[HN Gopher] Waymo pulls back the curtain on 6.1M miles of self-d...
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Waymo pulls back the curtain on 6.1M miles of self-driving car data
in Phoenix
Author : ra7
Score : 148 points
Date : 2020-10-30 14:51 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| mola wrote:
| When I cross the road (to get to the other side) I use eye
| contact as a very strong signal for my safety. I wonder what will
| replace this.
| JoshTko wrote:
| Waymo can signal that it sees you by slowing down a good
| distance away.
| just_steve_h wrote:
| I believe that the data-collection should be publicly escrowed
| for safety-critical research such as for autonomous vehicles,
| therapeutics, and so on.
|
| It's too easy for employees to subtly edit or shape data to
| please their managers / directors / shareholders. It can be as
| subtle as "cleaning" the data by removing records with "noisy" or
| "unreliable" data, or "correcting" outliers.
|
| In the Waymo case, I consider self-disclosure to be self-serving.
| withinboredom wrote:
| I wonder if the AI is going to overfit traffic patterns and
| behavior. The rest of the world doesn't drive like they're in
| Phoenix.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Is there any evidence that the Waymo approach involves "the AI"
| at all? I think you're projecting the approach of other, failed
| self-driving efforts onto Waymo.
| luhn wrote:
| Waymo uses ML/AI extensively. Here's a blog post from earlier
| this year about how they're forgoing CNNs for a "hierarchical
| graph neural network."
| https://blog.waymo.com/2020/05/vectornet.html
| jeffbee wrote:
| Is the concern that these nets might be trained in such as
| way as to infer the wrong thing in cities other than
| Phoenix?
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Yes, overfitting to the training set is a problem with
| AI.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| I doubt they'd blindly deploy in another city with a
| network trained entirely in Phoenix. That's not something
| even an amateur MLE would do.
| nielsole wrote:
| Also rule based systems / manual decision trees can overfit
| :)
| computerphage wrote:
| Are you suggesting that Waymo might not use machine learning?
| What do you imagine they do instead?
| jeffbee wrote:
| No, I understand they use NNs for object classification and
| so forth, but compare their approach to Tesla, where the
| overall architecture is camera - a miracle - steering
| actuators. It seems from the outside that Waymo relies less
| on the black box.
| scep12 wrote:
| I think it's reasonable to expect that overfitting is on the
| radar for Waymo (no pun intended) given that 1) their
| parent/sibling company's expertise in the domain and 2) that
| they've been extensively training outside of Phoenix both in
| real-world and simulation.
|
| To continue down this path, I wonder how easy/hard it is for
| the Waymo "driver" to adjust to driving on the other side of
| the road.
| stevesimmons wrote:
| > driving on the other side of the road
|
| just flip the X axis of the camera input!
| ebg13 wrote:
| If you consider the rules for human defensive driving as
| gospel, the safety side of this problem seems to go away.
| Defensive driving doesn't act based on predictions of what
| external agents _will_ do, which may have regional variation.
| It identifies what external agents _could_ do, which does not
| have regional variation, and engages accordingly with rules and
| physics e.g. by making sure that the vehicle always has a safe
| escape path if it needs to stop abruptly or swerve to avoid a
| collision.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| I think the mid-game probably needs to be regional behavior
| fitting anyway.
| maliker wrote:
| That's around 7.71 crashes/million miles driven by Waymo.
|
| By comparison, US national statistics from 2018 [1] are around
| 2.08 crashes/million miles driven.
|
| Seems like they're far from human performance. There are ton of
| ways to slice this data, though. I used national stats for
| accidents where the police showed up; maybe Waymo's data includes
| no-police accidents. It would also be interesting to compare
| injury statistics. And of course this is Phoenix-specific data
| from Waymo, which is a place with good road conditions.
|
| [1] https://cdan.nhtsa.gov/tsftables/National%20Statistics.pdf
|
| (edited to include simulated crashes, which were only averted
| through human safety driver intervention.)
| beambot wrote:
| You also need to account for confounding variables, such as
| geography. Does Phoenix mirror the nation as a whole?
| brixon wrote:
| Did you count all incidents or only the ones that happened in
| real life and not the simulations?
| maliker wrote:
| I omitted the simulations in the Waymo count. Good idea to
| add them in?
| IshKebab wrote:
| Yeah you should include them because they were only
| prevented by a safety driver who won't exist in the long
| term.
| maliker wrote:
| Thanks! I missed that definition in the article. Updated
| the ratios. So it's actually 3.7x more accidents not
| 1.5x. Definitely changed my conclusion.
| danielvf wrote:
| Simulations counts were times when a safety driver took
| control of the vechile, and post-incident simulations with
| the same data show that the AI would have crashed the car
| without the safety driver. So fair to include them.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| Phonenix doesn't get much snow / ice / crazy fog / crazy rain.
| The roads are wide. The amount of traffic is low compared to,
| say, NYC or LA.
|
| So yeah, they are not near human level yet.
| maxerickson wrote:
| I think there's a solid chance that a 'near human capable'
| driving system will handle slippery roads better than the
| human average. The system will be in a modern vehicle with
| traction control and likely make conservative judgments about
| road condition.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| There might also be differences in how accurately a human
| or machine can model which maneuvers can/can't be done
| without losing traction. I could see this going either way.
| Maybe a human will be able to identify spots (like puddles)
| where traction will be especially bad, but a machine can do
| a detailed physics simulation of a maneuver before trying
| it.
|
| In whatever way a machine does adjust its behavior for
| slippery roads, it will probably be more consistent at it
| than a human. Humans have to deal with force of habit, so
| for example they may momentarily forget that they can't
| brake hard or they shouldn't take that turn at a familiar
| intersection at the same speed as yesterday.
| notatoad wrote:
| also poor visibility. humans need to rely on their eyes, a
| car with a bunch of lidar sensors is absolutely going to
| outperform us in fog, blowing snow, or heavy rain.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| I suspect that Waymo will do better compared to a human
| outside of Phoenix than inside it.
|
| The hardest thing that Waymo will have to do is to interact
| with humans behaving oddly. Phoenix has those, just not as
| many as NYC/LA/SF. But one thing computers do exceedingly
| well is scale. Dealing with one strange human is very hard
| for a computer, but dealing with two or more of them is very
| similar.
|
| Snow / ice / rain on the roads means changing underlying
| models, behaving more cautiously. Computers can switch
| modalities much quicker/easier than humans.
|
| Fog and other visibility problems are sensor issues. Humans
| are stuck with the old Mark 1 eyeball, but self driving cars
| have a mix of sensors. These sensors may currently be worse
| than eyeballs in fog, but may not be in the future.
|
| Even given those advantages, you still start in an easy
| location. Going from 0 to 1 is really hard, give yourself all
| the advantages you can. But going from 1 to N is a lot
| easier.
| foota wrote:
| Fwiw your conclusion is not really supported by the rest of
| your statement. Just because scaling from 1 to n is easy
| doesn't make scaling from zero to 1 feasible. And even if
| it is (feasible) there's no guarantee they'll be able to do
| it soon.
| mchusma wrote:
| I thought your Your 2.08 crashes/million miles number had to be
| wrong, since if that were true the average person would have
| about 1 accident every 50 years or so (which doesn't match my
| experience of everyone I know having accidents).
|
| Your number was "police reported accidents" which was
| apparently 6.7M. Anecdotally, I have been involved in 10
| accidents or so as a passenger or driver, and none were
| reported to the police.
|
| So I can't find good numbers on what the real number is but I
| think its conservative to estimate it at 1/2 are reported to
| the police. In addition, "Crashes" mostly involve 2 cars, so
| the "police reported cars that crashed" is roughly 2x, or >12M.
|
| Basically, those changes makes it roughly 8 crashes per million
| miles for normal driving, or Waymo being basically the same.
|
| I still think that accident rate is too low though. This
| estimate is 6 crashes every million miles based on allstate
| data https://mashable.com/2012/08/07/google-driverless-cars-
| safer....
|
| If that was the case, then humans would be at about 12 vehicle
| crashes/million miles, almost 2x as dangerous as Waymo.
|
| So about 2x better than human performance?
| maliker wrote:
| Great analysis and new data!
| mchusma wrote:
| Thank you for getting it started. I'm not 100% sure I
| understand it all. It's obviously important to figure out
| if it is safer or riskier.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| >> So about 2x better than human performance?
|
| If you really want the comparison to be on an even footing,
| you should consider only the crashes that happen during miles
| driven by humans _in Phoenix_. Not all over the US.
|
| In Phoenix only- because Waymo would have many more crashes
| outside Phoenix (e.g. New York or LA, from what I'm told of
| the traffic conditions there) and because so would humans.
| IshKebab wrote:
| But is it 2.08 crashes/million miles of driving around
| extremely easy and empty suburbs? There's a reason they started
| where they have - it's the easiest driving in the world. That's
| very sensible but it does mean you can't just compare
| statistics like that.
