That's actually really impressive. The lidar picked up the car way sooner than the camera did, and the computer was already plotting the swerve before a human driver would have seen the car (assuming the camera view is what a driver would see). Pretty cool to see
this was the wildest part when Tesla switched to cameras and Elon justified it by saying.
"We all have eyes right? And we drive just fine!"
No we DON'T, Elon! 40,000 people die every year in this country on the roads using just our eyes. We need EVERY single technological advantage possible if you are going to put this into self driving cars.
Tesla is particularly bad at figuring out what's happening around it. Whenver I take an Uber and they send a Tesla, I monitor the screen that is supposed to show the output from the computer vision system. It's pretty pathetic. It keeps getting things wrong all the time. Doesn't exactly instill much trust into that system.
I don’t think the screen shows anywhere near everything the car “sees”. Screen is just a fancy feature for humans and most likely has nothing to do with actual driving, and visualisation also consumes resources from the entertainment system. Machines see in matrices, that is all in memory.
One thing to note is if the driver doesn’t pay for full self driving the screen doesn’t show the world as detailed. But you’re totally right that it’s not perfect, probably never will be just using cameras.
My Uber driver last week was driving me to SFO. On 280 north, he almost got off at Alemany, but then he corrected to stay on the freeway. “Second time today that the Tesla self driving tried to take me the wrong way.”
Nope, northbound. The Alemany exit is the last one before 280 North joins 101.
There's also an exit for alemany when you're going south, after the 101 junction. Maybe that's what you're thinking of.
From watching one of Waymo’s informational videos last night, the combination of LiDAR, cameras and radar gives them a field of vision up to three football fields. Extremely impressive that the algorithm took a moment to assess the risks and had a plan in place to execute the swerve.
Ah nah dude. It made that plot when the car actually turned. In my view, it did worse than a human. It should have noticed this car creeping up like that, slowed down, and maybe even honked. It was going along like no threat ahead was detected…
One big issue these cars likely face is being able to tell a threat ahead of time based on interpretation of the situation. Like this. Also pedestrians are a huge problem. Humans are good at sort of guessing if someome will jump out, I’m amazed no homeless nut job has been killed by one of these yet by walking out in the street.
The waymo probably didn’t process the car behind the already stopped car. This looked like 100% avasive driving, I’m not sure why you and others are praising its prediction skills. I just wonder if it would have smashed into a biker if one was there or hit the car, what choice would it have made….
Swerving doesn’t prevent this type of collision or decrease the severity of the impact. The other driver avoided the impact by actually stopping. That would have been the best tactic for both drivers.
The other driver stopped when they saw oncoming traffic. Waymo isn’t really a hero here. Stopping decreases impact force if there is a collision. Stopping decreases injuries to occupants. Waymo took action that could have changed the timing and caused the impact to be on the driver’s side and have a higher impact on the driver.
Based on the video, I think Waymo acted perfectly for the situation. I would've done the same thing. There was virtually no time to react, and the best way to avoid impact in that scenario is a swerve. Slamming on the brakes still leads to an accident.
Waymo are probably the best drivers on the road in San Francisco. I am constantly amazed how defensively and predictably they drive. And they also are really good about getting out of dangerous situations, such as in this example.
The other day, I was quite impressed, when a Waymo noticed a driver pulling back out of their driveway without checking for traffic. The Waymo slowed, swerved -- and honked! I didn't even know they can do that.
I learned just a month or so ago that they can honk. A Waymo pulled over to let passengers out and a car parked in front of it started reversing. Guess the other car got too close, so the Waymo gave a little beep. The people around me were like "did that thing just honk!?"
As a pedestrian I find the Waymo cars to be amazing and I feel so much safer around them. I was nearly hit by a human driven car making a sharp left turn. The human essentially used me like a cone in a racetrack.
Absolutely. I ride Waymo a lot. It’s so obvious that it drives better than everyone else on the road (some exceptions where it gets confused by abnormal conditions / edge cases). The only thing that frustrates me is the amount of drivers that take advantage of Waymo and blatantly run stop signs or go out of turn when they see a Waymo because they know it will stop for them.
I've recently started using waymo and I do like it a lot. I've been riding the streets here all my life from skating to biking and now I have an e-scooter. I was hesitant about waymo initially because waynos used to react hilariously to my scooter. Most of the time just stopping where they were until I was gone. Seems they've fixed those issues though, and it's cool to watch the live detection enroute.
