8 ms·
Waymo updates 3,800 robotaxis after they 'drive into standing water'
- giacomoforte 5mo agoLeCun is right.
- alex1138 5mo agoAbout what
- giacomoforte 5mo agoThat you need world models to sensibly deploy "thinking" machines in the real world. Else they do stupid shit like drive straight into water. You can bruteforce some semblance of thinking by training on literally all knowledge that can be digitized but even that is proving to not be quite enough.
- jfyi 5mo agoLike this? https://waymo.com/blog/2026/02/the-waymo-world-model-a-new-frontier-for-autonomous-driving-simulation/ https://waymo.com/blog/2026/02/the-waymo-world-model-a-new-f... Or did you mean strictly in operation?
- gjm11 5mo agoThis seems like an odd take. Don't existing self-driving cars already have rather a lot of world-model? It's not like they're just hooking the driving apparatus to the output of an LLM or something. (Of course there is also scope for debate about how much world model today's LLMs have; it seems like it's more than none even though it has to be built out of token-shuffling parts. But that's not relevant here.)
- Animats 5mo agoThat's a tough problem - distinguishing wet pavement from deep water. Humans make that mistake frequently. Autonomous vehicles should probably be equipped with a water sensor. (We did that in our DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle back in 2005). Then they can enter water very cautiously and see if it's too deep. This may make them too cautious about shallow puddles on roads, though.
- alexnewman 5mo agoDo they make this mistake frequently? How frequently? I've seen people overestimate things, but I don't think this is as hard as one might think
- wombat-man 5mo agoIf they have a laser measurement of the road from before, couldn't they see that the level of water vs the expected road surface?
- AnimalMuppet 5mo agoIf they have a pre-existing database of every road, sure. And if it's kept up-to-date at all times in all vehicles.
- mortenjorck 5mo agoIsn’t that the Waymo data model, though? They extensively pre-drive every new market, building dense volumetric maps of the entire service area before they begin service, so they essentially do have that database of every road (that they drive on).
- filoleg 5mo agoGranted, I am not sure exactly how Waymo operates, but I thought that the extensive testing was mostly for legal reasons+just handling edge cases. I am saying this, because I noticed that they typically start with a low-tier restrictive permit to operate (with a rather small number of cars in the fleet). Then they run it for a year or two, iron out edge cases particular to a given city (e.g., climate particularities, crazy spaghetti junctions in ATL, etc.), and log a lot of data. Then they take that data, go to the city/state, say "we have all this data that demonstrates we were very above the board while running the test pilot program, we are safe, and now we want to expand out of a very limited test pilot program." And then it either goes well (Bay Area, LA, etc.) or goes off the rails for other reasons (often failing earlier for entirely unexpected reasons, like the pushback against it from taxi driver unions in NYC). My point being, I could be entirely wrong, but I don't think that they literally map every single inch of the road before being allowed to operate. I just don't see it as being possible in any large populated city, given how often things change there. Just in 3 years living at one apartment in Seattle, I had a road directly adjacent to me changed from 2-way to 1-way, and then had 3-4 lanes that were basically highway entrances/exits (a block away from me) created and the whole area being rerouted entirely.
- gib444 5mo agoThis is ok though because humans drive into flood waters too. Look, you can't make progress without getting your feet wet and then diving straight into the deep end.
- foobazgt 5mo agoMaybe you drive into flood waters, but I don't. That's not a difficult skill to pull off. We're still in the early days of self driving cars, and as much simulation and miles as they have, they're still constantly getting exposed to real world conditions that are new to them. The world is dynamic, so this will always remain true. It remains to be seen where we'll converge on capability, incident rate, and acceptance.
- hawaiianbrah 5mo agoThe world is dynamic, so sure, it will always be true in some technical sense. But I am confident that eventually we’ll have trained them on enough scenarios that novelty will have a smaller and smaller effect on their ability to safely navigate through the world.
