5 ms·

What was the better solution here then? Assuming there's hundreds or thousands of self-driving cars suddenly driving in environment without any traffic lights.

by dmix 10mo ago

What was the better solution here then? Assuming there's hundreds or thousands of self-driving cars suddenly driving in environment without any traffic lights. In the pictures you can see six Waymo cars at a single intersection. Assuming some of them had passengers should they all try to turn at the intersection anyway, when their LIDAR says the lane is likely free and pull over to the side? Is that the safest option? Should there be human police to direct the self driving cars through intersections? Or wait out the temporary electricity failure? I believe the answer is far more complicated than it seems and in practice having the cars stay still might have been the safest option any of the parties could agree on (Waymo's office, the city traffic people, state regulators, etc). There are people thinking this stuff out and those cars can 100% pull over automatically but an explicit choice was made not to do so for safety.

pinnochio 10mo ago
Uh, how about having their remote driver staff take over? > but an explicit choice was made not to do so for safety. You know this how?
- MBCook 10mo ago
  That’s what they usually do. The assumption here is that due to the blackout or some other related issue the human drivers were unavailable. However even if that’s not true if they have more cars than human drivers there’s gonna be a problem until they work through the queue. And the bigger that ratio, the longer it will take.
  - autoexec 10mo ago
    I guess that in a blackout they should just have the cars park somewhere safely. Maybe it'd be best to never have more cars on the road than assisting/available human drivers. As soon as no human drivers are available to take over for outage/staffing/whatever reason all cars should just pull over and stop.
- bink 10mo ago
  This only works if they have cell service and enough human drivers to handle all of their cars.
MBCook 10mo ago
I think part of the problem is they’ve made it our problem. Look I like Waymo. I think they’re neat and I trust them far more than any of the other companies. But in my mind being able to handle stuff like this is just a requirement to be on the roads in any non-trivial number. Like if they had two vehicles in this happened then OK that’s a problem but it was two vehicles in an entire city. When you have enough on the road that you can randomly have six at one intersection you should absolutely be able to handle this by then. I want them to do good. I want them to succeed. But just like airliners this is the kind of thing where people’s safety comes first. What we saw happen looks like the safety of the Waymo and its passengers came above everyone else despite having no need to do that. There are certainly some situations where just staying put is the best decision. The power went out and there are no other hazards on the road is not one of them. They made things worse for everyone else on average in a foreseeable situation where it was totally unnecessary. And that’s not OK with me. This feels like the kind of thing that absolutely should’ve been tested extremely well by now. Before they were allowed to drive in large volumes.
- macintux 10mo ago
  Effectively they’ve turned any edge case into a potential city-wide problem and PR nightmare. One driver doesn’t know how to handle a power outage? It’s not news. Hundreds of automated vehicles all experience the same failure? National news.
  - MBCook 10mo ago
    Right. You know there are humans somewhere in the city who got confused or scared and mess up too. Maybe a young driver who is barely confident in the first place on a temporary permit, or just someone who doesn’t remember what you do and was already over-stressed. Whatever, it happens. This was a (totally unintentional) coordinated screw up causing problems all over as opposed to one small spot. The scale makes all the difference.
    - necovek 10mo ago
      Definitely. The question then becomes how do they respond on the stimulus of other, more experienced drivers? Eg. if they see 5 cars going around them and "solving" the intersection, do they get empowered to do the same? Or do some annoying honkers behind them make them bite the bullet and try their hand at passing it (and not to worry, other drivers will also make sure no harm comes to anyone even if you make a small mistake)? Human drivers, no matter how inexperienced, will learn on the spot. Self-driving vehicles can "learn" back in the SW department. Yes, driving is a collaborative activity which requires that we all partner on finding most efficient patterns of traffic when traffic lights fail. Self-driving cars cannot learn on the spot, and this is the main difference between them and humans: you either have them trained on every situation, or they go into weird failure modes like this.
wiml 10mo ago
We already have a solution, it's written down in the traffic laws. If the signals fail, treat the intersection roughly like a four-way stop. Everybody learns this in drivers' ed. It's not obscure. If the cars can't follow traffic rules maybe they're not ready to be on the streets unsupervised.
- dmix 10mo ago
  That may be the rules for humans, particuarly people who are always in a rush and won't stay still anyway. With a major intersection turned four-way stop you have lots of humans making very complex decisions and taking a lot of personal risk. If multiple self driving cars make the choice at the wrong time you could jam up an intersection and create a worse traffic issue, or kill a passenger. It's all a careful risk calculation, those self driving cars need to determine if it's safe to continue through an intersection without the traffic lights their computers spent millions of hours to train on (likewise with humans). That's a tough choice for a highly regulated/insured company running thousands of cars. If anything, their programming should only take such a risk to move out of the way for a fire truck/ambulance.
  - markdown 10mo ago
    > If multiple self driving cars make the choice at the wrong time Would would they do that? It's a hive, isn't it?
    - NetMageSCW 10mo ago
      A hive that may not be able to talk depending on how much infrastructure was affected by the power failures.
  - necovek 10mo ago
    In a traffic jam situation, getting into a collision that "kills a passenger" is usually very hard (10-20mph collision between cars won't get anyone dead, except maybe for someone who gets another health condition triggered). With large cars in the road today, pedestrians are at a great risk, but similarly have more time to react due to slower speeds.
ethanwillis 10mo ago
The better solution? To not fetishize technology.
wrsh07 10mo ago
Tbh I'm surprised waymo didn't have remote monitors who could handle cars at intersections or safely pull to the side
- NetMageSCW 10mo ago
  Even if they did, did those monitors have power? And I’m sure they don’t have enough monitors for one to one with the cars.
dragonwriter 10mo ago
> Assuming there's hundreds or thousands of self-driving cars suddenly driving in environment without any traffic lights. Self-driving cars should (1) know how to handle stops, and (2) know that the rules for a failed traffic light (or one flashing red) are those for an all-way stop.
- necovek 10mo ago
  In a traffic jam situation, all-way stop is a "blocked intersection" if every vehicle obeyed it strictly (if there are cars coming from every direction, nobody has right of way and you can't apply the rule of yielding right). Humans, luckily, never follow the rules to the letter, which made it reasonable to put them down like this: some will be more impatient/aggressive, others will establish eye contact and wave one another through, etc. In a situation like this where you've got "drivers" who can't collaborate and learn on the spot, the rule does not make sense.
  - dragonwriter 10mo ago
    > In a traffic jam situation, all-way stop is a "blocked intersection" if every vehicle obeyed it strictly (if there are cars coming from every direction, nobody has right of way and you can't apply the rule of yielding right). The first arrived rule (which applies before yield right) is usually unambiguous in a traffic jam situation (since it will also be the position where the last car went the least recently, and everyone at the intersection will have been close enough to see through the prior cycle.)
    - necovek 10mo ago
      I wasn't aware of the formal first-arrived rule (as I said, we don't have 4-way stop intersections). Obviously, still imperfect for the original point of arrival (if 4 vehicles come at the same time), but once the pattern is established, it can keep flowing. I apply the alternating pattern even when I have right of way to keep the traffic flowing.
autoexec 10mo ago
> What was the better solution here then? Just pulling over and getting out of the way really would help. There's no reason a human couldn't do the same safely. Not beta testing your cards on public roads would really be ideal. Especially without human drivers ready to take over.
- NetMageSCW 10mo ago
  Is pulling over possible in most cities?
  - autoexec 10mo ago
    Hopefully, we need people lined up at intersections to do it all the time in order to make way for emergency vehicles.
Zopieux 10mo ago
The better solution is reducing America's dependency on cars in urban centers to make room for vehicles which actually need to drive, like emergency services, while the rest of the general public uses an excellent public transportation network, whenever politicians finally grow the pair to build one. Unfortunately HN is still not ready for that discussion despite the year being 2026 in a few days.