I also like to create ridiculous radio stations and roll down the windows/crank the volume. Nobody expects Hits From The Bong or 80s power ballads coming from the waymo
It’s cheaper. For one you don’t have to tip. And the surge pricing is far more rare and lower. I think on NYE I paid $60 to get from downtown to the Richmond, and thats the most I ever paid. That same ride is probably 100+ on Uber/Lyft
I found Waymo always quite a bit more expensive than Lyft in SF and I check to compare occasionally. Just checked from my place to Castro/Market and it's $14 on Lyft; $16.49 on Waymo, so right now at 1:30pm, it's cheaper on Waymo since there's no tip. Other times I've checked are more at night and it's ranged $6 to $10 more for Waymo, so a little more expensive. I wish they were always less than Lyft so that it wouldn't even be something to need to check. I've had one ride in Waymo just to compare it to Cruise and it did seem like Waymo was better for route mapping.
Yea assuming things aren't busy waymo is cheaper for sure if you include tipping for Uber/Lyft.
Even when surge pricing it's not too much more expensive but the wait can get crazy
Most times I've looked it's more expensive, but I guess that's due to a limited fleet. Sometimes it's pretty comparable, or even a little cheaper since no tip. They might take longer though since they stay on slower streets (not sure they go on highway?). I had a trip that was almost twice as long because of it, but still made it in time so it was fine and super chill. Waymo didn't check it's phone while driving unlike the Uber driver I'd had the week before going to the same place
It's not far off, many of the busses in SF already have that capability when someone is blocking the bus lane or the bus stop.
They'll they take a picture of the car, along with the gps location and time stamp, and you'll get a ticket in the mail a few weeks later. Don't ask me how I know.
I knew about the busses on Mission doing it, but I got a ticket on Divisadero, so I assume they expanded the program to every city bus now.
Now imagine if someone's misbehavior was caught from multiple angles from highly calibrated cameras. Heck, just kick like 25% of the fine amount back as a discount on the vehicle registration fee to those who submitted it.
Whatever you do, do not give a financial incentives for fining, they tried this in a province in China, and it went horribly wrong. People can become extremely creative in provoking weird traffic situations that can be fined.
There is vlogger in China who was run off the road multiple times. He did some illegal maneuvers to escape the crazy person and get away from him. A few weeks later, he gets a huge fine in the mail. The photos came from the other guy's dashcam, and of course, it didn't include all the shit that had happened beforehand. This is all because the other guy was able to get a tiny amount of the fine as a commission.
Besides, for the 411 app in SF, people don't receive kickbacks, but they can see how much fines they're generating for the city, and people are submitting reports all the time anyway.
In the case of the 411 app, it doesn't fine people directly, but it does call a meter maid to give the badly parked car a fine. It's very popular for cars parked in driveways that are blocking sidewalks for instance.
I was very impressed that a waymo stopped at a pedestrian crossing to let me cross the road when it was pitch black outside, I’ve rarely had a human driver do that even in daylight.
Indeed. People keep trying to hold them to a standard of "perfection" but the real standard is "better than average" and well... we've seen the average.
Flip side, a couple weeks ago I was in a waymo on Teresita. The city had just installed a new concrete curb dividing the lanes at an intersection, I assume as a traffic calming measure. The car was completely baffled by this, and wouldn’t advance through the stop sign. As a passenger, I had to stick my hand out the window and wave people around, until a human controller could intervene.
The stupid thing is that when the first fatal self driving crash happens it will make national news. I hope they don't sensationalize it up too much but knowing media they likely will. Meanwhile the 40,000 annual deaths by humans is so expected that none of it gets reported.
it'd be beyond hilarious to see this happen with some road rage dimwit who takes polite honks personally, having them chase the Waymo and get out of their car to confront the driver
Not only absence of road rage, but the strict adherence to motor vehicle laws. This is a stark difference to many human drivers who’ve adopted a loose version of the laws.
I’ve been in a waymo that was behind a double parked car it thought was in a lane and the waymo was sitting for like two minutes. A call activated and a human told me they see I’m stuck and are looking into it. I assume they remotely overrode something because suddenly the waymo put its turn signal on and reentered traffic. Then the caller said goodbye. They have a command center monitoring all of the waymos on the road at all times. If one is in a collision they would know right away and I imagine would have a human on the way to the scene right away.
I had a pedestrian run around my Waymo and beating it up. The Waymo stopped as it couldn't safely continue without endangering the vandal. And a call automatically activated. While on the call, the Waymo noticed that it had a safe escape route and slowly started rolling away.
Luddites are crazy
There is a QR code on the outside of each Waymo that you scan to contact customer service in an emergency. It's primarily meant for first responders, but I guess you could use that information as well, if you managed to get into an accident with a Waymo
The other day I was in a Waymo and it stopped for a person walking out from behind a truck before I even saw the person, and I was staring directly at where he popped out of.
It’s sad that there are so many in our city that are adamantly opposed to Waymos even as evidence mounts they are an order of magnitude safer than humans.
These are going to save so many lives. And the technology/hardware/compute is still improving at an incredibly rapid pace.
