I saw plenty of Waymos managing to make it through intersections. They were slow and tentative, but definitely made forward progress.
I think the emergency "phone home" protocol requires a phone, presumably with enough channel capacity for reasonable video feeds. I wouldn't be surprised if the dead in the road Waymos were lacking connectivity.
There is of course also a possibility that the total demand exceeded the number of people at Waymos available for human intervention.
I don't think this was a street, I think SF just experiences rolling blackouts sometimes (unsure if this is due to their forest fire laws, the city buying the grid, or something else, although it seems silly that it's happening at all)
I was driving across the east side of SF and hit a patch of lights that were out.
The Waymo's were just going really slow through the intersection. It seemed that the "light is out means 4-way stop" dynamic caused them to go into ultra-timid mode. And of course the human drivers did the typical slow and roll, with decent interleaving.
The result was that each Waymo took about 4x as long to get through the intersections. I saw one Waymo get bluffed out of its driving slot by cross traffic for perhaps 8 slots.
This was coupled with the fact that the Waymos seemed to all be following the same route. I saw a line of about a dozen trying to turn left, which is the trickiest thing to navigate.
And of course I saw one driver get pissed off and drive around a Waymo that was advancing slowly, with the predictable result that the Waymo stopped and lost three more slots through the intersection.
On normal days, Waymos are much better at the 4-way stops than they used to be a few years back, by which I mean they are no longer dangerously timid. The Zoox (Amazon) cars are more like the Waymos used to be.
I expect there will be some software tweaks that will improve this situation, both routing around self-induced congestion and reading and crossing streets with dead lights.
Note that I didn't see any actually dead Waymos as others have reported here. I believe this is an extreme failsafe mode, and perhaps related to just too much weirdness for the software to handle.
It would be interesting to see the internal post mortem.
Its either people complain that they go slow and are too careful, or they will video and complain about every small traffic infringement that they make. Humans never driver 100% within the law and no one really cares. The second a single one of those things steps out of line and its an uproar. they have to drive ultra conservatively. How long have people been complaining about that one cat.
>either people complain that they go slow and are too careful, or they will video and complain about every small traffic infringement that they make.
Is there a name for this (and related) effects? Obviously, in a group of several hundred thousand people, there will always be at least a few people that complain about something for the exact opposite reasons. That's not a signal of usefulness. I feel we need a name for the some-rando-has-an-opinion-that-gets-picked-up-and-amplified-by-"the algorithm" phenomena. And the more fringe/out-there, the more passionate that particular person is likely to be about this issue, when "most" people feel "eh" about the whole thing.
the fact that there's practically no visible regulatory response to autonomous/remote-controlled vehicles that violate traffic laws or put people/pets/property at risk is a big part of why i'm personally not okay with these vehicles being allowed to use public rights-of-way.
when a waymo can get a traffic ticket (commensurate with google's ability to pay, a la the new income-based speeding ticket pilot programs in LA and SF), and when corporate officers down to engineers bear responsibility for failures, i think a lot more people will stop seeing these encroachments onto our commons as a nuisance.
story time: i've literally had one of those god awful food delivery robots run straight into me on a sidewalk. once, one of them stopped in my way and would not move, so i physically moved it myself and it followed me to my apartment. i'm about to start cow-tipping them (gently, because i don't want a lawsuit alleging property damage, even though they're practically just abandoned tech scrap without a human operator nearby to take responsibility).
Anything other than "normalish" tends to be a failure in driving. I.e. stopping and throwing your hazards on when you're in the intersection isn't success just because there were even worse options to have picked. It's nice they were able to pull the fleet back and get the cars out of the roads during the problem though.
I think this was a failure. The gold standard should be that the if every human driver was replaced with an AI how well could the system function. This makes it look like things would be catastrophic. Thus, showing how humans continue to be much more versatile and capable than AI.
I suppose if you lower the standards for what you hope AI can accomplish it wouldn't be considered a failure.
I'd say yes. The goal of a self-driving car is to emulate humans. If the car is panicking and reverting to "extreme safety mode" in situations where a normal human is going to be fine, then that's a failure.
Using that math it would be better if they were faster even if they killed somebody.