| ghaff wrote:
| >Waymo says its vehicles were involved in 47 "contact events"
| with other road users, including other vehicles, pedestrians, and
| cyclists. Eighteen of these events occurred in real life, while
| 29 were in simulation. "Nearly all" of these collisions were the
| fault of a human driver or pedestrian, Waymo says, and none
| resulted in any "severe or life-threatening injuries."
|
| While Waymo's statements may have been technically true, the
| pedestrian blaming at least strikes me as a bit tone deaf. Of
| course, pedestrians can do really stupid things. But, generally
| speaking, drivers have a lot of responsibility to still avoid
| hitting them under most circumstances.
|
| ADDED: The language that caught my eye is the Verge's and Waymo
| is just the facts. But pedestrians and cyclists are in general
| concerning because it doesn't take much. Even though a a
| pedestrian walking into the side of a suddenly(?) stopped vehicle
| is probably not generally a bad outcome.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| According to the paper, the pedestrian walked into the side of
| a stationary Waymo vehicle. I don't know how the vehicle can be
| at fault in this case.
| d0mine wrote:
| there are ~110 fatalities per million miles in US (6 "contact
| events" per million miles (> half in simulation) looks good in
| comparison) https://www.statista.com/statistics/191641/traffic-
| related-f...
| imtringued wrote:
| By those numbers I should have died ten times already.
| sib wrote:
| By those numbers, the average US driver (or passenger, I
| suppose) would die more than once per year... ;)
| maxerickson wrote:
| There's ~1 fatality per 100 million miles driven.
|
| It looks like you've calculated a rate, as there are about
| 110 annual deaths per million people.
| d0mine wrote:
| correct. There 10000 times error: there is actually ~0.011
| fatalities per million miles (not ~110)
| pkulak wrote:
| Yup. A pedestrian can technically be "at fault" for using the
| side of an intersection parallel to the painted crosswalk.
| Getting run over by a 5000-lb minivan doesn't seem like fair
| punishment.
| seibelj wrote:
| In Boston, jay walking is just what everyone does. No one
| will blame the jay walker if they get run over - it is the
| driver's fault.
| Grazester wrote:
| If the driver was not breaking any laws when they hit the
| pedestrian I bet nothing will come of it however. In NYC it
| seems like this is usually the case.
| loughnane wrote:
| This is correct and I think it's the healthy attitude of a
| pedestrian friendly city.
|
| This is the sort of bar self-driving firms should be
| setting.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| 'Jay walking' is such a bullshit term. 'People trying to
| get across a road' is what it is. Pedestrians should always
| have right of way.
| Sodman wrote:
| I strongly disagree. We can argue where exactly the line
| should be, but most people should agree that pedestrian's
| shouldn't be able to just suddenly jump out in front of a
| fast-moving stream of heavy traffic and expect everyone
| to stop across all lanes for them.
|
| As a society we have agreed that the laws in most places
| are "Pedestrians should cross the road at these
| designated spots, where they have right of way, sometimes
| only when given a specific signal". Sure, in some places
| it's become acceptable to cross the road outside of these
| "allowed" circumstances if you feel like there's no risk,
| but at that point you should also assume all liability.
|
| FWIW I am for the pedestrianization of city centers and
| adding protected bike lanes everywhere possible, but I do
| think when there _is_ a road, we all have to follow the
| agreed upon rules.
| umanwizard wrote:
| > pedestrian's shouldn't be able to just suddenly jump
| out in front of a fast-moving stream of heavy traffic and
| expect everyone to stop across all lanes for them.
|
| I don't agree. If you are driving too fast to stop for
| pedestrians, you are driving too fast, period.
|
| I'll make an exception for protected major freeways,
| especially in rural areas. (Abominations like the I-5
| going straight through the middle of Seattle should be
| illegal).
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > As a society we have agreed that the laws in most
| places are "Pedestrians should cross the road at these
| designated spots, where they have right of way, sometimes
| only when given a specific signal".
|
| For example this isn't the law in the UK. Yet our road
| death rate is a fraction of yours.
|
| > we all have to follow the agreed upon rules
|
| Yes we should... but the rules shouldn't be as they are
| in the US and Canada, with hostile rules like
| 'jaywalking'.
| Sodman wrote:
| Actually the law in the UK is that Pedestrian's usually
| _don 't_ have the right of way outside of designated
| crossing areas [0]. Drivers are considered to have a
| "Heavy Duty of Care" since they are of course driving
| large dangerous vehicles and pedestrians are more
| vulnerable, but they still have the right of way on your
| average road.
|
| Road death rate is a very broad statistic. As an EU
| citizen living in the US, there are certainly more
| differences than road-crossing rules and etiquette. For
| one, population density is almost an order of magnitude
| more sparse in the US (36 people / km^2) vs the uk (275
| people /km^2). This, among other things means there's a
| dramatic shift in driving norms. There are also major
| cultural differences, eg talking on the phone while
| driving in Ireland is taboo (and illegal), but in Boston
| it's totally normal (and perfectly legal). Drink driving
| here is far more acceptable too. The list goes on and on.
|
| [0]https://www.birchallblackburn.co.uk/do-pedestrians-
| always-ha...
| quicklyfrozen wrote:
| It's probably still normal to talk on the phone while
| driving in Boston, but it's no longer legal unless hands-
| free.
| abfan1127 wrote:
| illegal lane change? no, its just a car getting across a
| road.
|
| Like all things in life, we define patterns of use so we
| can more easily predict others' behavior. Sometimes these
| pattern definitions come from rules, others come from
| experience (rolling stops). Either way, pedestrian road
| crossing is defined in cross walks, typically found at
| intersections. If someone breaks the pattern, expect
| others around you to react unpredictably, which may
| include death.
|
| This comment sounds very entitled, as if a pedestrian is
| entitled to the road whenever they damn well please.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > This comment sounds very entitled, as if a pedestrian
| is entitled to the road whenever they damn well please.
|
| It's not 'as if' that's what I'm arguing - that's
| literally what I'm arguing. I literally think a
| pedestrian is entitled to the road whenever they damn
| well please. (Within reason, to genuinely cross it
| reasonably quickly, don't step out without giving cars at
| a reasonable speed enough time to stop, excluding
| purpose-built major roads.)
|
| Look at it from the other angle.
|
| Why should cars be entitled to the road whenever they
| damn well please?
|
| Why should the pedestrian stop for the car, instead of
| the car stopping for the pedestrian?
|
| Why is your default mental model that the car owns the
| road?
| abfan1127 wrote:
| I'll offer 2 points of view. 1) I ride atvs in the sand
| dunes. There's an unwritten rule that "tonnage rules"
| I.e. stay out of the way of bigger things. Regardless of
| right/wrong, you're still dead if a dirt bike collides
| with a sand car.
|
| 2) cars are required to stop at cross walks, driveways,
| and other similar pedestrian interfaces. Cars are
| entitled to roads because roads are for cars. Otherwise
| we'd have sidewalks everywhere.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| 1) bigger wins is a rule bullies use
|
| 2) roads were there for pedestrians long before cars were
| invented - they got taken from us for cars
| abfan1127 wrote:
| It's not a bully, it's defensive.
|
| It's just like train crossings. Cars stop for trains
| because trains can't stop.
|
| Lastly modern roads are heavily funded from gas taxes, so
| cars in effect pay for the roads.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Is the land for the roads funded by gas taxes too? I
| doubt it.
|
| Effectively you're condoning stealing a bunch of land
| from the commons, because the thieves paid for the
| improvements on it? (Which only benefit themselves - non-
| drivers are perfectly happy with non-"modern" roads).
| fastball wrote:
| Even when crossing roads where the speed limit is 40MPH+?
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah. I see the clowns in Cambridge who dart out into a
| poorly lit road at night not at a crosswalk wearing dark
| clothing. I'm watching for them because I know people do
| it. But the idea that a pedestrian can do anything they
| want to get across a medium speed road is idiotic.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Why shouldn't they cross the road any way they like? Why
| do you think the space is yours by default and not
| theirs?
| fastball wrote:
| Because you are in a fast-moving, can't-stop-on-a-dime
| vehicle that society has agreed is useful and that
| society has agreed can (and should, for efficiency
| purposes) go certain speeds in certain areas.
| ghaff wrote:
| Because someone may well maim or kill them sooner or
| later, if you're going to have cars, and will be a great
| bother for everyone involved. Look, I live somewhere
| people in all modes of transportation including foot
| mostly treat traffic laws as vague suggestions, but it's
| not so much a case of a driver refusing to stop for a
| pedestrian but the fact that pedestrians randomly
| crossing roads, especially at night and/or rainy weather,
| are running a non-trivial risk of getting hit.
| imtringued wrote:
| Yeah, I'm always terrified when someone crosses the
| street irresponsibly. Pedestrians are very unpredictable
| so often I just have to cross my fingers and hope they
| weren't stupid enough to make obvious mistakes but lazy
| enough to take dangerous shortcuts.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Why not? People come first. That's how it works in other
| countries.
|
| I think in the UK pedestrians always have right of way,
| with a couple of exceptions (motorways and things.)
| fastball wrote:
| 1. The person in the car is also a person, why shouldn't
| they have right of way.
|
| 2. That's not how it works in other countries.