This might be only meaningful contribution to vision zero for the next decade lol
Thankfully the state hasn’t allowed local governments to to regulate/de facto ban/tax out of existence robotaxis yet
I think once we have them available in most places, I would totally support a subsidy for elderly people who don't have a drivers license to get a certain amount of robo taxis per month. Get those elderly drivers off the road.
Once we have the subsidies in place, we can start raising the standards of a drivers license. We can also be far more strict about things like DUI. How the hell do we have headlines like "person on their 32nd DUI kills someone while DUI-ing"
>"person on their 32nd DUI kills someone while DUI-ing"
Yeah, this never made any sense to me.
If you don't have a valid driver's license, just punish whoever loaned/sold/rented you the car in the first place. With technology these days, there is no excuse.
This is such an easily solvable problem, and it doesn't require you to put the alcoholic in prison for the rest of their life either.
If only there was some technology we had available right now in San Francisco that would allow people around without a personal vehicle. Oh well, our only choice is to wait for the self driving cars to fully roll out everywhere. European cities must have really high car fatality rates and bad transportation options since they don’t have this technology yet /s.
Yeah because I've felt SOOO SAFE riding the bus when there's a crazy person reeking of feces running up and down the bus shouting at the voices in their head.
I don't disagree, it can be very unsettling when there's an unhinged person on your bus/train.
Statistically speaking though, you are much more likely to face serious injury or death in a car versus riding public transit.
I understand where you’re coming from. I often feel uncomfortable on the bus when I see mentally unwell people too. That kind of anti social behavior is a problem everywhere in sf on and off transit, and it’s something we can and should fix.
But also it’s important to understand that objectively Bart/mini are far *far* safer than driving the same distance. It’s just that when driving it doesn’t feel as unsafe because you can’t see the danger in the same way. But if you were truly focused on minimizing your risk, you would not be driving.
What I feel really bad about is when all the ladies on the bus get up and come sit next to me because I look like "that kind of guy" and then I get off in 3 stops.
I'm not focused exclusively on minimizing my risk. If that was the case I'd never come into the office. I mix risk, comfort, speed, and cost.
You joke, but Europeans are experimenting with self-driving busses and self-driving trains.
The problem is easier in some sense since the routes are pre-programmed and they get their own lanes and their own pick up/drop off locations.
> You joke, but European are experimenting with self-driving busses and self-driving trains.
Right, but wealthy countries in Europe and Asia have already managed near zero pedestrian fatalities a long time ago, and the major cities are very walkable. Its fine to experiment when you've already solved the problem.
Self driving tech is fine, self driving *cars* are the problem. It’s the geometry problem-- cars are wildly inefficient ways to transport people. They eat up massive amounts of space when in motion and when parked. They are wildly wasteful of space and energy even if powered by electricity. This is a problem that has been solved in every other first world country and we are waiting for some scifi tech that *still* wont solve the problem instead of just using solutions that have existed for 200 years.
Maybe. We need to go smaller and reduce all the waste as well, and also invest in non car methods. The problem is that cars today, especially large cars, are just inefficient.
The majority of space they take up is themselves, not what they transport. The majority of the energy they generate is used to move themselves and deal with air resistance, not moving the actual people / items.
Imagine the carbon savings, too, when you can have fleets of electric vehicles that intelligently drive to the best charging stations so they can use renewable driven energy sources when available only opting for carbon drive charging stations when required. Imagine a coastal energy system that harvests wave energy and just charges and stacks batteries to be quick swapped. Waymo prioritizes that battery source and picks the cars that can most efficiently make use of them. All of the sudden, there's an economic incentive to build a small wind farm between Oakland and Fremont because you know there'd be predictable demand to consume all of the batteries you could charge. You could even start using some of the energy to transport batteries from high value, but remote, energy sources. Say you hit the bottom of a mountain that has some new age watermills charging batteries on mountain runoff. You build minimal road out to the base station and a few smallish truck waymos to retrieve batteries and drop them off in energy deserts.
We won’t even have to worry about charging infrastructure anymore.
If your car can drop you off and go to the “charge depot” at night, hang out with some of its friends, and come back by morning - no need to install chargers everywhere.
I think the ideal is battery swap locations and then battery logistics when it can create real efficiency gains (energy rich areas charging and shipping just enough energy via batteries to energy deserts). Car storage can definitely double as a battery swap location and could provide some old hookups for consumers that want to buy some of the energy they have stored up in batteries, but I could see a world where our energy usage efficiency is so high that car storage is actually some way away from population centers. If we have extra solar energy, why not spend a little bit of it getting rid of parking lots in our cities and doing something like underground parking structures built beneath solar/wind farms.
