5 ms·

In ATL this happens often enough that it's not a shock when it happens, we have lots of drainage problems here. I agree that I would have assumed Waymo had test

by burnte 5mo ago

In ATL this happens often enough that it's not a shock when it happens, we have lots of drainage problems here. I agree that I would have assumed Waymo had tested in events like this, but clearly not. So what I can say is running in ATL is a great test case for these events, and also the people who live here don't do a better job than Waymo did. There were dozens of people who ruined their cars yesterday trying to drive through deep water.

QuercusMax 5mo ago
We had a story in the news this week about a Cybertruck driver who thought his Elonmobile was a boat because it has "wade mode" and deliberately drove into a lake! Humans are very stupid when it comes to driving through standing water!
- burnte 5mo ago
  I saw that just a day or two before wednesday! Hilarious timing.
- SR2Z 5mo ago
  To be fair if you take Elon Musk at his word the Cybertruck is supposed to have hermetically sealed powertrain components and be capable of exactly this.
  - mschuster91 5mo ago
    The powertrain is one thing, the more critical issue is the car's structure, including the ventilation system, all sorts of gaps - and also, all hollow spaces, in which you need to balance weep holes (to prevent water condensation and subsequent rusting or weird issues regarding temperature changes) against the ability for external water to end up there at all. Getting that right is a very expensive job and that's why you usually only see true (i.e. no visit to a shop needed afterwards) wade ability on large military vehicles and custom RV builds.
Muromec 5mo ago
As much as one could expect waymo to train on it, one could also expect a functioning city to not have flooded streets
- ethbr1 5mo ago
  That's like saying one could expect New Orleans not to flood during hurricanes. There are problems. There is money you can throw at those problems. And there are some problems that are rare & low impact enough that it's not worth throwing money at them. See also: keeping snowplows in Atlanta.
  - namibj 5mo ago
    Yeah you can start by not building _more_ in the flood plain. And if you do, then don't build architecture that is incapable of just accepting the temporarily higher ground water. We know how to basement just make the basement high enough to tower over the flood. Oh, no cheap ground-level storefront windows? Welp, guess those have to be elevated above sufficiently voluminous drainage channels (the former streets).
    - ethbr1 5mo ago
      Or in Florida's case, mandate hurricane ties on timber homes so they can't lift off their slabs. One of the things that annoys me most about non-engineering mindsets is not looking at problems from a multivariate optimization perspective. There are problems, and then there are always more variables to be balanced to optimally solve them than people expect. The critical additional ones, more often than not: time and money.
      - mschuster91 5mo ago
        > Or in Florida's case, mandate hurricane ties on timber homes so they can't lift off their slabs. That doesn't mitigate much. The mass of a paper and matchsticks "house" just isn't enough to resist it getting torn apart - if not by the wind, then by debris. The only kind of structure able to survive a dead-on hit is steel bar reinforced concrete or very, very solidly built brick-and-mortar. But that is expensive to build.
ryukoposting 5mo ago
SV is the most cloistered place I've ever seen. I'm comfortable assuming that nobody in any position of power at Waymo ever thought to themselves "gee maybe the weather is different in this new city we're deploying to, perhaps we should test that"
- pinkmuffinere 5mo ago
  This seems silly -- they roll the service out to individual cities in different regions, one at a time. Why do you think they do that? I'm pretty sure this is exactly that testing that you're referring to.
  - zardo 5mo ago
    Surely Waymo can afford a test track.
    - pinkmuffinere 5mo ago
      They can, and I bet they have! But they cannot afford a test track that accurately reproduces every condition exactly as it will be encountered in the real world. At some point, it is judicious to test with real-world conditions, and simulating only gets you so far.
- jfim 5mo ago
  There's a long tail of unpredictable events in the AV industry that you end up seeing, especially since the cars in aggregate end up driving more than one could over a lifetime. At a previous employer, we've seen anything from cars getting mooned, a SUV slowly driving past the AV, the rear window roll down, and someone poke their head out and start throwing dollar bills at the AV, a convention of people dressed up in animal costumes, the "Miami left," and so on. So it's much less of "maybe we should test that" and more of "we don't know what we don't know, so let's gather some data." In practice, the cars have lidar so they won't crash into solid objects that aren't recognized, they just end up getting stuck in embarrassing situations like these.
ehnto 5mo ago
There is a pretty big difference between a citizen driving their car into danger, and a service provider driving their car into danger with you in it. You wouldn't accept that from a taxi driver either. Pausing the service is the right move.
- burnte 5mo ago
  I completely agree pausing service is the right move. I'm not defending Waymo. More laughing at my fellow ATLiens.