That's a repulsive argument... Just because some argument is logically sound doesn't mean it's rational or reasonable.
Also, when attempting that math, make sure you account for the buffer that everyone already builds into their life. No sense in double counting the extra 10m I'm angry in traffic, instead of angry sitting at home because I'm doom scrolling some media feed with that extra 10m I saved because the robotaxi was faster.
I mean, we would all save lives if we just never used a car outside of medical emergencies, but we do, so clearly there's some time/risk tradeoff that's happening.
Your naive feel good attitude (and you're not alone in it, that crap permeates white collar western society) is exactly the problem and being all emotional about it only worsens your ability to reason about it.
Whenever we do something "good" at societal scale be it build ADA ramps or engage in international trade of consumer goods or in this case, have transportation infrastructure, there is always some tradeoff like this. We can either do the thing in a safer to life and limb manner, but that almost always has tradeoffs that make the thing less accessible or worse performing. We could have absurdly low maximum vehicle speeds, that would save lives, but the time and wealth (which are convertible to each other on some level) renders the tradeoff not worth it (to the public at large).
You can value a whole life loss higher than man hours. You can value a child more than the elderly. You can make all sorts of adjustments like that but they do not change the fundamental math of the problem.
> Your naive feel good attitude (and you're not alone in it, that crap permeates white collar western society) is exactly the problem and being all emotional about it only worsens your ability to reason about it.
It's not a feel good attitude. I'm only objecting to your shallow take arguing that the commoditization of human life is reasonable. (i.e. touch grass) Similar to how you're concerned, exclusively, with the numbers you think you can count. That attitude of dehumanization has never resulted in good things things for society and humanity. That's the trade off I'm suggesting is important to consider when trying to make up numbers as you are. I'm not arguing that an absurdly low max speed is better. I'm arguing that it's small minded to try to count like that.
> You can value a whole life loss higher than man hours. You can value a child more than the elderly. You can make all sorts of adjustments like that but they do not change the fundamental math of the problem.
I wouldn't make any adjustments like that. The value or importance that exists with a human life, the case example, being a person that cares for others, and is cared about by others. Can't be reduced into a value that's translatable to man hours. I'd trade hours with some people for minutes with others. Just because time is something you can quantify, and you like that you can count it. Doesn't make it more better or important.
To be clear, I'm not saying your math is wrong, I'm saying you're wrong to believe it applies. (in such a simplistic manner.) You can use the math to decide how you're going to make tradeoffs given known input values; how much can my city pay for safety equipment to protect people. But you can't make up some adjacent math and say, this car's design is wrong because it didn't kill the correct number of people... err I mean, the correct number of man hours.
I had to look up what this was a reference to. Several months ago a cat ran underneath a Waymo and the vehicle's rear tire ran over it while pulling away from the curb. The NYT has a video [1] of the incident.
I’d bet you already have a mode that would’ve prevented what happened to the cat. From NYT reporting on the actual incident:
A human driver, she believes, would have stopped and asked if everything was OK after seeing a concerned person kneeling in front of their car and peering underneath.
“I didn’t know if I should reach out and hit one of the cameras or scream,” she said of the perilous moment. “I sort of froze, honestly. It was disorienting that Waymo was pulling away with me so close to it.”
I watched the video and read the article. (I wish I didn't; I love cats. I've known some wonderful bodega cats myself.)
But I'll bet I already have a mode that makes me want to drive away from people I don't know who are acting weird around my car.
I mean: I've got options. I can fight, flee, or hang out and investigate.
But I'm human -- I'm going to make what ultimately turn out to be poor decisions sometimes. I will have this condition until the day I die, and there isn't a single thing I can do about it (except to choose to die sooner, I guess).
So to posit an example: I'm already behind the wheel of my fleeing-machine with an already-decided intent to leave. And a stranger nearby is being weird.
I've now got a decision to make. It may be a very important decision, or it may instead be a nearly-meaningless decision.
Again, I've got options. I may very well decide that fighting isn't a good plan, and that joining them in exploring whatever mystery or ailment they may perceive is also not a great idea, and thereby decide that fleeing is the best option.
This may be a poor choice. It may also be the very best choice.