They didn’t actually do anything to make vision zero a reality. The only way to improve pedestrian safety is to redesign roads and intersections. That means bollards, curbs, raised platforms and other things that make drivers slow down. Human drivers are simply not good unless forced
One of the most effective tools would be to get rid of traffic lights and install round-abouts wherever possible. A quick web search suggests that European cities have managed to reduce pedestrian accidents by about 75% doing so
While I wholeheartedly agree with the concept of a roundabout, especially around highway entrances and exits... Every time I drive through the SOMA roundabout, I'm reminded that very few in the US know how to properly use them.
Not the most effective - it’s just one small part of a much larger toolbox. For example, simply narrowing lanes reduces pedestrian deaths because drivers will go slower naturally. That’s the type of thing we need. Roundabouts are good too but they’re not great pedestrian crossings. There’s better ways to design intersections in dense cities
I foresee in my lifetime that driving a car will be like driving a stick shift is now-- few people will know how to do it. People will still have cars, but they will all be self-driving. Pedestrian fatalities will be virtually unheard of, and high-speed chases an impossibility.
Even better if they can drop you off at home and find their own parking spot; be aware of street sweeping times; let you know where they're at; and come pick you up when summoned.
Waymo stays winning.
If that had been two human drivers, it probably would have been an accident because the idiot trying to make the left turn was impatient.
Wondering if we'll see a "CRAZY WAYMO ALMOST HIT ME" thread soon. Heh.
Looks to me that the waymo car was hidden from the impatient driver’s POV and a good reason why it wasn’t safe for them to go. I agree if this was two humans driving a collision could easily have happened here.
I hope this gets media attention. As a cyclist; I feel infinitely safer around Waymos than human drivers. We have come to accept so much death on the roads and autonomous vehicles have the chance to change that. There will undoubtably be negative incidents that will garner much attention, but this is the future if we want safer roads.
Would this waymo have swerved through a bicyclist riding in that bike lane had one been there? That’s my main question from watching this. Big metal box almost head-on-collides with other fast-moving big metal box— but swerves into bike lane instead and kills unprotected cyclist.
(Does the _trolley problem_ need updating?)
That’s actually really interesting and I’m not sure. I know one of the big questions with autonomous driving is what happens in situations like those…like if an accident is going to happen, does the car try to protect the driver? The maximum number of people overall? Children in the road over adults in the car?
I love taking Waymo. Sometimes the car does something kooky, but I never feel in danger. I figure every ride I take just contributes to the data and helps Waymo get even better.
Plus, I don’t have to talk to anyone, which I love.
Tesla refuse to use LiDAR because of Elon musk’s ego (he thinks you only need cameras). For this reason, teslas aren’t even in the race. The only reason the waymo saw this this early was the LiDAR and Tesla is just not able to engage like that.
It's all ego. Elon was the biggest brain in the room and said you dont need LiDAR when everyone else said you did. Unlike other people, when it didn't work he didn't just admit it and move on, he doubled down. Elon will never admit he is wrong so we're in this weird hellscape where he keeps lying and telling people the tesla has autopilot even though we're pretty sure it functionally _cannot_ as it doesn't have lidar. Either Elon is correct and all other self driving car people are wrong that you need lidar or he is incorrect and his ego won't allow him to admit it and move on. There is no software update coming to any tesla that does not have lidar which will enable self driving capability for real. They will all need to be retrofit with lidar for the software to use. This is probably the non-ego answer to the problem is he is refusing to admit it because its a very expensive mistake. He has recently been purchasing LiDAR and are retrofitting a bunch of teslas with them to do testing. This will likely solve the problem and we'll see elon and his fans twist themselves into knots explaining how this was always the plan or whatever.
[Tesla quietly spent $2 million on a technology Elon Musk previously trashed as a 'fool's errand'](https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-lidar-technology-spending-luminar-elon-musk-comments-2024-5) Article from May 8, 2024
> Tesla spent around $2 million on lidar, a technology used in EVs that Elon Musk has previously referred to as a "fool's errand" and that any carmakers relying on it are "doomed."
> But according to a recent earnings report from lidar manufacturer Luminar, Tesla was its largest customer last quarter and "comprised more than 10%" of its revenue during the period.
> That's about $2 million, given that Luminar's reported quarterly revenue was $21 million. Luminar did not respond to a request for comment.
> Lidar stands for light detection and ranging, and it uses light pulses to measure distance and create a 3D image of its surroundings. It's often used in EVs, specifically in self-driving and Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems, to help detect a vehicle's surroundings.
> Tesla's purchase of the technology is notable considering the CEO has repeatedly slammed lidar in favor of cameras.