by dmix 10mo ago

pinnochio 10mo ago

Uh, how about having their remote driver staff take over? > but an explicit choice was made not to do so for safety. You know this how?

MBCook 10mo ago
That’s what they usually do. The assumption here is that due to the blackout or some other related issue the human drivers were unavailable. However even if that’s not true if they have more cars than human drivers there’s gonna be a problem until they work through the queue. And the bigger that ratio, the longer it will take.
- autoexec 10mo ago
  I guess that in a blackout they should just have the cars park somewhere safely. Maybe it'd be best to never have more cars on the road than assisting/available human drivers. As soon as no human drivers are available to take over for outage/staffing/whatever reason all cars should just pull over and stop.
bink 10mo ago
This only works if they have cell service and enough human drivers to handle all of their cars.

MBCook 10mo ago

I think part of the problem is they’ve made it our problem. Look I like Waymo. I think they’re neat and I trust them far more than any of the other companies. But in my mind being able to handle stuff like this is just a requirement to be on the roads in any non-trivial number. Like if they had two vehicles in this happened then OK that’s a problem but it was two vehicles in an entire city. When you have enough on the road that you can randomly have six at one intersection you should absolutely be able to handle this by then. I want them to do good. I want them to succeed. But just like airliners this is the kind of thing where people’s safety comes first. What we saw happen looks like the safety of the Waymo and its passengers came above everyone else despite having no need to do that. There are certainly some situations where just staying put is the best decision. The power went out and there are no other hazards on the road is not one of them. They made things worse for everyone else on average in a foreseeable situation where it was totally unnecessary. And that’s not OK with me. This feels like the kind of thing that absolutely should’ve been tested extremely well by now. Before they were allowed to drive in large volumes.