I don't know everything, and I can't see everything, and I do not get to use a time machine to gain hindsight for how this decision will play out.
(But I might speculate that if I stopped to investigate every time I saw a nearby stranger act weird at night in neighborhoods with prominent security gates that I might have fewer days remaining than if I just left them to their own devices.)
That’s an interesting perspective. The way I’ve always approached it is that if someone is looking at my car weird, I should probably ask what’s up. I’ve honked over several cars to let them know their tire is flat, flagged down drivers in parking lots because some dumbass let a ton of nails fall off their work truck, etc. When it comes to cars, someone checking out my car in a “weird” way is a prompt to me to investigate, not flee.
It's a perspective, prefaced with a speech about human error. I might get it wrong -- so might you, yourself.
There remains some reason for the businesses and residents of the neighborhood in which Kit Kat was run over to have spent money to install and maintain things like security gates and iron pickets in front of the glass and entryways of their buildings.
When I find myself in such a neighborhood at night and am already intent upon leaving, is not my intention to stick around and maybe find out what that reason might be.
>It would be interesting to see the internal post mortem.
What post mortem? The whole fleet reverted to it's "baseline" of acting like a hysterical teenager on day 1 of driver's ed. Obviously there's serious collateral damage to overall system performance when you just create thousands of those people out of thin air but that's "other people's problem" as far as waymo is concerned.
I’m curious what’s the regulation in this scenario? In Canada I think light off means 4-way stop signs so everyone obeys that, or at least most of everyone. What’s the situation in SF?
Yes, that is the same law in California, but so many people drift through stop signs that the guidance is close to meaningless.
In addition, there are 4-way stop signs all over SF and tourists regularly comment on how they work here.
The law is clear - yield to the right, but that is a pretty slow system in congested roads.
The local custom in SF is that someone is usually obviously first, rightmost, or just most aggressive, and opposing pairs of cars go simultaneously, while being wary about left turns.
Of course pedestrians have right of way in California, so someone in a crosswalk gives implied right of way to the road parallel to the person's crosswalk.
The result is 2x or better throughput, and lots of confused tourists.
So ... with the lights out on a Saturday before Xmas, there was a mess of SF local driving protocol, irritated shoppers, people coming to SF for Xmas parties, and just normal Saturday car and foot traffic.
I thought Waymo did pretty well, but as I said, I didn't see any ones that were dead in the middle of the street..
Is this not how four way stops work everywhere? I live in Kansas and have previously lived in Chicago, and I feel like both places follow this custom. Only thing that’s different is the laws are followed slightly more rigorously in low traffic areas, but the customary rules are definitely still in play.
That's how any relatively busy 4-way stop works in Ohio, too. The law says to do it one way (first to arrive, yield-to-the-right, wait for intersection to clear before entering).
But in practice what happens is an unscripted ballet where other things happen instead, like: Like, 4 cars can turn right simultaneously, and this works fine.
People know it's "wrong," but they also know it works. It's normal, expected, and a bit weird.
The weird part is something I've only ever really observed when I've driven cop cars around the block and had to traverse a 4-way stop. Other drivers stop the ballet immediately and get all timid and stuff -- like they're waiting for me (just someone being a lowly radio tech today, not a cop at all) to give them direction or something. It's bizarre.
I had a classmate in the military whose old car got t-boned and so he went and bought a used white Ford Crown Victoria (for the non-US folks, used to be the most common US police car ~10-15 years ago).
He had funny stories about people slowing down to the speed limit and pulling over to the right lane on the freeway.
> Other drivers stop the ballet immediately and get all timid and stuff
I can personally attest as to why I suddenly get weird when at a 4-way with a cop: I don’t remember exactly what the rules are, what’s “ok” as in not technically illegal (ie 2 cars crossing at the same time?), etc, and the panic of getting pulled over because of some minor detail makes me just wait however long I need to to get a clear turn. It’s silly, I know how it works, and when that authority figure is present I just want to avoid any and all interaction.
I've heard from English and German visitors that 4 way intersections are frequently disambiguated by a concept of priority roads, and they seem surprised by the relatively smaller number of intersections in SF that stop only one of the roads.