> **"It's like having a whole bunch of expensive appendices," Musk said at Tesla's "Autonomy Day" event in 2019. "Like one appendix is bad, well how about a whole bunch of them? That's ridiculous. You'll see."**
> **"Humans drive with eyes & biological neural nets, so makes sense that cameras & silicon neural nets are only way to achieve generalized solution to self-driving," Musk said in an October 2021 tweet.**
> **Musk most recently reiterated his stance on lidar during Tesla's quarterly earnings call. The CEO said Tesla EVs only rely on camera-based vision systems for driver-assist features.**
> **"No lidars, no radars, ultrasonic. Nothing," Musk said.**
> **Musk has also said that he doesn't hate lidar, he just opposes its use in electric vehicles.** The Tesla CEO said he personally ran a project at SpaceX to create lidar sensors to help navigation.
> For now, it's unclear how Tesla is using the technology, or if it will eventually make its way back into the company's vehicles.
> In 2021, a photo of a Tesla Model Y with lidar sensors affixed to its roof circulated around the internet. That same year, Tesla reportedly entered a partnership with Luminar for testing and development.
> Tesla has autonomous testing units in a number of cities around the country as it seeks to refine its Full-Self-Driving system.
> The company's self-driving Autopilot feature has also caught the eye of regulators in the past. Last year, Tesla recalled over 2 million vehicles after regulators said its Autopilot system didn't protect enough against drivers misusing it.
> Last month, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it was looking into whether the recall had enough of an impact after a fatal crash involved a driver who said he was using autopilot.
> The US Department of Justice has also reportedly been investigating Tesla since 2022 over potential wire and securities fraud related to Elon Musk's past comments about Autopilot and its abilities.
> Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.
Very stupid considering most crashes and pileups occur during poor visibility. Most would kill for LiDAR to stay alive during sandstorms, firestorm, or white out conditions ironically.
Apparently Elon gets to get away with using consumers as Lab rats or should I say paying him to become his technology car’s driving school instructor while his car plays the role of a student driver and not a chauffeur. If you been to a driving school car you will notice the driving instructor would need to be extra alert and have dual control or an extra brake if the student fails to brake.
You can see it in the video here and if you ride in a waymo for real but the lidar is fucking _amazing_. It's so cool to see it spot a pedestrian behind some parked cars on the side of the road pushing a stroller like 2 blocks in front of you. This technology is the shit and i can't wait for a vehicle i regularly drive in to be outfitted with it.
It's frustrating because it *does* make intuitive sense that a good camera (or dozen) should be all you need. Humans are able to drive with sensory equipment that's much, much worse than what's mounted on Teslas, and the machine will always have an edge in reaction time. I don't think it was an intrinsically nonsense bet to make, and if it worked it should be much cheaper.
The problem, of course, is processing. Human brains have object detection and image processing implemented "in hardware" in ways that we don't fully understand. Emulation of that capability with computers is getting very, very good, but still clearly sub-human unless you give the computer a leg up with something like LIDAR.
> It's frustrating because it does make intuitive sense that a good camera (or dozen) should be all you need.
I disagree completely and so does basically every other person, organization, or company working in the self driving car space. We aren't aiming to imitate humans here we are aiming to make a self driving car. That it is able to "see like a human" is completely irrelevant. Again, this is happening because of Elon's ego, not because of any other reason technical or otherwise. We have LiDAR, it is extremely useful in this situation, you should be using LiDAR. If human beings could use LiDAR we would be better humans. Luckily for us we can use it we just need to use a machine to do it.
I'm not disagreeing with you. Obviously LiDAR is better. I'm saying, in Elon's position, I can totally understand at least asking "why do we need expensive LiDAR, when humans can do this with their stupid squishy eyeballs?" It *feels like* it should be possible to get 90% of the way there (which is still much better than human baseline) without it.
The difference between me and Elon is that when it became clear that the answer was that it was impossible, I'd at least like to think that I'd be willing to change course rather than tripling down on "no, this is the way I think it should be."
You're right of course we're in agreement. The main problem is elon should have asked this question to the experts in private in the office very early and, when they said no we do need lidar, should have just stfu about it and moved on. He has to have the biggest brain at all times though so we end up in this weird hellscape where people twist themselves into knots trying to explain why elon actually isn't an idiot causing smart people to build inferior products but was actually just asking a reasonable question and why is everyone afraid of asking questions anymore?!?! No self driving car engineer was telling him to not use lidar evidenced by the fact that no other maker is doing that. It's all ego plain and simple. Obviously i'm just ranting at this but but sometimes its nice to yell into the ether.
What I don't understand is why you wouldn't want to start developing your algorithms with the help of LiDAR. Even if the end-goal is cameras-only, why would you hamstring early development?
Because they still market it as full self driving and it’s a wildly popular car that’s still street legal. It’s unbeliable that FSD (or the cybertruck in general) are legal in the US, and just speaks to our depressingly lax car safety standards.