| Pedestrians do not have right of way in the UK if not at
| a marked crossing.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Pedestrians do not have right of way in the UK if not
| at a marked crossing.
|
| Yes they do - look at the case law in practice. For
| example Brushett v Hazeldean (that was cyclists but it's
| being interpreted as cars as well.)
| fastball wrote:
| I have. They do not have the right of way. Vehicle
| operators merely have a high duty of care which can
| supersede right of way.
|
| Also, the case you reference was a case of a pedestrian
| crossing at a designated pedestrian crossing, so I don't
| understand how that's relevant to your point - if
| anything it supports mine.
| Sodman wrote:
| You have to remember there are also people _in the cars_
| who are now put in unnecessary danger by pedestrians
| jumping out in front of them. The worst part is that they
| are at the mercy of others to avoid this danger. Even if
| they see you unexpectedly moving in front of traffic and
| react in time, the 2-3 cars behind them also have to do
| the same for everyone to avoid injury. If you jump in
| front of moving cars, you should be personally liable for
| any injuries and damages caused by cars trying to avoid
| you. And this is all avoidable if the pedestrian walks a
| little further to get to the crosswalk, or waits a little
| longer for a walk signal.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Why do we make it the pedestrian's job? You want the
| pedestrian to walk a little further, you want the
| pedestrian to wait a little longer. Why don't we turn it
| around and say the car has to wait a little longer if
| someone wants to cross in front of them?
| imtringued wrote:
| Because emergency braking isn't guaranteed to stop your
| car before you have hit a pedestrian. Plainly said:
| physics exist.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Maybe we shouldn't be driving so fast in built-up areas?
| fastball wrote:
| I personally am not in favor of decreasing the efficiency
| of our entire economy so that pedestrians who think they
| own the roads can walk wherever they want and expect
| everyone else to defer to their whims.
|
| Also, you've repeatedly asked the question "why should
| drivers get any right of way on the roads". Well, for
| one, I would imagine that the average car operator pays
| more towards the upkeep of the roads than the average
| pedestrian.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Property taxes pay for city streets.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > the average car operator pays more towards the upkeep
| of the roads than the average pedestrian
|
| Pay to play, huh?
|
| Rich people get to use the roads for what they want, huh?
| Sodman wrote:
| Cars already do have to wait a little longer for
| pedestrians to cross - at traffic lights, stop signs,
| intersections and crosswalks.
|
| Roads are literally built _for cars to drive on_. Having
| people on them makes driving far more dangerous, as well
| as meaning it takes longer to get places, not to mention
| taking a hit on fuel efficiency.
|
| Should I be able to walk in front of a bus load of people
| and delay their commute? If we're allowing pedestrians
| unlimited full access to roads with full right of way all
| the time, then roads basically become sidewalks which
| cars are also allowed to inch along at walking speed. So
| what happens to busses now? Are we ok saying busloads of
| people now have to move at 3mph across a few miles?
| Again, I am for converting some downtown roads into
| pedestrian-only areas, but until we do that, we should
| treat these roads as roads.
|
| If pedestrians should have right of way everywhere all
| the time, should a pedestrian be able to walk across a
| railroad crossing while the barriers are down and a train
| is approaching? Is the train expected to stop? Of course
| not, that would be ridiculous, but it's the same
| argument.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Roads are literally built for cars to drive on.
|
| No, at least outside of the US roads were there before
| the car even existed. They were walked on before anything
| else. Then cars hijacked them, and now people have so
| long forgotten in the US that they've started writing
| laws to strengthen their land-grab as if it was always
| this way.
|
| > Should I be able to walk in front of a bus load of
| people and delay their commute?
|
| No I don't think you should be able to unreasonably
| obstruct the highway. You can't do that no matter what
| vehicle or no vehicle you're in. But crossing is
| completely reasonable in my mind.
| ummonk wrote:
| I'm picturing somebody jumping in front of a fast moving
| horse wagon and expecting not to get run over now. I
| guarantee you everyone would have found that expectation
| equally ridiculous.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| But 'jaywalking' is crossing _anywhere_ where there isn
| 't a crossing, even when the road is _empty_. That 's a
| stupid rule.
|
| I'm not saying people should expect physics to not apply
| to them, but they should be allowed to cross anywhere
| they want and cars should defer.
|
| Cars used to have to have a person walking on foot in
| front of them to warn people with a flag.
| fastball wrote:
| That's a fair point. Here's the new idea then:
| pedestrians have right of way on any road that was
| originally built with pedestrians in mind and has not
| since been updated with cars in mind.
| Sodman wrote:
| > No, at least outside of the US roads were there before
| the car even existed
|
| I mean yes, obviously the concept of a road does
| literally predate cars. But no roads that modern cars
| drive on today were built 200 years ago for cattle and
| wagons to use. Modern city planners built (or re-built)
| these roads specifically with vehicle traffic in mind
| (and in some cases maybe bikes). If they didn't want them
| to support vehicle traffic, they would have built them
| using different materials and designs.
|
| > No I don't think you should be able to unreasonably
| obstruct the highway. You can't do that no matter what
| vehicle or no vehicle you're in. But crossing is
| completely reasonable in my mind.
|
| This reads like you're saying you think it's completely
| reasonable to cross the highway even if it obstructs
| traffic? I could be misinterpreting the connection
| between your first and last sentences here...
|
| Either way, at the end of the day I think it comes down
| to the fact that we disagree on what constitutes
| "unreasonable obstruction". I believe a single pedestrian
| wanting to slow down dozens of cars so they can cross the
| street 30 seconds quicker is unreasonable. Even if we're
| talking about _all_ pedestrians, the aggregate time saved
| by pedestrians crossing slightly earlier is far
| outweighed by the time _lost_ by everyone in a car who 's
| now traveling at 5mph instead of 40mph. I believe the
| current system we have of batching pedestrians crossing
| using traffic lights is far more efficient overall. The
| "should there be roads here in the first place" argument
| is a totally different one however.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > This reads like you're saying you think it's completely
| reasonable to cross the highway even if it obstructs
| traffic?
|
| Yeah I do - as a pedestrian. I think you should get
| across as quickly as you can and shouldn't get in
| people's way unnecessarily... but yeah morally I think
| you should have that right as a human being on foot.
|
| Letting cars have priority lets people with wealth and
| opportunity have priority.
| Sodman wrote:
| > Letting cars have priority lets people with wealth and
| opportunity have priority.
|
| I would actually argue the opposite. As the saying goes,
| "Location, Location, Location." Many of the wealthiest
| people / most expensive homes are either walking distance
| to or in the middle of big hubs. The next most expensive
| places are walking distance to public transport to take
| them to big hubs. You can get a much cheaper place if you
| go to somewhere that's an hour's drive outside the city
| with no public transport (or the only public transport
| available is by bus), and that's what many people do to
| cut down on costs.
|
| You've also mentioned that cars probably shouldn't be
| able to go even as fast as 40kmph when pedestrians could
| cross... Should we be making all of our highways 30kmph
| now if we're saying pedestrians should be able to cross
| them at-will?
| chrisseaton wrote:
| No I think UK law already makes an exception for highways
| (in the sense you mean), so no I don't think people
| should be able to cross for example three-lane roads
| purpose built for cars where people are going 70 mph.
|
| This thread has digressed a bit. It was originally about
| jaywalking in cities. Should it be a named crime to cross
| a road in the middle of New York City? Come on - no -
| pedestrians owned those first and should still do.
| fastball wrote:
| The reason jaywalking can be a crime is because a
| pedestrian crossing a road with cars in it in a non-
| designated location or at a non-designated time runs the
| real risk of recklessly endangering others.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| I know we're just going round in circles here... but why
| don't we make it the cars' responsibility to stop for
| pedestrians, instead of the pedestrians' responsibility
| to stop for cars?
|
| Why are we starting from the point of the default is that
| it is space for cars rather than people?
|
| Because cars take longer to stop? Well then how about the
| cars slow down in cities?
|
| Because cars are more dangerous? Well that sounds like a
| reason to restrict them, not the pedestrians.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Such roads shouldn't exist in cities.
| blobbers wrote:
| I'm reminded of
| https://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/11/18/7236471/cars-
| pedestria...
| UncleMeat wrote:
| But that never happened in these examples. Instead it was
| "the waymo car stopped and the pedestrian walked into it".
| jefftk wrote:
| From the paper (https://storage.googleapis.com/sdc-
| prod/v1/safety-report/Way...):
|
| "There were also no collisions (actual or simulated) in which
| the Waymo Driver struck a pedestrian or cyclist. There were
| three events (one actual, two simulated) in which the Waymo
| vehicle was struck by a pedestrian or cyclist. In each
| instance, the Waymo Driver decelerated and stopped, and a
| pedestrian or cyclist made contact with the right side of the
| stationary Waymo vehicle while the pedestrian or cyclist was
| traveling at low speeds."
|
| "in each of the 3 actual and simulated events in which a
| pedestrian or cyclist struck the Waymo vehicle at low speed,
| the Waymo vehicle had decelerated and stopped immediately prior
| to the contact or simulated contact in a way that may have
| differed from the cyclist's or pedestrian's expectations. This
| illustrates a key challenge faced by AVs operating in a
| predominantly human traffic system and underscores the
| importance of driving in a way that is interpretable and
| predictable by other road users."
