at a traffic stop feels like something from Idiocracy.

dageshi 2y ago

Sometimes humans knowingly drink and drive into oncoming traffic... What's your point?

PostOnce 2y ago
My point is that Waymo isn't a good example of Google's success considering that after decades of development it still can't drive on the right side of the road in broad daylight on a clear day.
- dageshi 2y ago
  Which is no different to a whole host of bad human driving as well. Mistakes are inevitable in something like driving, they happen to even the best human drivers. All that matters is that over time the self driving mistakes decrease to the point they are far below the human average. I don't see the point of picking one example of a mistake and pretending it's indicative of a failing endeavour when literally no other company is even close to what Waymo is doing right now.
  - PostOnce 2y ago
    Several different comments in this sub-thread call this a "mistake". Machines don't make mistakes. If a crane collapses, it didn't make a mistake. If a robot car drives into oncoming traffic, it's not a mistake, it's an engineering failure, a bad design. This wasn't a fuckup in a prototype, this was a life-critical fuckup 15-20 years into the project which is still confined to a small number of well-mapped cities with good weather. So my point stands, major fuckups decades into a project when conditions are fairly close to ideal are not acceptable and are indicative of a failed project. As an aside, it's also not the case that "better than human" is all that matters. The kind of fuckup also matters because people vote, and votes change regulations. If people don't like it, it won't be legal. Driving into oncoming traffic in broad daylight with 20 years of engineering progress is not something people are going to say "oh okay well sometimes my grandma does that too" to. You guys are wearing rose-tinted glasses.
- dekhn 2y ago
  The car almost certainly made a reasonable decision based on the information available. They have all the technology and logic required to make decisions based on ambiguous and vague signage, and if they hadn't done this, we'd be reading articles about how Waymos would stop in situations where humans would figure out what to do. There is a lot of press trying to "gotcha" Waymo but from what I can tell, their systems are actually quite good.
- Workaccount2 2y ago
  Waymo is a failed experiment because this one time one of the cars made a mistake. Do you hear how naive you sound?

rty32 2y ago

This is very unfair. If you look at how competitors are doing, Waymo is already very successful. Even if they can never replace human drivers in all scenarios, they have already set new standards for automated driving.

PostOnce 2y ago
It's as unfair as complaining that an airplane company's airplanes lose a wing when their competitors often lose both wings. The standard isn't good enough and probably never will be, they've been restricted to super-well-mapped, mostly-good-weather cities without a lot of adverse real-world conditions they're going to encounter. In fact, performance may not improve, it may worsen as they expand geographically, and/or encounter "new" conditions (other robot drivers, who knows?) Humans are remarkable at coping with new conditions, machines are not.