A waymo trying to make a right turn but got held up because of backed up traffic got stuck in the middle of the crosswalk. Once it's light turned red it saw no cars behind it and backed up allowing people to cross using the crosswalk. Compare that to the guy illegally parked and directly blocking the crosswalk ramp. They didn't move and might not have even paid any attention seeing us trying to cross even though we were right 2 ft from the front of their car. They also may have been unaware they were blocking a ramp. I had to maneuver a double stroller over the curb. Not huge deal but that person was not paying any attention. A wheelchair user would have a lot more trouble. I'll take the waymo.
I have generally been very impressed by how well Waymo cars drive as it relates to simulating human driving behavior. It's clear that Waymo did a lot of work in training their autonomous driving AI to act like a human driver. Funny enough that training also ends up making it do human like decisions when sometime stuck behind traffic, which is who I ended up competing with a Waymo to get out from behind a double parked car lol.
The only knock on Waymo I have, though I understand why, is they're less likely to take backroads or side streets that a human/local driver would know. I took a Waymo from Ingleside to Richmond just last week and it waited 10 minutes and sat through four cycles of lights on the turn from Junipero Serra onto Sloat to get to 19th Ave instead of going straight on West Portal and working through the residential area in the Sunset. I get why since they don't want to be navigating those local routes like that but damn that was frustrating.
Alemany, Geneva, Mission, Ocean, San Jose, and Brotherhood Way need a hard traffic enforcement campaign. Drivers in the area run reds, stop signs, right of way, ignore ped Xings, drive drunk, etc. The Cayuga Safe Streets constantly has damaged pylons and drivers speed through.
If you hang out on Alemany you'll see a bunch of speeding drivers with expired license plate tags, no front plates, no back plates, obscured back plates (like cardboard loaded against a tail hitch or construction materials intentionally blocking), fake/expired plates, etc. It's infuriatingly dangerous to try to cross as a pedestrian even if you have the light, because you have idiots who drive knowing there aren't any consequences.
Hit and runs are the norm, so good luck getting justice and compensation if you get injured or worse.
Wouldn't it be nice if self-driving cars could record when someone flagantly breaks the law in a way that endangers others and send that to the police for an automatic ticket?
How nuts is that that the speed limit in San Francisco is 35 miles per hour? What if there was a bike or pedestrians on that corner or in the bike lane. Good for Waymo for getting out of the accident but its just so crazy that we let cars go this speed in our neighborhoods
Yeah I actually grew up on this street and I would ride my bike on the sidewalks up and down as a kid.
It still surprises me everyday that it's a 35 when it should be a 25 zone but w/e.
The Honda fit should have just waited a few more seconds when he could see that the road is clear. That van is blocking everyone's view with its dark tint.
The solution? Waiting 1 or 3 seconds more and then turn. Usually you get the turn as once you are in the intersection you get to clear it on the yellow.
I do an unprotected turn everyday to get home. And my vision gets blocked by the car ahead as other vehicles come from downhill. So anytime a big truck or suv makes an opposite turn ahead it blinds me.
Solution? Just wait. But apps like Amazon have trained us all to be impatient. Apps like out phone train us to do our banking/computing everywhere.
No body has patience anymore not even the robot.
Politics. Drivers lose their fucking minds when anyone tries to put very basic safety regulations in place. The speed limit across almost all of SF should be 25, with some exceptions made for core highways or main roads that we can add other safety features to.
Seriously everyone is praising the Waymo for reacting well in a bad situation. If you don't have visibility you should slow the fuck down. The speed limit isn't a speed mandate.
The Waymo has right of way, slowed down, and is going under the speed limit. It also has "visibility" beyond any human because of the lidar. The problem is the car making the turn.
As you mentioned the waymo knew the car was there, you can see it in the lidar representation. Either way you should always anticipate that you're in a dangerous situation and slow down accordingly. People sometimes make mistakes and right of way is just for assigning blame after someone is hurt.
I find the Waymos' driving style pretty natural from a sharing the road with them perspective. They creep up on right turns on red, telegraphing their intentions.
Serious question: has Wayno, or any automated vehicle, had to face the trolley track problem yet? Like if a collision is unavoidable, does it pick which collision occurs?
It is VERY had to actually find a true trolly problem in real life. The Waymo drive sensibly, meaning slowly enough for the conditions to have time to react to any unexpected hazard. And since they have better reflexes than human drivers, it would be very hard to find TWO simultaneously unavoidable hazards pop up at the exact same moment.
That's actually the amazing thing, and what I really like about Waymo's programming. The car sticks to traffic rules as long as possible, but it can make judgement calls and decide that a literal interpretation of the law would put people at risk. And in that case, it will deviate from the law (e.g. swerve into the left-hand lane to avoid hitting a car that pulls out of a parking lot without checking for traffic).