|
| (Disclosure: I work for Google, a sibling company of Waymo,
| speaking only for myself)
| alextheparrot wrote:
| They just don't drive like humans. I almost walked into the
| side of a Cruise vehicle a few years back because the car did
| a double stop at a stop sign when I expected it to keep
| moving forward after the first stop. There was no other
| traffic and I wasn't distracted - but it just stopped in the
| middle of the crosswalk after starting to go forward.
|
| Pedestrians assume certain things that are not necessarily
| true for self-driving vehicles, just as if I started acting
| erratically as a pedestrian it would really mess with cars.
|
| All in all, though, I'd much rather take that failure case
| (At least when walking) over the human failure case of
| hitting me while turning.
| imtringued wrote:
| Pedestrians "assuming" certain things (aka acting
| irresponsibly) is the worst.
|
| I often see people cross the street halfway to only stop at
| the last second when a car is about to pass them. For
| people driving at 50km/h this is terrifying because they
| have to trust that the pedestrian is fully aware of his
| dangerous position. If you maintain your speed there is a
| good almost 100% chance that you will pass the pedestrian
| before he even reaches your lane but if you slow down then
| there is a non zero risk that the pedestrian didn't see you
| and you are about to run him over. So nope, defensive
| driving is not the answer and can actually increase
| accident risk in this specific scenario. It was all up to
| the pedestrians to follow safety basic rules and they broke
| them to cross the street a few seconds faster.
| megablast wrote:
| Nope. Killing machines being meters away from people is
| the worst. And it's crazy we just accept this.
| umanwizard wrote:
| You drivers are the ones who stole massive amounts of
| prime land from the commons for your cars, and now you
| want us to adjust our behavior to make driving easier for
| you too?
| alextheparrot wrote:
| The car is also assuming how the pedestrian will walk,
| I'm pretty sure we're just describing an adversarial game
| here. If the pedestrian guesses wrong they might be hit
| by the car, if the car guesses wrong the pedestrian might
| be hit. This means you can have easy rules that look
| clear cut, but in practice the risk for both parties
| makes me a pretty defensive pedestrian and driver.
| bentcorner wrote:
| Eye contact is a big thing when driving at low speeds - if
| you don't make eye contact with a driver you can assume
| they either don't see you or are not going to give you
| right of way (e.g., if you're jaywalking). I can imagine
| moments of confusion at intersections where pedestrians are
| unsure what the AV car is "thinking".
|
| Similarly with other situations where you might leave a gap
| in traffic for someone to make that left turn across your
| congested road (would an AV even do this?), it helps to see
| that other driver wave you across (even if technically you
| don't have right of way).
| tln wrote:
| I'd love to see some kind of indication that a car is in
| autonomous mode. That would let others adjust their
| expectations.
|
| Especially cops, it could be legal to be asleep/drunk if
| the car is autonomous!
|
| That being said, it would be great if autonomous cars
| kept up with traffic. I've seen autonomous cars going
| 50mph on hwy 101 when other traffic is going 70mph, or
| 5mph over normal highway speeds. Not a great situation.
| thelean12 wrote:
| It's not the Cruise system's fault that you almost ran into
| them. They should absolutely be able to stop again to
| access the situation before continuing, regardless of the
| traffic situation. And who knows, maybe there was another
| pedestrian or animal running around on the other side of
| the road that you didn't see.
|
| It's like rear ending a car at a stop sign because they did
| a double stop and blaming the front car. That's just not
| how it works.
| alextheparrot wrote:
| This absolutely can be a liability. I've been 'hit' by a
| car that made a left turn into their driveway across the
| bike lane. If there is a small animal or another
| pedestrian that isn't the biker's fault - the car is
| still liable at that point. Blocking orthogonal lanes of
| traffic is not a driver's 'right'.
| thelean12 wrote:
| That's a much more vague situation. Did they actually hit
| you? Did they cut you off and force you to hit them?
| Those are much different situations than them having
| plenty of time to make a turn and having to stop for
| whatever reason, and you assumed that they wouldn't stop
| so you didn't slow down. And to be clear, I don't care
| what the law says in this conversation; I care about what
| I think is the correct outcome.
|
| A double stop at a stop sign is a very simple situation.
| alextheparrot wrote:
| I'll address your questions second, but I want to put
| forward the most lucid scenario that I feel addresses the
| double stop situation.
|
| We have an intersection where one direction is controlled
| (There's a stop sign) and the other is not. If a bike or
| pedestrian is moving in the uncontrolled direction,
| should we allow a car in the controlled direction to be
| able to block uncontrolled traffic - car, bike,
| pedestrian without by default being liable.
|
| My answer would be no - the car coming from the
| controlled direction cannot impede the uncontrolled lanes
| of traffic when proceeding. If something suddenly
| appeared, like an animal, then we should allow drivers
| some leeway to resolve that trolley problem. However, I
| would add that there should be an expectation that things
| are proportionate - allowing a cat to survive should not
| force a biker or pedestrian to hit the car.
|
| I think we can generalize this further by introducing
| right-of-way and other concepts that make fully
| controlled intersections more difficult, but I feel the
| results will be roughly similar.
|
| To your initial questions, the body of the car moved into
| the bike lane when I had insufficient time or space to
| deviate my path to avoid the car. I hit the hood of the
| car and flew over it.
|
| I am in agreement that if I'm following someone through
| an intersection and rear-end them based on them double
| stopping, I think it is less so when we are dealing with
| orthogonal lanes of traffic.
| thelean12 wrote:
| We might have to agree to disagree a bit.
|
| If I am driving in the uncontrolled direction and see a
| car crossing in the controlled direction, then I slow
| down enough in case the crossing car slows down or stops
| unexpectedly. If the crossing car doesn't give enough
| space (i.e. cuts people off), then they're at fault.
| Otherwise the uncontrolled direction is at fault.
|
| To simplify it: Everyone should give everyone enough
| space/time to stop before hitting something. Everyone
| should use that space/time when something unexpected
| happens. Anyone who breaks either of those should be at
| fault.
|
| Again, just my opinion about how it should be. I have no
| idea what the law says.
| 0xB31B1B wrote:
| As a cyclist, this says nothing to me about the safety of
| these cars. I was biking and I "struck" a car that was
| heading opposite my direction and making a left hand turn
| across my path in the bike line and crossing my right of way.
| I struck the car on the side near the front passenger wheel
| at "slow speed" and was thrown over the hood of the car and
| then onto the ground. This incident was the cars fault for
| making a turn without consideration of my right of way even
| though I, the cyclist, was the one who struck the car.
|
| An SDC that freezes in front of cyclists is still dangerous
| to cyclists.
| ljhsiung wrote:
| Firstly, this isn't direct at you, more at the title. I think
| the title of "47 events" is greatly misleading. While the
| simulations are definitely incredibly valuable, it's misleading
| to use the figures from simulations in any argument for how
| careless Waymo is. In fact, I think the heavy usage of
| simulation to model realistic events should be a plus, rather
| than how the title makes it seem like a bad thing.
|
| Secondly, If you read Table 1 [1] of the paper, you'll see that
| there was only _1_ actual pedestrian event (and I guess 2
| simulated events), and that was a person walking into a parked
| car (it 's funny that they could measure the walking speed of
| the person at 2.7mph).
|
| Lastly, in Table 2 they enumerate all the events that "were the
| fault of the other human driver". Most of them are "failure to
| yield", for example-- "failure to yield to a vehicle
| approaching from the left while making a right turn at an
| unsignalized intersection."
|
| This touches on your bit on driver's responsibility. While it
| is _true_ that Waymo isn 't at fault, it makes me wonder how
| much "defensive driving" Waymo is including in their models. In
| the case above, without video/full context, you don't fully
| know whether it was an avoidable accent or not by, say,
| swerving to the other lane, or if that option wasn't possible
| due to another car. It'd be incredibly interesting to know the
| exact number corrective actions taken/attempted and number of
| probable accidents avoided.
|
| [1] https://storage.googleapis.com/sdc-prod/v1/safety-
| report/Way...
| ghaff wrote:
| Fair enough. I did not read the actual paper. My bad.
|
| >that was a person walking into a parked car (it's funny that
| they could measure the walking speed of the person at
| 2.7mph).
|
| And heh. I can't say the car's likely at fault in that case
| although it may still have behaved in a way the pedestrian
| didn't expect. And as someone else noted, some of the
| language I was quoting was from The Verge. The actual report
| is much more just the facts.
|
| To your broader point, a human driver could probably obey
| every traffic law and get into tons of at least minor
| accidents that would be technically the other driver's fault.
| JackC wrote:
| > I think the title of "47 events" is greatly misleading
|
| If I understand correctly, it's not the title that's
| misleading but the term "simulation." They're only talking
| about simulating _what would have happened if the safety
| driver didn 't intervene in real life_, not simulations
| generally. A better word would be predictions -- they predict
| that there would have been 47 events, but safety drivers were
| able to prevent the majority of them.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| I agree with you, and yet at the same time I'm not sure how to
| word it for the general public so as not to be "tone deaf." You
| would almost need to accompany such statements with video, or
| somehow humanize the actions of the car.