- PlasmaPower 5mo agoMaybe you don't drive into flood waters, but your Uber driver might, and that's what Waymo is trying to replace, not your personal driving. In that context I think comparing it to the average human driver makes a lot of sense, because even if you personally are an even better driver, or even if human drivers are better at some specific things, we have more than enough data to show that Waymo reduces accident rates overall in their current rollout.
- MetaWhirledPeas 5mo ago> It remains to be seen where we'll converge on capability, incident rate, and acceptance. I think we're already there with Waymo as the example. We may later choose to diverge from this now-accepted path, but for the moment we have a blueprint, and fixing edge cases with a software update is apparently acceptable, if you just look at all the Waymos operating legally right now.
- bethekidyouwant 5mo agoWhat is a recall in this case? Is them getting a software update a recall now?
- svachalek 5mo agoI think so. For some kind of legalese reasons that's generally what a Tesla "recall" amounts to these days.
- superfrank 5mo agoThey suspended service areas they deem high risk until the software update can be applied. So while, yes, it's just a software update, it's a recall in the sense that they've temporarily pulled all the cars off the road in certain areas
- SpicyLemonZest 5mo agoYes, this is a common terminology issue. "Recall" is legally defined in terms of the kind of problems that require one, not the solution to those problems, because the relevant regulations were written when there was no way to fix consumer products other than physically delivering them to the manufacturer or an authorized repair person.
- Veserv 5mo ago"Recall" is a technical term meaning: "public dangerous defect notice". A "recall" is stating that the defective version of the product in the field must be "removed/recalled" and replaced/updated with a non-defective version at the manufacturer's expense. It just so happens that the removal and replacement of defective software from the field can occur remotely. The important part is that the manufacturer delivered a defective product that risks your safety, that fixing that safety defect is the responsibility of the manufacturer, and the system is unsafe until that occurs.
- srameshc 5mo agoDoes anyone with a better understanding about LIDAR vs camera approach to autonomous drivng explain how would Tesla handle such situation ?
- xnx 5mo agoWaymo has LIDAR and cameras, so it is better equipped for every situation.
- lizardking 5mo agoUnless the power is out https://abc7news.com/post/san-francisco-leaders-press-waymo-stalled-robotaxis-during-december-power-outage/18669520/ https://abc7news.com/post/san-francisco-leaders-press-waymo-...
- xnx 5mo agoKind of unrelated. That issue was due to a misguided effort to be cautious by having vehicles requesting human-review when they didn't really need it. Waymo fixed the issue by allowing the vehicles to operate in their normal, independent, mode.
- whimsicalism 5mo agopart of the problem is that SFs traffic lights just turn off in a power outage, rather than flashing red battery power as I have seen in many other jurisdictions
- CSMastermind 5mo agoThis seems tautological, but in practice, you might expect to see different results. Engineering hours are finite, so if they're spread across interpreting signals from two different sources, they might not go deep enough to make either one as good as it could be. Having your engineering resources more focused on a particular approach might actually yield better results. I say this as someone who's dealing with LiDAR + vision vs pure vision in a different domain, and at this point, I actually think our pure vision systems are better.
- Desafinado 5mo agoFFS, can we just go back to talking to each other in person and driving our own vehicles? Where'd the 90s go?
- Analemma_ 5mo agoJust this morning I was almost killed twice on my bike ride to work by two separate drivers, one of whom looked to be 80 and could barely see over the dashboard, and one who was on their phone. I didn’t even bother trying to remember the plate numbers, knowing that the odds of any kind of consequences are absolute zero. No, we can’t go back to driving our own vehicles. Waymo everywhere and human driving outlawed, ASAP.
- qwerpy 5mo agoAgree. Multiple people I know have bought Teslas because they don’t trust themselves or their spouses to drive safely, and want them to use FSD. There should be incentives to get people onto self driving.
- mikem170 5mo agoIf self-driving is better, then presumably cheaper insurance costs would be an incentive.