by burnte 5mo ago

QuercusMax 5mo ago

We had a story in the news this week about a Cybertruck driver who thought his Elonmobile was a boat because it has "wade mode" and deliberately drove into a lake! Humans are very stupid when it comes to driving through standing water!

burnte 5mo ago
I saw that just a day or two before wednesday! Hilarious timing.
SR2Z 5mo ago
To be fair if you take Elon Musk at his word the Cybertruck is supposed to have hermetically sealed powertrain components and be capable of exactly this.
- mschuster91 5mo ago
  The powertrain is one thing, the more critical issue is the car's structure, including the ventilation system, all sorts of gaps - and also, all hollow spaces, in which you need to balance weep holes (to prevent water condensation and subsequent rusting or weird issues regarding temperature changes) against the ability for external water to end up there at all. Getting that right is a very expensive job and that's why you usually only see true (i.e. no visit to a shop needed afterwards) wade ability on large military vehicles and custom RV builds.

Muromec 5mo ago

As much as one could expect waymo to train on it, one could also expect a functioning city to not have flooded streets

ethbr1 5mo ago
That's like saying one could expect New Orleans not to flood during hurricanes. There are problems. There is money you can throw at those problems. And there are some problems that are rare & low impact enough that it's not worth throwing money at them. See also: keeping snowplows in Atlanta.
- namibj 5mo ago
  Yeah you can start by not building _more_ in the flood plain. And if you do, then don't build architecture that is incapable of just accepting the temporarily higher ground water. We know how to basement just make the basement high enough to tower over the flood. Oh, no cheap ground-level storefront windows? Welp, guess those have to be elevated above sufficiently voluminous drainage channels (the former streets).
  - ethbr1 5mo ago
    Or in Florida's case, mandate hurricane ties on timber homes so they can't lift off their slabs. One of the things that annoys me most about non-engineering mindsets is not looking at problems from a multivariate optimization perspective. There are problems, and then there are always more variables to be balanced to optimally solve them than people expect. The critical additional ones, more often than not: time and money.
    - mschuster91 5mo ago
      > Or in Florida's case, mandate hurricane ties on timber homes so they can't lift off their slabs. That doesn't mitigate much. The mass of a paper and matchsticks "house" just isn't enough to resist it getting torn apart - if not by the wind, then by debris. The only kind of structure able to survive a dead-on hit is steel bar reinforced concrete or very, very solidly built brick-and-mortar. But that is expensive to build.

ryukoposting 5mo ago

SV is the most cloistered place I've ever seen. I'm comfortable assuming that nobody in any position of power at Waymo ever thought to themselves "gee maybe the weather is different in this new city we're deploying to, perhaps we should test that"

pinkmuffinere 5mo ago
This seems silly -- they roll the service out to individual cities in different regions, one at a time. Why do you think they do that? I'm pretty sure this is exactly that testing that you're referring to.
- zardo 5mo ago
  Surely Waymo can afford a test track.
  - pinkmuffinere 5mo ago
    They can, and I bet they have! But they cannot afford a test track that accurately reproduces every condition exactly as it will be encountered in the real world. At some point, it is judicious to test with real-world conditions, and simulating only gets you so far.
jfim 5mo ago
There's a long tail of unpredictable events in the AV industry that you end up seeing, especially since the cars in aggregate end up driving more than one could over a lifetime. At a previous employer, we've seen anything from cars getting mooned, a SUV slowly driving past the AV, the rear window roll down, and someone poke their head out and start throwing dollar bills at the AV, a convention of people dressed up in animal costumes, the "Miami left," and so on. So it's much less of "maybe we should test that" and more of "we don't know what we don't know, so let's gather some data." In practice, the cars have lidar so they won't crash into solid objects that aren't recognized, they just end up getting stuck in embarrassing situations like these.

ehnto 5mo ago

There is a pretty big difference between a citizen driving their car into danger, and a service provider driving their car into danger with you in it. You wouldn't accept that from a taxi driver either. Pausing the service is the right move.

burnte 5mo ago
I completely agree pausing service is the right move. I'm not defending Waymo. More laughing at my fellow ATLiens.