|
| A human driver can feel remorse and/or psychological trauma
| when someone commits suicide by traffic even if there WAS
| something they could have done, but didn't react quickly or
| appropriately enough. Because of that, we can sympathize with
| the driver even if, in retrospect, there was some better action
| they could have taken. Generally we wouldn't talk to the driver
| about it, because we understand it was traumatic for the
| driver. A computer does not get the same benefit of the doubt.
| javagram wrote:
| It depends on how the pedestrian is violating the rules.
|
| But I hope that AV data will show that AVs are significantly
| better than human drivers at following pedestrian related rules
| such as automatically stopping to let pedestrians cross at
| crosswalks without signal lights. (As a driver, I've been
| guilty of not stopping in many cases myself, sometimes because
| I don't look far enough ahead and to the side and notice the
| person waiting for cars to stop)
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > the pedestrian blaming at least strikes me as a bit tone
| deaf. Of course, pedestrians can do really stupid things. But,
| generally speaking, drivers have a lot of responsibility to
| still avoid hitting them under most circumstances
|
| Can you explain exactly what you think a driver is supposed to
| do to stop a pedestrian literally just walking into your
| stationary car?
|
| If you're responsible for avoiding that, you tell me what you
| would have done?
| alextheparrot wrote:
| If you've ever almost walked into one the failure case is
| really clear. They use stopping as a default mitigation
| strategy when something unpredictable happens - this isn't
| always a good solution especially when suddenly blocking
| transit (Crosswalks, bike paths, railways, traffic) instead
| of just crossing it. This is a failure case humans can get
| cited for - I hit a car in the bike lane once when they did a
| left turn in front of me and it was legally the driver's
| fault for blocking that path.
|
| It is just another characteristic they need to figure out in
| a complex problem.
| sidibe wrote:
| By making the car act more like people expect it to
|
| From the paper (which doesn't really pedestrian-blame as GP
| suggests)
|
| > In each instance, the Waymo vehicle had decelerated and
| stopped immediately prior to the contact or simulated contact
| in a way that may have differed from the cyclist's or
| pedestrian's expectations
| chrisseaton wrote:
| But
|
| > responsibility to still avoid hitting them
|
| They didn't hit them at all!
| michael1999 wrote:
| People also expect drivers to kill 20k per year. I don't
| think Waymo is likely to sign up to that goal whole-
| heartedly.
| kube-system wrote:
| If we are truly talking about "contact events", I have seen on
| multiple occasions, pedestrians walking into the side of
| stopped vehicles. This is definitely an area where data speaks
| louder than words, so good on them for releasing it.
|
| Edit: skimming through the paper, it does appear that at least
| one of the events was exactly this scenario.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| it's truly remarkable. granted this is an exceptional case
| given the general mental state of people at burning man, but
| I have seen a cyclist ride straight into the back of a fully
| parked, Very Brightly Lit art car before.
| hyperdimension wrote:
| What a lovely euphemism, "contact events."
|
| I suppose Chernobyl was just a simple 'thermal event,' and
| we're only in the middle of a moderate 'disease spread
| elevation.'
|
| EDIT: "Sorry boss, there was a ton of traffic on my commute.
| Seems there was a 27-vehicle 'spontaneous gathering' on the
| highway"
| keymone wrote:
| Would you call it a crash if pedestrian walks into side of
| the car that stopped to avoid another collision?
| spankalee wrote:
| You're quoting The Verge's words, not Waymo's there. I'm
| curious how Waymo actually stated this.
| judge2020 wrote:
| https://storage.googleapis.com/sdc-prod/v1/safety-
| report/Way...
|
| See page 5
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I'm from an area where pedestrians have the right of way
| everywhere, so this isn't reassuring.
| harlanji wrote:
| Waymo does simulations? I have to update my surveillence program
| design. Pretty sure they're able to track me, and do. I'm a vocal
| activist against their data collection, have approached them and
| taken photos to make the drivers uncomfortable and tweeted about
| marking them with red paintballs to indicate recording (goal:
| make them signal their collection activity).
|
| Literally every day I am greeted by patterns of Waymo vans, like
| 2 the moment I leave and at the majoroty of my destinations one+
| buzzes me. They box me in at stoplights, park at my destinations.
| I know it sounds crazy, but a pretty simple program with a few
| compartmentalized functions would enable the legal team to feed
| my phone carrier loction stream into the dispatching system;
| could also be an element of prediction as well. None of the
| drivers or engineers would know what they're building. The end
| result would be a surveillance system that can follow targets.
| The diagram is just pencilled on paper, but I've been deep enough
| in Silicon Valley to say it's plausible. I also made a short
| story on SoundCloud, same handle.
|
| What's the economic value of this data? An element of my message
| is also that they're profiting off of homeless people who can't
| opt out; eg. they could be targets for training a prediction
| system, since they will always be available and be in the same
| few locations. I want an opt-out function.
|
| I've been meaning to fugure out how to CCPA request their data,
| with my photo, license plate, photos of my car and bike.
|
| Lawyer in the house? Biz@harlanji.com
| Hitton wrote:
| Looks nice, but I'm little sceptical about the rear end
| collisions. From previous videos of self-driving cars (I don't
| remember whether it was Waymo) I have seen, they tend to suddenly
| stop for seemingly no reason. And although the driver has duty to
| keep safe distance, from point of view of other drivers it might
| seem no different than "anatagonistic motive" mentioned in the
| article.
| ilaksh wrote:
| Check out JJ Ricks's recent Waymo vehicles. There is no
| evidence of that being the case today.
| zaroth wrote:
| The evidence is the rear-end collisions cited by OP.
| Animats wrote:
| That's comparable to the autonomous vehicle accident reports
| Google files with the California DMV. Minor rear-ending at low
| speed is the most common problem. The usual situation is where
| the Waymo vehicle has an obstructed line of sight at an
| intersection and enters the intersection very slowly. Then the
| system sees cross traffic and stops. The human-driven vehicle,
| following the Waymo vehicle, then fails to stop fast enough.
| There's one intersection in Mountain View which has a tree in the
| median high enough to block the LIDAR but clear at window height.
| That causes a very cautious intersection entrance. Waymo vehicles
| have been rear-ended twice there. As LIDAR units get cheaper and
| more are fitted, that problems should be fixed.
|
| Autonomous vehicles may need a "Back Off" signal, like flashing
| the brake lights at ultra-bright levels when someone gets too
| close.
|
| "The one actual, non-simulated angled collision occurred when a
| vehicle ran a red light at 36 mph, smashing into the side of a
| Waymo vehicle that was traveling through the intersection at 38
| mph."
|
| Not Waymo's fault. I wonder if Waymo went to court, with full
| video of the driver running the red light.
|
| This is encouraging.
| OnlineGladiator wrote:
| > Waymo says its vehicles were involved in 47 "contact events"
| with other road users, including other vehicles, pedestrians, and
| cyclists. Eighteen of these events occurred in real life, while
| 29 were in simulation.
|
| If they drove 6,100,000 real miles and ~5,000,000,000 simulation
| miles, and had 18 real contacts and ~29 simulated contacts - that
| _strongly_ indicates their simulation is not representative of
| reality.
|
| Edit: My (old, now changed) numbers were wrong but my theory was
| right!
|
| So they drove 6,100,000 real miles and had 18 real contacts.
| Between June 2019 and April 2020 they drove ~5,000,000,000
| simulated miles and had ~29 simulated contacts.
|
| So their simulator is 3 orders of magnitude safer than the real
| world. The only number that's really fuzzy here is 29 - the
| number of simulated contacts (because the dates don't match up
| perfectly, as this report from Waymo started counting in January
| 2019). But no matter how you slice it, there is clearly no way
| the simulated miles are representative of reality.