- ggreer 5mo agoDifferent states have different rules about what sort of things insurers are allowed to charge different rates for. In the states that allow it, Tesla does offer insurance discounts for FSD usage.[1] Lemonade also offers discounts for FSD usage.[2] 1. https://www.tesla.com/support/insurance/fsd-discount https://www.tesla.com/support/insurance/fsd-discount 2. https://www.lemonade.com/fsd https://www.lemonade.com/fsd
- israrkhan 5mo agoCalifornia is one of those states that does not allow FSD usage to impact insurance rates
- xnx 5mo ago"recall" = applies software update
- paconbork 5mo agoGah, thanks for this. Thought I was used to that slight-of-hand but this one got me
- fudged71 5mo agoAlso I think it's wrong to call something a recall if it's not owned by customers. Waymo is a service.
- adrianmonk 5mo agoWaymos are fleet vehicles. Recalls go to the owners, just like with other fleet vehicles such as rental cars, taxis, limos, delivery services, utilities, and city/state/federal government. It doesn't really matter who is whose customer.
- jagged-chisel 5mo agoaw, I was having fun imagining 3,800 Johnny cabs just immediately changing route to go to headquarters.
- dawnerd 5mo agoRecall makes for better headlines.
- rogerrogerr 5mo agoI really want car companies to just automate publishing “recalls” for every commit pushed to any car ever. Flood this broken term and force a distinction between “the airbags will literally explode and destroy your face” and “the radio volume is too quiet sometimes”
- nickthegreek 5mo ago
- moribvndvs 5mo agoWaymo: *locks doors, chorus to Floods by Pantera starts playing, guns it into the water* “Wash away maaaaan, take him with the floooood”
- sunrunner 5mo agoHow about a Mastodon, Lamb of God take with Floods of Triton: Heap data upon this modern age All human drivers now phased away A lidar's glow, the soft wheel's echo Autonomous force of code remains We are last of the before rides Now hear the robot cars rise Hum into eternity Remember this, all roadways lead to the fleet
- robotnikman 5mo agoThat gives me a horrifying idea for a short story about a Waymo being hacked to carry out an assassination where it purposely drives off a bridge and into a lake.
- steele 5mo agoGo fish
- blueskies1029 5mo agoThey are rolling these out in New Orleans soon. Standing water is everywhere, and sometimes you have big hidden potholes. You just need to know the roads. Should be fun.
- MetaWhirledPeas 5mo agoOn a normal day it should suffice to train the model to use its judgment and maybe monitor how other cars are reacting to water covering the road, but when it starts flooding everywhere maybe they should pause the service until it dries out.
- blueskies1029 5mo agoSometimes there are not other cars around. Sometimes, I get scared driving on the same roads I know in heavy rain. So I am interested to see how Waymo handles it. I agree a suspended service is nice. The issue with that is flooding is local localized at times, like even block by block. So I don't know how they will make the call to suspend service. Because the nuclear options is any heavy rain cancel rides, but that seems to hurt their service model.
- MetaWhirledPeas 5mo agoFor people, they hear a news report and avoid affected intersections. With autonomous cars they can have people (or AI or both) monitoring affected areas and blacklisting streets and intersections in real time.
- selimthegrim 5mo agoI have seen them around here in beta form, but yes God help them
- robrain 5mo agoArticle's current (possibly original), less ambiguous title: "Waymo recalls 3,800 robotaxis after glitch allowed some vehicles to ‘drive into standing water’" IOW 3,800 Waymo vehicles aren't currently sat spinning their wheels in water.
- bombcar 5mo agoThis is important as flooded vehicles are a common sight on the salvage-title market. Though the idea of a single rider calling for a Waymo and slowly one-by-one 3,800 Waymos drove into a flood and were washed away ...
- ndsipa_pomu 5mo agoIs that because they're stuck in Atlanta? https://www.msn.com/en-us/technology/robotics/empty-waymo-robotaxis-swarm-atlanta-neighborhood-circle-cul-de-sac-for-hours/ar-AA23hJbV https://www.msn.com/en-us/technology/robotics/empty-waymo-ro...