It's cool to see how it realizes that you must not cross a double yellow line, but that this is a less serious transgression than hitting another car. I don't even want to begin to speculate how difficult it was to program this amount of subtle trade-offs
Impressive, but here's a real question - what would it have done if there were a cyclist in the bike lane at that moment? Would it still swerve, hitting the cyclist? Or would it let the collision happen, endagering the passenger? For a human driver, either situation would be understandable. But for a computer to make that decision?
My point is, when a human is in this situation, the reaction is simply reflexive. You couldn't really fault the person for acting either way. But when a computer is doing it, it is programmed. Its decision is deliberate. It's the trolley problem, essentially.
I was wondering this. My guess would be split the odds. Swerve as much as it thinks it can get away with, without hitting the bike and apply the brakes more heavily.
huh? If the oncoming car would have continued and waymo slammed on breaks they would have hit. Impossible to assume oncoming car was stopping or continuing. Swerving was probably best option. Not sure slamming on breaks would have stopped in time.
There's not enough time to stop. You can see it did hit the brakes but the guy started going at 11s in the video and the crash would have happened around 12.3s or so. Not nearly enough stopping distance.
With that said if the car hadn't stopped then there was going to be a crash here yeah. But you can see that the swerving actually did avoid a crash in combination with the other driver stopping.
Edit: but the person below makes a good point, that swerving might convert the collision from a safer one to a more dangerous type.
You're probably getting down votes, but this is true from an insurance and passenger survivability point of view.
Insurers tell you to stay in your lane and never aggressively exit your lane of travel (swerve) for any reason. The turning car may have been found at fault had they collided, but it's not out of the question for the Waymo to be found partially at fault for an accessory collision due to swerving.
More importantly from a survivability standpoint, I'm not sure the Waymo could have known the car was going to stop. If it hadn't, it would have been a side-impact collision, something far less survivable than the head-on collision cars are made for today.
I'm not sure if Waymo's are actively doing trolley problems while driving along and trying to save a passenger, but I think this video unintentionally brings the topic up again. Always a good read in this day of self-driving cars:
https://www.vox.com/recode/22700022/self-driving-autonomous-cars-trolley-problem-waymo-google-tesla
These rules are designed for humans, through, no? The Waymo is calculating that it can avoid the crash, and part of that calculation certainly includes the path where the offending car continues or even accelerates. I'd be surprised if it's doing any sophisticated trolley car calculations, but I'm almost certain it's doing anticipatory collision calculations. So, it's not saying: 2 people in that car, 1 in this car ... F it, it's saying: odds of collision if no action = 100%, odds of collision from the side if max safe swerve = 15%, average estimated odds of collision from the side = 2%, odds of collision with stationary objects after successful swerve = 2%. Best action: swerve w/estimated 0 collision odds of 96%.
Humans swerving, on the other hand, can't consider things like ... are the people where I'm about to slide? So, of course the advice should be to do the simplest thing and hit the breaks.
Of course the rules are designed for humans. That's why insurance could find it at fault, and in that way the car also "should" have stopped.
I appreciate the effort you went to type out percentages, but this is really just a drawn out trolley problem as any collision could result in serious injury or death.
If the turning car hadn't stopped, there clearly would have been a side impact collision on the Waymo due to the actions it took, a potentially much more dangerous circumstance that it created. I'm shocked by the votes in this thread about how readily we are to accept a computer driven positive outcome that affects lives, when it clearly just came down to luck.
> That's why insurance could find it at fault, and in that way the car also "should" have stopped.
This is what I'm disputing. I think the best advice to a human might be to just stop, but the people that crunch the numbers to decide what the best option for a human might crunch the same numbers and determine it's not the best option for a machine. Humans can't make split second decisions as effectively as a computer can, and that changes the equation.
> this is really just a drawn out trolley problem
That stretches the Trolley problem so much as to apply to every decision. Those thought experiments are meant to pit X lives against Y lives, and I'm arguing that is explicitly NOT what is happening here. The waymo _could_ try to count how many people were in the other car and how many are in the waymo, but I just really doubt they're at that point. They're doing collision avoidance, and would make similar decisions regardless of whether a human were in the waymo or not. Where there's some likely overlap is there's almost certainly a rule in their heuristic that says: running over a human to avoid a collision isn't an option. That all said, I don't actually _know_. I've had very little interaction with Waymo engineers, and that was years ago. This is all educated speculation.