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/10/waymo-has-now-driven-10-bi...
|
| https://blog.waymo.com/2020/04/off-road-but-not-offline--sim...
| BigBubbleButt wrote:
| The simulated contacts are when Waymo investigates what happens
| after a driver disengages and concludes they would have had a
| collision, not the actual contacts measured from simulation.
|
| I know, confusing right?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| spankalee wrote:
| That's not what the article says. They drove 6.1 million miles
| autonomous with a safety driver.
| jartelt wrote:
| The 6.1M miles was self-driving in real life, with a safety
| driver in the car.
|
| The simulation portion only comes into play if the safety
| driver intervenes in a real life situation. In this case, they
| go back and simulate what would have happened in the safety
| driver did nothing.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> that strongly indicates their simulation is not
| representative of reality._
|
| If they take the common software testing approach where every
| time they discover a fault, they add a simulation that
| reproduces it alongside the code change that fixes it, we would
| _expect_ the simulation to contain a great many scenarios where
| collisions don 't occur.
|
| Indeed, I would be more worried if they'd resorted to real-
| world testing before they'd solved the known problems their
| simulation had revealed.
|
| Of course, whether quoting a number of simulated miles driven
| is relevant to anything is another question....
| OnlineGladiator wrote:
| That's a good point. It still suggests there is no apples to
| apples comparison between the real world and simulation
| though, and that those numbers can't really be considered
| equivalent or even compared in a useful way.
|
| If you're saying the simulation should've revealed more
| problems than the real world, wouldn't that mean there'd be
| more contacts through simulation (because that's where you
| discover them) and then you'd hope the fix exists before
| rolling it out to the real world, so you'd expect to have
| less contacts there? What they're reporting is the opposite
| of that though.
|
| Obviously I don't have enough information to draw a
| scientific conclusion here - I'm just pointing out there is
| an _enormous_ discrepancy between their simulated miles and
| their real miles.
| mamon wrote:
| Where did you get those numbers from? according to the article
| 6.1M miles was driven on the roads with safety drivers, and
| additional 65000 miles were driven without safety drivers.
|
| "Simulated contacts" are when safety drivers engages, and Waymo
| investigates what would happen if they did not, so this is as
| close to the real life as it gets.
| csours wrote:
| If you dig in and watch the vehicles, it's clear that the next
| barrier is communication with other road users pedestrians,
| cyclists, drivers (and passengers).
|
| Pedestrians don't know where the car is trying to go or when it
| will start or stop. Drivers get annoyed and brake check the
| vehicles. Drivers don't understand what the car is about to do
| next and drive erratically to get around it.
| jeffbee wrote:
| People who "get annoyed and brake check the vehicles" should be
| apprehended and launched into the sun. There's no excuse for
| behavior like that.
| Jabbles wrote:
| "Only" 74,000 miles in driverless mode.
|
| That is less than I expected.
|
| Executive Summary
|
| https://storage.googleapis.com/sdc-prod/v1/safety-report/Way...
| bgee wrote:
| Google engineer not working on Waymo, opinions are my own.
|
| I think "driverless" here is different from "self-driving",
| i.e. 'Waymo uses "driverless" here to refer to operations in
| which the ADS controls the vehicle for the entire trip without
| a human driver (whether in the vehicle or at a remote location)
| expected to assume any part of the driving task.' at page 5 of
| that report.
|
| I think this driverless mode is only available to public on Oct
| 8th [0].
|
| [0]: https://blog.waymo.com/2020/10/waymo-is-opening-its-fully-
| dr...
| Jabbles wrote:
| That's how I interpreted it too, but I'm still surprised it's
| not 10x. I would have thought that paying the drivers is a
| major expense, and collecting "real" data 24/7 would be a
| priority.
| hacker245678910 wrote:
| wowwwww
| loosescrews wrote:
| The severity scale used in the paper is backwards. Their S0 means
| "no injury expected" and their S3 means "possible critical
| injuries expected". Google's Issue Tracker [1] uses the opposite
| scale [2].
|
| [1] https://issuetracker.google.com/
|
| [2] https://developers.google.com/issue-tracker/concepts/issues
| abirkill wrote:
| They're using the ISO 26262 scale for severity, not their own:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_26262#Part_9:_Automotive_S...
| [deleted]
| mdorazio wrote:
| It's great to see actual data reported since so many AV companies
| hide it behind as many walls and fluffy press releases as
| possible. I think this speaks to the maturity of Waymo's system
| at this point. Two key paragraphs for me personally:
|
| "The most common type of crash involving Waymo's vehicles was
| rear-end collisions. Waymo said it was involved in 14 actual and
| two simulated fender-benders, and in all but one, the other
| vehicle was the one doing the rear-ending."
|
| -> This is consistent with previous reports from Waymo. If one of
| their vehicles gets in an accident, it's extremely likely that
| the other (human) driver was at fault. Of course, this is
| somewhat compounded by the fact that Waymo vehicles actually try
| to follow road laws like attempting to stop for yellow lights and
| making full stops at stopsigns, which human drivers often don't
| do (and may not expect other vehicles to do).
|
| "The one incident where Waymo rear-ended another vehicle was in
| simulation: the company determined that the AV would have rear-
| ended another car that swerved in front of it and then braked
| hard despite a lack of obstruction ahead -- which the company
| says was "consistent with antagonistic motive." (There have been
| dozens of reports of Waymo's autonomous vehicles being harassed
| by other drivers, including attempts to run them off the road.)"
|
| -> This doesn't surprise me really, but is still pretty sad. Many
| drivers are just assholes and AVs are going to be an easy target
| for such people.
| me_me_me wrote:
| > -> This doesn't surprise me really, but is still pretty sad.
| Many drivers are just assholes and AVs are going to be an easy
| target for such people.
|
| Whoa Whoa. We dont have go as far as calling them people.
| xxpor wrote:
| >which human drivers often don't do (and may not expect other
| vehicles to do).
|
| This presents an interesting problem. It's obviously easier to
| program something to follow the law, given it's unambiguous.
| But the question is what are we optimizing for? The fewest
| crashes? That's probably the right thing to do given crashes
| are bad. In that case, isn't it better to do what people would
| expect other cars to do? But are Waymo constrained by the fact
| that if a self-driving car is programmed to get a ticket they
| could be held liable? Probably.
|
| I think the moral side of self-driving cars is just as hard or
| a harder problem than the technical side, and we haven't made
| the decisions as a society that we need to. If the government
| doesn't step up soon to lay out how this is going to work, the
| corporations will. And guess what: they'll choose whatever
| costs them the least amount of money. Not what's best for
| society.
| keanebean86 wrote:
| Sorry this is a little off topic but I think there's some
| things we can do now to prepare yourselves for eventual self
| driving cars.
|
| Our phones should SUGGEST slight changes to our driving to
| improve efficiency. For example there's a jam ahead.
| Google/Apple know our phone's speed and the speed of those
| around us already.
|
| A lot of backups are due to a lack of information transfer.
| The wave of stopping/slowing is the propagation of that
| information. If our phones informed us beforehand to slow
| slightly we could smooth the way out much faster.
|
| I know it's a privacy nightmare right now but it's doable and
| everyone that's driving would potentially benefit.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| >But the question is what are we optimizing for? The fewest
| crashes? That's probably the right thing to do given crashes
| are bad
|
| Another thing to take into account is that not all crashes
| are equally bad. I wouldn't be surprised if getting rear
| ended 10 times was safer than a single t-bone or head on
| collision
| michael1999 wrote:
| Isn't that exactly the problem? People doing what they
| normally do kills 20k people in the USA every year. Google
| won't get away with that kind of blood-sacrifice. I look
| forward to the opposite: a generation of young drivers who
| copy the robots as examples and driver error plummets. Screw
| idiots who anticipate empty spaces that aren't actually
| there. Rear-ending someone is always your fault unless
| someone entered your lane.
| megablast wrote:
| 40k people. And millions seriously injured.
| bradstewart wrote:
| > isn't it better to do what people would expect other cars
| to do?
|
| You--a human driver--have no idea what the other cars will do
| either. Some people run yellows, some people don't. The only
| reasonable thing to assume the other car to do is follow the
| law, but be prepared for the unexpected.
|
| Unless Waymo cars are doing something unnatural like braking
| significantly harder or faster than a human would, the Waymo
| car is not at fault for being rear-ended.
|
| Once we pass ethical muster (meaning don't ship knowingly
| buggy code, don't sell cars you expect to crash a lot, etc),
| I have a hard time seeing what the moral issues are here.
| toast0 wrote:
| I haven't gone through this article, but I've read several
| incident reports from testing in Mountain View and seen
| several test vehicles driving around in that area.
|
| Waymo cars are often unnaturally cautious, which is usually
| a factor when they get rear-ended. Ex: vehicle behind
| expected waymo car to turn left when there was an opening
| large enough for it, but it didn't.
|
| These are probably worse because there's a safety driver
| who is probably actively engaged. If you can see the
| (apparent) driver looks actively engaged, you'll expect
| them to see the gap, and go for it. If the car had no one
| in the driver seat (or they were looking at
| screens/passengers), you might be more cautious.
|
| Added: of course, that doesn't mean it's waymo's
| responsibility; this type of collision occurs with human
| drivers too, and it's the driver to the rear's fault, but
| either driver could have avoided the error: the front
| driver by going when it was safe to do so, as expected; and
| the rear driver by waiting to confirm the front driver
| actually went. Sometimes it's tricky because the front
| driver releases the brakes and then reapplies them; the
| rear driver saw the brake lights turn off and moves forward
| while watching oncoming traffic, but doesn't see the brakes
| were reapplied.
|
| Added later: I read the verge article. It sounds like Waymo
| is working on not getting rear-ended, so they acknowledge
| there are things they can do (and that, in many cases, the
| safety driver was able to do).
| [deleted]
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| I'm very cautious when making left turns - way more than
| the average driver. If I'm not I'm liable to screw up in
| either direction and no one wants that.
|
| No one has managed to rear end me, but I obviously don't
| have 6.5 million miles driven. And even if they did, I
| would trade a high speed t-bone for a low speed fender
| bender any day of the week.