>The local custom in SF is that someone is usually obviously first, rightmost, or just most aggressive, and opposing pairs of cars go simultaneously, while being wary about left turns.
This is how it works in most of north america.
Those confused tourists are just making up excuses for being poor drivers.
Yes, I feel the same way about driving in NYC thanks for asking.
The US has a FIFO rule but it only applies once you reach the stop sign itself, so the FIFO is never very deep. Yielding to the person to your right is the tiebreaker if you get there at exactly the same time.
I have seen an increased number of drivers have no idea how to handle 4-way stops, but the rule is relatively simple in practice.
> And of course I saw one driver get pissed off and drive around a Waymo that was advancing slowly, with the predictable result that the Waymo stopped and lost three more slots through the intersection.
Why are you saying they got pissed off? Going around another vehicle that is blocking the road sounds like basic driving to me.
There was definitely a second there where they were aggressive enough to run red lights, probably because they kept getting rear-ended by people that were expecting them to run the red light.
Obviously things will continue to improve, so this is a point in time criticism.
One of the biggest issues with current state of tech I see is, where these cars usually are. They're in cities, and most often in very dense ones, and ones in the south. These are effectively perfect conditions.
From my perspective, I wonder how these cars will behave with ice on the road, with snow, or a typical Montreal Wednesday of "It's a blizzard, you can't see 10 feet, there is snow on the road and ice, it's slippery, all the lines and street markings are obscured completely, oh and the power is out and there are no traffic lights."
Some of this can be resolved by snow tires, or even studded tires which are legal in Quebec. It should be noted that Quebec plows the roads less, and uses less dirt and salt on the road, and also enforces a law that snow tires are on cars in the winter. Of course studded tires give insane grip on ice, but have reduced grip on rain.
And it can 10C and rain, then freeze, then be a blizzard, then move to -40C, all in a few days.
But anyhow, my point is if a Waymo is slow with a missing traffic light, how will it act with a missing traffic light, and 10ft visual range of reflective snow in the air, no ability to see lines on the street, and so on. Humans are great at peering and seeing mostly obscured indications of an intersection, but this is still challenging for a car with a top priority of safety.
Here's another example. The cameras in my car are constantly obscured by slush, dirt, and such on the windshield and all over the car. All the roads are coated with dirt to help with slipping on ice. I often have my car absurdly complaining that cameras are covered, and there's no assist this and that, just because the entire car is coated in dirt.
How will a Waymo operate with all sensors covered in dirt?
There are probably solutions. But it feels like it will be a long while before such cars treat a normal day in winter, as usual.
It should be noted that I've simply discussed downtown Montreal. What of a rural area? And by rural, I mean houses 1 km apart, also with a blizzard, all lines obscured on the road, and meanwhile Canadians just intuitively know where and how to drive it. We just slow down a bit (from 120km/hr to maybe 70km/hr) and just drive on our merry way. If we try to stop, distances are greatly extended, and of course in some places without care you'll just slide into the ditch.
Of course that's just a Wednesday, and you can read the 'signs of the road', and sort of tell where to slow down more. Where to take more care.
Sometimes, you'll see a bunch of cars in the ditch, and think 'Ah, must be particularly slippery here', and slow down a bit more.
No way, it would be such a humongous quality of life improvement for humanity. I don't think we will just give up on it. Car interiors could be reworked once all the controls were gone, throughput on freeways/roads could be optimized, all the parking lots could be closed.
I'm starting to realize that this is most likely what will happen. They'll be available in select major cities, for certain areas, under certain weather conditions.
I'm also curious about this. They're coming to Minneapolis next year, so apparently they're confident in their ability to figure out cold / unpredictable weather (in urban conditions at least).
LIDAR can't be compared to radarless cars (yes, to Teslas) The car might have a better understanding in low visibility conditions than a person (blizzard)
I got stuck behind a Zoox in SF trying to cross the street from an alley. There was an endless stream of stop & go traffic and the Zoox refused to push itself into traffic, despite other cars deliberately giving it space. I wasn't sure if honking at it would help or hurt the situation.
They put Ghislaine Maxwell in jail then had to wait until her appeal about Epstein's immunity deal made it to the Supreme Court.
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