- Zigurd 5mo agoIt's an interesting case of whether it's possible to infer the condition of wading and avoid having to install a sensor specific to a one in a million trips circumstance. The inference would come from standing water slowing down the vehicle and likely require steering correction, in combination with some machine vision for identifying standing water. Then there's the advantage of being Google and having hundreds of thousands of people in the same area using Google maps and navigation. Accelerometers in phones can detect crashes pretty reliably. There's a good chance they can reliably detect deceleration from standing water and report the location of the hazard.
- yieldcrv 5mo agoSince recall on cars no longer means doing anything to the car's physical location I think the regulator NHSTA should update this term It just creates alarmist headlines for what's really an over the air update, although "recall" is still currently a regulatory accurate term in the vehicle space Cars, especially EVs, have many similarities to being gigantic phones. Imagine if a routine software update from Apple was called a "recall", that functionally describes what's happening here NHTSA should at least distinguish between "omg we have to get these cars off the road and bring them to the shop immediately!" versus "over the air software update"
- ElijahLynn 5mo agoExactly what I was thinking, the CNBC article feels very clickbity because they don't say that in the opening lead that it's just a software update. They make it sound like they need to be taken back to some factory somewhere and get their systems updated. Which is not true because they just get a software update.
- NetMageSCW 5mo agoNo, they said it was a recall, which means there is a legal requirement that the update be performed and tracked, which is much different from a smartphone update that is done voluntarily by the manufacturer.
- chaidhat 5mo agoMaybe they're secretly developing Waymo submarines..
- ed_mercer 5mo agoIf they are recalled, do the cars drive themselves back to the factory?
- cesarb 5mo agoThat's the promise of self-driving cars. Every time an issue is found, no matter how minor, it's fixed and updated everywhere. From now on, every car of that model (and future models, and related models) will no longer have that problem. Several passes of that improvement cycle, and self-driving cars become safer (and more efficient/comfortable/etc) than human drivers. At least, that's how it's supposed to work.
- ishtanbul 5mo agoSo underappreciated. The article writes as if its some kind of sign that waymos just aren't ready. But human drivers are not improving at all.
- bushbaba 5mo agoIf you've ever built software, you'll know that regressions are all too common. Especially when AI/ML is involved. It's likely they patch this and cause 2 other bugs in the process.
- tstrimple 5mo ago> If you've ever built software, you'll know that regressions are all too common. Especially when AI/ML is involved. "AI/ML" has delivered far more complete testing criteria than any "QA expert" has. It's absolutely crazy to me the number of people who defend the status quo in software testing when software quality has been on the decline for over a decade. But sure. "AI/ML" is the problem, not shit developers who never considered that angle in the first place.
- GhostDriftInc 5mo ago[flagged]
- cryptoegorophy 5mo agoHow is this only being solved now? Isn’t it a very common thing that happens on roads or what am I missing? At least few times a year I have to go around major puddles, Waymo just speed boats through them? I doubt to believe.
- gerdesj 5mo agoAround 40 years ago, I was cycling around Andover (Hants, UK). Me and a mate were whizzing around near a small artificial lake. I decided to run into what I thought was shallow water and it wasn't. With hindsight that was a really daft failure of perception but you live and learn. Forty years later touch wood I have not yet broken myself or a car ...
- hansvm 5mo agoIf we're lucky, this'll help get us better roads. I'm never exactly happy slowing down to 10mph on the freeway because it isn't obvious whether the 100ft long puddle is an inch deep or 2ft, and I can sidestep some of that danger sometimes by proactively choosing safer lanes, but our roads are dangerous and don't handle water correctly.
- black_13 5mo ago[dead]
- acd 5mo agoBut as soon as what happens is an unusual event that is not in training data it get dangerous. Think of any abnormal weather events that would make news headlines such as Lightning, blizzard, snow storms etc This need to be simulated Or the litmus test would the developers ride in such a product at such an event?
- relistan 5mo agoAt least they can patch all of them to fix it at once. 16 year old new drivers are harder to patch.
- kapija 5mo agolmao
- bwoah 5mo agoPreviously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48151767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48151767