| ghaff wrote:
| I've been told by researchers that unprotected lefts are
| one of the hardest problems for self-driving. They're so
| situationally dependent and can rely on social signaling.
|
| If traffics is light, it's pretty easy of course. But get
| into congested areas and you pretty much have to be at
| least somewhat aggressive and even take things like
| Pittsburgh lefts. And if you're not at least somewhat
| aggressive, cars behind you can start honking horns and
| taking dangerous actions because, from their perspective,
| you're blocking the road. (No criticism intended; you
| have to do what feels comfortable for you.But it's
| probably one of the routine driving tasks that takes the
| most judgement.)
| kibwen wrote:
| In case people aren't aware of what a Pittsburgh left is:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_left
| ponker wrote:
| I remember once I had a protected left but saw the car
| coming (hundreds of feet out) and didn't like the look on
| his face (which was barely visible), like he was too into
| his music. I didn't take the left and the guy flew
| through the red light and slammed his brakes halfway
| through. I think back to that situation when I think of
| AV.
| [deleted]
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > You--a human driver--have no idea what the other cars
| will do either. Some people run yellows, some people don't.
|
| But one of them may be more likely, and therefore result in
| more collisions if you assume it isn't.
|
| In addition to that, many yellow lights are timed too
| short. That makes it possible to be far enough from the
| light that you won't make it through the intersection
| before it turns red, but still close enough that stopping
| before the intersection would require braking rapidly
| enough to yield a significant probability of being rear-
| ended. The problem there is the light timing, but the car
| can't fix that and still has to make a choice.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Are there a lot of situations where it is a strict choice
| between following the law and doing what other drivers
| expect?
|
| I don't think there are that many really. Speeding is one,
| but most of the time following the speed limit doesn't
| dramatically increase the risk of accidents. Then you have
| stuff like turn signals. Using them isn't going to hurt
| anything, whether drivers expect them or not.
| ilaksh wrote:
| Waymo customers have confirmed that the car currently does
| behave very similar to a human in situations like yellow
| lights. It will keep going quickly if it makes more sense to
| do that than stop abruptly. A lot of times that is actually
| the only safe way to handle it.
|
| That doesn't mean that it can't still get rear-ended by being
| more cautious than some impatient and unsafe human drivers,
| for example when it decided there is plenty of time to stop
| safely.
| ummonk wrote:
| I mean given how much unusual braking Waymo cars do, causing
| human drivers to rear-end them, I wouldn't have any sympathy
| for them if an antagonistic driver succeeds in brake-checking a
| Waymo car and causing a collision.
| inlined wrote:
| I can't imagine driving recklessly _at_ a camera-covered car.
| Seems like Waymo could /should just forward videos of clearly
| _trying to cause an accident_ to the local police
| nostromo wrote:
| In my city you can have video evidence of someone driving up
| to your house, license plate visible, stealing you property,
| and driving away and they will take a report, pass it along
| to the prosecutor, and he or she will proceed to do
| absolutely nothing.
|
| In Seattle my car was stolen on camera and was later found
| with a million identifying pieces of information in it,
| including the thief's security guard uniform _complete with
| name badge_ , along with receipts at local pot shops with
| _their name and phone number_ and... nothing happened.
|
| It's hard for me to imagine they're going to running around
| trying to ticket people for abrupt lane changes.
| nnm wrote:
| Hard to believe this story. Feel like the police department
| is not working as expected.
| mrkstu wrote:
| Note he said Seattle. If necessary, you can read up on
| the recent developments as regards law enforcement in
| that city for further clarity.
| colordrops wrote:
| I've had similar experiences in Los Angeles. The problem
| is not that they are negligent but rather that there is
| so much for them to do that they don't have time to get
| around to crimes such as this.
| uluyol wrote:
| If they did this I think it would a massive PR issue. People
| would probably start destroying Waymo cars if this happened.
| I sure wouldn't be happy if self-driving cars became mass
| surveillance tools.
| junipertea wrote:
| Dashboard cameras are a thing already.
| EGreg wrote:
| Actually cameras are everywhere all the time already, the
| question is who can access the footage
|
| http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=169
| ceph_ wrote:
| > If they did this I think it would a massive PR issue.
|
| Strongly disagree. There amount of contempt people have for
| asshole drivers is massive. Videos of people driving like
| assholes and getting caught is a mainstay of subreddits
| like http://old.reddit.com/r/IdiotsInCars and
| /r/InstantKarma
| sounds wrote:
| Inevitably, one of the autonomous vehicle companies,
| eventually, will.
|
| Therefore letting the aggressive, reckless drivers build up a
| sense of immunity and excitement seems like a Sun Tsu move to
| me.
|
| When the camera-covered car has its first day in court, it
| may be that all the cases are filed at once (by that company,
| and Waymo may not be the first to pull the trigger on the
| lawsuits).
|
| Statute of limitations in California is a bit tricky, but
| just as a baseline, assume this Sun Tsu-esque company
| collects evidence for 5 years. Judges may actually look
| favorably on the company waiting to make sure their cases can
| be decided en masse. Of course, the media will be all over
| it.
| kortilla wrote:
| That doesn't really make sense. The cases wouldn't be able
| to be decided on in mass. The court would still need to
| review each incident individually so dumping them into the
| court system all at once is an asshole move.
| conanbatt wrote:
| The animals are the people that made rules that people don't
| want to follow.
| in3d wrote:
| Sometimes it's possible to stop for a yellow light by braking
| very hard. I hope Waymo cars don't this when they detect cars
| behind them, it's unsafe.
| dheera wrote:
| Interestingly I once had a near-accident with a Waymo car
| because I had a stop sign and thought it was a 4-way stop
| (which would mean I got to go first since I stopped first), but
| it was only a 2-way stop, and the Waymo had right of way.
|
| That's right, in California, 4-way stops aren't [edit:
| consistently] labelled 4-way, so when you come up to an
| intersection with a stop sign you need to peek around at the
| transverse road (sometimes in the dark) to see whether or not
| they also have a stop sign to know whether it's 2-way or 4-way.
| All while looking out for cars on both sides.
|
| The Waymo car stopped just in time and there was no accident.
| Not sure if this was because of the safety driver or because
| its algorithm had seen and extrapolated my car's motion and
| actively avoided the collision.
|
| (Or if they are advanced enough, maybe they have mapped out all
| the stop signs in California and have labelled all the
| intersections that are 2-way stops in which a driver could
| accidentally think it's 4-way, and anticipate the possibility
| of an accident in advance at these dangerous intersections. I
| doubt that though.)
| denlekke wrote:
| anecdotally, all the 4 way stops I encounter in day to day
| driving in the SF Bay area are labelled as 4 way or all way
| dheera wrote:
| I'm in the bay area and adecnotally it has been very
| inconsistent for me. Here are a few I dug up in just a few
| minutes of 4-way stops without 4-way labels. This has led
| me to mostly disregard the absence of a 4-way label as a
| source of information.
|
| San Francisco https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7253706,-122.
| 4072718,3a,75y,...
|
| Stanford https://www.google.com/maps/@37.4342864,-122.16801
| 13,3a,75y,...
|
| Palo Alto https://www.google.com/maps/@37.4671732,-122.1480
| 907,3a,90y,...
|
| Los Altos https://www.google.com/maps/@37.3977786,-122.1162
| 461,3a,75y,...
|
| San Jose https://www.google.com/maps/@37.3313026,-121.87977
| 36,3a,75y,...
| verytrivial wrote:
| I'm "that guy" in my area that reports and tracks and
| eventually shames-via-local-newspapers anything I find
| like this (and trash dumping etc.) Maybe you could be
| that guy too? This seems sort of dangerous.
| dheera wrote:
| I could, though I really don't have time to drive around
| on street view and keep doing this. I found these
| violations within a few minutes, I'm sure I could spend
| hours and map out several hundred such intersections.
|
| Rather, I would be more interested in mapping out all the
| violations on a mass scale using neural nets, though I'd
| want my time funded to do something like that,
| considering it takes away time I could use to do other
| things.
| linguistbreaker wrote:
| But a good feature and something that human drivers do - I
| know the sketchy intersections in my town.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > which would mean I got to go first since I stopped first
|
| Careful with that. No one has the right-of-way at four-way
| stops in some (most? all?) states. Whoever _enters_ the
| intersection first gets the right-of-way. Same reason you
| have the right-of-way to finish a left turn after your light
| turns red, if you were already in the intersection waiting
| for cross-traffic to clear /stop.
| abduhl wrote:
| Caltrans has a readily available copy of their Manual on
| Uniform Traffic Control Devices at
| https://dot.ca.gov/programs/safety-
| programs/camutcd/camutcd-...
|
| Part 2 is specific to signage. Turn to Part 2B.05:
|
| At intersections where all approaches are controlled by STOP
| signs (see Section 2B.07), an ALL WAY supplemental plaque
| (R1-3P) shall be mounted below each STOP sign. The ALL WAY
| plaque (see Figure 2B-1) shall have a white legend and border
| on a red background. The ALL WAY plaque shall only be used if
| all intersection approaches are controlled by STOP signs.