macintux 10mo ago
Effectively they’ve turned any edge case into a potential city-wide problem and PR nightmare. One driver doesn’t know how to handle a power outage? It’s not news. Hundreds of automated vehicles all experience the same failure? National news.
- MBCook 10mo ago
  Right. You know there are humans somewhere in the city who got confused or scared and mess up too. Maybe a young driver who is barely confident in the first place on a temporary permit, or just someone who doesn’t remember what you do and was already over-stressed. Whatever, it happens. This was a (totally unintentional) coordinated screw up causing problems all over as opposed to one small spot. The scale makes all the difference.
  - necovek 10mo ago
    Definitely. The question then becomes how do they respond on the stimulus of other, more experienced drivers? Eg. if they see 5 cars going around them and "solving" the intersection, do they get empowered to do the same? Or do some annoying honkers behind them make them bite the bullet and try their hand at passing it (and not to worry, other drivers will also make sure no harm comes to anyone even if you make a small mistake)? Human drivers, no matter how inexperienced, will learn on the spot. Self-driving vehicles can "learn" back in the SW department. Yes, driving is a collaborative activity which requires that we all partner on finding most efficient patterns of traffic when traffic lights fail. Self-driving cars cannot learn on the spot, and this is the main difference between them and humans: you either have them trained on every situation, or they go into weird failure modes like this.

wiml 10mo ago

We already have a solution, it's written down in the traffic laws. If the signals fail, treat the intersection roughly like a four-way stop. Everybody learns this in drivers' ed. It's not obscure. If the cars can't follow traffic rules maybe they're not ready to be on the streets unsupervised.

dmix 10mo ago
That may be the rules for humans, particuarly people who are always in a rush and won't stay still anyway. With a major intersection turned four-way stop you have lots of humans making very complex decisions and taking a lot of personal risk. If multiple self driving cars make the choice at the wrong time you could jam up an intersection and create a worse traffic issue, or kill a passenger. It's all a careful risk calculation, those self driving cars need to determine if it's safe to continue through an intersection without the traffic lights their computers spent millions of hours to train on (likewise with humans). That's a tough choice for a highly regulated/insured company running thousands of cars. If anything, their programming should only take such a risk to move out of the way for a fire truck/ambulance.
- markdown 10mo ago
  > If multiple self driving cars make the choice at the wrong time Would would they do that? It's a hive, isn't it?
  - NetMageSCW 10mo ago
    A hive that may not be able to talk depending on how much infrastructure was affected by the power failures.
- necovek 10mo ago
  In a traffic jam situation, getting into a collision that "kills a passenger" is usually very hard (10-20mph collision between cars won't get anyone dead, except maybe for someone who gets another health condition triggered). With large cars in the road today, pedestrians are at a great risk, but similarly have more time to react due to slower speeds.

ethanwillis 10mo ago

The better solution? To not fetishize technology.

wrsh07 10mo ago

Tbh I'm surprised waymo didn't have remote monitors who could handle cars at intersections or safely pull to the side

NetMageSCW 10mo ago
Even if they did, did those monitors have power? And I’m sure they don’t have enough monitors for one to one with the cars.

dragonwriter 10mo ago

> Assuming there's hundreds or thousands of self-driving cars suddenly driving in environment without any traffic lights. Self-driving cars should (1) know how to handle stops, and (2) know that the rules for a failed traffic light (or one flashing red) are those for an all-way stop.

necovek 10mo ago
In a traffic jam situation, all-way stop is a "blocked intersection" if every vehicle obeyed it strictly (if there are cars coming from every direction, nobody has right of way and you can't apply the rule of yielding right). Humans, luckily, never follow the rules to the letter, which made it reasonable to put them down like this: some will be more impatient/aggressive, others will establish eye contact and wave one another through, etc. In a situation like this where you've got "drivers" who can't collaborate and learn on the spot, the rule does not make sense.
- dragonwriter 10mo ago
  > In a traffic jam situation, all-way stop is a "blocked intersection" if every vehicle obeyed it strictly (if there are cars coming from every direction, nobody has right of way and you can't apply the rule of yielding right). The first arrived rule (which applies before yield right) is usually unambiguous in a traffic jam situation (since it will also be the position where the last car went the least recently, and everyone at the intersection will have been close enough to see through the prior cycle.)
  - necovek 10mo ago
    I wasn't aware of the formal first-arrived rule (as I said, we don't have 4-way stop intersections). Obviously, still imperfect for the original point of arrival (if 4 vehicles come at the same time), but once the pattern is established, it can keep flowing. I apply the alternating pattern even when I have right of way to keep the traffic flowing.

autoexec 10mo ago

> What was the better solution here then? Just pulling over and getting out of the way really would help. There's no reason a human couldn't do the same safely. Not beta testing your cards on public roads would really be ideal. Especially without human drivers ready to take over.

NetMageSCW 10mo ago
Is pulling over possible in most cities?
- autoexec 10mo ago
  Hopefully, we need people lined up at intersections to do it all the time in order to make way for emergency vehicles.

Zopieux 10mo ago

The better solution is reducing America's dependency on cars in urban centers to make room for vehicles which actually need to drive, like emergency services, while the rest of the general public uses an excellent public transportation network, whenever politicians finally grow the pair to build one. Unfortunately HN is still not ready for that discussion despite the year being 2026 in a few days.