|
| In other words, the intersections you're running into are not
| in compliance with the Caltrans MUTCD.
| dheera wrote:
| Yup, and I run into dozens of non-compliant intersections
| every day. See my other comment below in which I listed
| several examples on street view that I dug up within a few
| minutes.
| abduhl wrote:
| I understand, but your comment was: "That's right, in
| California, 4-way stops aren't labelled 4-way" which is
| true in practice but not any more useful than saying "4
| way stops aren't labelled 4-way anywhere" because some
| intersections may not be up to code.
|
| They are SUPPOSED to be labelled. You can probably get
| them fixed by reporting it to the local government.
| dheera wrote:
| Yup, I made an edit, I should have said "consistently
| labelled as 4-way"
| JaggedJax wrote:
| This must be handled by the city or county level as where I
| live in California there's usually (always?) a little "4 way"
| sign under the stop sign when it's 4 way.
|
| Either way, this should be made consistent across the state
| and all of them definitely should have it added if they
| don't.
| m463 wrote:
| Usually there's a yellow sign underneath the stop sign
| saying "Cross traffic does not stop".
|
| I don't know if it's a requirement, but it is common.
| dheera wrote:
| I wonder if I could get them to pay me a meaningful amount
| to identify all the intersections that need such a label.
| Like say, a bounty of $X for each non-compliant
| intersection or whatever. I think I could automate it with
| some simple perception neural nets. Or does the government
| just not give a damn about this kind of stuff ...
| dwwoelfel wrote:
| Please report them in the SF311 app or at
| https://sf311.org/.
|
| They won't pay you any money, but they're very responsive
| in my experience. Things usually get fixed.
| dheera wrote:
| I'm happy to report the few I found to them.
|
| To whoever downvoted me: I wasn't suggesting that I would
| not report the ones I already know without pay, but
| rather that if I was funded, I would be able to carve out
| time to write code to find non-compliant intersections on
| a mass scale.
| discordance wrote:
| 4-way intersections in the US have always bothered me.
| Roundabouts are a much better solution.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I like roundabouts too, but which choice is most
| appropriate depends on circumstance. The US is big and
| spacious, which makes spending extra on roundabouts not too
| appealing in many places. And in some circumstances four-
| way stops flow more traffic.
| rodgerd wrote:
| > -> This doesn't surprise me really, but is still pretty sad.
| Many drivers are just assholes and AVs are going to be an easy
| target for such people.
|
| I would cheerfully bet good money that the Venn diagram of
| "people fucking with Waymo cars" and "people who run cyclists
| off the road" is close to a circle.
| [deleted]
| caturopath wrote:
| > This is consistent with previous reports from Waymo. If one
| of their vehicles gets in an accident, it's extremely likely
| that the other (human) driver was at fault.
|
| It looks like in 2018 Arizona had 1.4 crashes per million miles
| https://azdot.gov/sites/default/files/news/2018-Crash-Facts....
| and Waymo released data that they had 2.9 crashes per million
| miles, over twice as many. 7.7 if they hadn't had human
| intervention, almost at another order of magnitude than the
| average driver. That's rough.
|
| I'm really not interested if the other driver is almost always
| at fault, that's not the number to get down. Their mid-term
| goal seems to be to drive on public roads with mostly human
| drivers, so they need to get better results. If they're getting
| bad results over lots of data, it's not just bad luck: the way
| they're driving is causing more crashes, even if they're not at
| fault. Additionally, fault classification is worrisome, since
| there is the potential for bias.
|
| Various factors might make this remark wrong
|
| - "Crashes per mile" isn't the right metric: injury, fatality,
| or similar should replace or augment it.
|
| - I compared data from Arizona to data from Waymo's zone, which
| might be more crashy.
|
| - Crashes in the doc I linked underestimate total crashes,
| since many go unreported.
|
| - I am not comparing apples-to-apples -- new commercial
| minivans might be far more crash-prone than the average
| vehicle.
| RivieraKid wrote:
| To put Waymo's 7.7/million accident rate in perspective, it
| would mean an average driver, who drives 13,500 miles in a
| year, has one accident in 10 years.
|
| In other words, I don't think this is a concern at all. It's
| similar to humans already and will only get better.
|
| I think economics and scaling are the main challenges and
| unknowns for Waymo. I hope they will soon finish phase 1
| (perfect self-driving in a small area) and start pahse 2
| (expand as fast as possible).
| marwatk wrote:
| This report [1] seems to imply that around 35% of minor
| crashes aren't reported which is significant, but not enough
| by itself to move the needle too much.
|
| Another factor is highway vs surface miles. Highway miles
| would seem significantly safer on a per-mile basis (but I
| can't find any numbers to back that up), and with Waymo
| excluding highways for now they'd be all surface miles. I
| can't find data that breaks down crash rate by street type,
| but I suspect surface traffic has a much higher crash rate
| than highway miles.
|
| [1] https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublicati
| on/...
| OliverGilan wrote:
| I'm not well versed in the different self driving techniques but
| isn't 6.1 miles a little low compared to say Tesla which is
| estimated to have autopilot miles in the billions [0]?
|
| [0]: https://lexfridman.com/tesla-autopilot-miles-and-
| vehicles/#:...
| ummonk wrote:
| Waymo cars could be following the law and still be extremely
| difficult for other drivers to deal with.
|
| E.g. I don't know how much they've improved since but a few years
| back I was in a short merge for my daily commute and there was a
| Waymo car in the lane I was trying to merge into which just drove
| parallel to me without speeding up or slowing down as most human
| drivers do to make way. This was the most difficult merge I had
| experienced on that spot in years of driving that same commute.
| 317070 wrote:
| Does someone know what a "simulated collision" is? How is it
| relevant? Or are those still collisions in the real world?
|
| EDIT: it is in the article, I read it too fast:
|
| > The company says it also counts events in which its trained
| safety drivers assume control of the vehicle to avoid a
| collision. Waymo's engineers then simulate what would have
| happened had the driver not disengaged the vehicle's self-driving
| system to generate a counterfactual, or "what if," scenario. The
| company uses these events to examine how the vehicle would have
| reacted and then uses that data to improve its self-driving
| software. Ultimately, these counterfactual simulations can be
| "significantly more realistic" than simulated events that are
| generated "synthetically," Waymo says.
| adrr wrote:
| Simulated collision is an important stat. It shows how much
| improvement the AI needs to obtain to be on-par with a human
| driver.
| uluyol wrote:
| Almost, it should how much improvement the AI needs to avoid
| collisions a human driver did avoid. The AI might avoid
| collisions that the human didn't.
|
| In other words, you need 0 simulated collisions to be
| strictly better than a human driver (in the same setting).
| Not ~equal with sometimes better and sometimes worse.
| rconti wrote:
| I still don't understand "in simulation", though, because of
| this line:
|
| > But the company highlighted eight incidents that it
| considered "most severe or potentially severe." Three of these
| crashes occurred in real life and five only in simulation.
| _Airbags were deployed in all eight incidents._
| abirkill wrote:
| From the second paper[0]:
|
| 'In order to provide more information about event severity
| within the S1 designation, S1 severity events have been
| separated into two columns in Table 1 based on whether each
| event is of sufficient severity to result in actual or
| simulated airbag deployment for any involved vehicle. Of the
| eight airbag-deployment-level S1 events, five are simulated
| events with expected airbag deployment, two were actual
| events involving deployment of only another vehicle's frontal
| airbags, and one actual event involved deployment of another
| vehicle's frontal airbags and the Waymo vehicle's side
| airbags. There were no actual or predicted S2 or S3 events'
|
| [0] https://storage.googleapis.com/sdc-prod/v1/safety-
| report/Way...
| rightbyte wrote:
| That is quite confusing, yes. Did they mean 5 simulated air
| bags?
| thelean12 wrote:
| What doesn't make sense? Surely it shouldn't be too hard to
| even say "air bags deploy when there's x amount of force,
| so they would have deployed in the simulation" let alone
| have an actual physics simulation going on.
| deelowe wrote:
| In all of the incidents, air bags deployed. 5 of the 8
| incidents were in simulation. The simulations likely have
| extremely realistic models for safety critical features
| such as airbag deployment (which relies on specific sensors
| in the vehicle).
| netsectoday wrote:
| There were 8 real accidents on the road. In all 8 of those
| real accidents the airbags were deployed. Safety drivers were
| in some of those cars and took control of the vehicle at some
| point. When the safety drivers in the car took control; they
| performed evasive maneuvers that reduced the potential
| outcome from "most severe or potentially severe" to something
| less severe.
|
| When the engineers reviewed all of these 8 crashes they
| played them back watching what the humans did, then they put
| all of the constraints into their simulation and let the AI
| take over. When they say "Three of these crashes occurred in
| real life and five only in simulation" that means that 3
| severe crashes happened in real life and the AI would have
| cause 5 more "severe" crashes had the humans not taken
| control.
| jeffbee wrote:
| 18 crashes in 6 million miles is pretty good. Middle-aged human
| drivers cause that rate of police-reportable crashes, and one
| injury per million miles.
| ilaksh wrote:
| But Waymo did not cause the crashes.
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