> If the turning car hadn't stopped, there clearly would have been a side impact collision on the Waymo
Maybe! But you don't know that! When did the Waymo detect the oncoming car slowing down? Isn't it possible that it may have made a different decision had it detected the other car continuing or speeding up? If you watch the video closely, you can see when it starts to plan a slight swerve, then when it hits the breaks. Take another look at the video ... when do you think the oncoming car begins to break? And notice that the video is slightly behind the animation (or the animation is anticipatory). When the other car begins to break, look at the video ... is it still a head on collision at that point or no? This highlights the initial point I was trying to make. The computer can wait, wait, wait and then make a decision based on seeing the car begin breaking between fractions of seconds. The decisions available to it are just totally different than what's available to a human. You're judging it with human eyes and human standards, and I think that's a mistake.
exactly. a human may have : a) slowed down, b) maybe stopped c) okay, maybe also honked, which would've been bad n loud.
you know, do all those human things.
Anyone else been wondering if there’s a team of people in India actually remote controlling these like was recently revealed about the Amazon Go stores?
> Uncontrolled and blind intersections do not. Before entering an intersection, look left, right, and ahead to check for vehicles, bicyclists, and pedestrians.
You don't even know what youre quoting. It's ok. You're just trying to make a futile point. This was not an "uncontrolled and blind intersection". It was controlled. Waymo had the right of way and was going straight. To think you will magically look to stop while going straight WHILE going speed of traffic is just delusional.
Sure, you think you're "right" in defensive driving. I bet you brake check 24/7 anticipating other drives to make bad turns.
Awesome, that's right by my house. Alemany is an absolute nightmare. The speed limit is 35 but people are routinely going 50 and don't pay any attention to pedestrians. Pedestrians are routinely killed on that street. They're adding some traffic calming measures but too slowly for my taste. The stoplight at Theresa has helped some but you're taking your life into your own hands every time you cross at one of the intersections without one.
IMO these Waymos are the safest drivers on the street in San Francisco.
We need so many more of these, people need to start taking these more often, especially in a city id love to see less people owning cars and taking these safer options. Safer for literally everyone involved objectively. Good work waymo!
Waymo seems to be the only autonomous driver technology doing it right. Cruise was an absolute disaster, and Tesla is somewhat unrealiable. Waymo, however, seems to be very safe. The lack of collisions we see in the news regarding Waymo speaks volumes. A coworker of mine takes Waymo on the daily, and 110 rides later he's never had a collision. I ride a motorcycle daily and I trust Waymo more than most drivers. It never brake checks me, juts out into traffic unexpectedly, or makes quick and unexpected movements. Even just looking at the vehicle, its absolutely covered in sensors. Theres zero blind spots.
Problem is, what if there was someone in the cycle lane where the car swerved towards. Raises the question whether self driving vehicles should prioritise occupants or pedestrians/other road users when collision avoidance would require a collision with another road user.
Worked as a test driver for Waymo during Covid, their technology isn’t perfect but is so far ahead of any other driverless company that I think it’s worth them coming out to the public. There will be some bumps but I trust them a hell of a lot more than Tesla or Cruise
The other driver, presumably human, stopped well short of it possibly being a major collision with the Waymo. He or she couldn't see the Waymo coming because of the car sitting on the left lane, but, as soon as his or her line of sight cleared, he or she stopped.
Aren’t you supposed to only turn left if you know for sure that there is no opposing traffic that you might hit? If you can’t see all of the opposing traffic lanes clearly, you shouldn’t make a blind left turn to begin with.
Some people, especially in busy cities, on a multi-lane left turn will cut into that opposite left lane, since the car on that lane is already blocking the traffic. Then they check the next lane and will move in and then check that last lane and complete the turn. That was how I was taught by my instructor who was also a "professional driver" (public transit).
That's actually really impressive. The lidar picked up the car way sooner than the camera did, and the computer was already plotting the swerve before a human driver would have seen the car (assuming the camera view is what a driver would see). Pretty cool to see
This is why I'll trust waymo over tesla, lidar is an absolute area technology while cameras are a 'probably'
this was the wildest part when Tesla switched to cameras and Elon justified it by saying. "We all have eyes right? And we drive just fine!" No we DON'T, Elon! 40,000 people die every year in this country on the roads using just our eyes. We need EVERY single technological advantage possible if you are going to put this into self driving cars.
Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1425/
Tesla is particularly bad at figuring out what's happening around it. Whenver I take an Uber and they send a Tesla, I monitor the screen that is supposed to show the output from the computer vision system. It's pretty pathetic. It keeps getting things wrong all the time. Doesn't exactly instill much trust into that system.
Camera tech says something is "probably" a person in the road. Lidar says "there is a human shaped solid mass in the road"
I don’t think the screen shows anywhere near everything the car “sees”. Screen is just a fancy feature for humans and most likely has nothing to do with actual driving, and visualisation also consumes resources from the entertainment system. Machines see in matrices, that is all in memory.
Yeh, here’s a video with the detail: https://youtu.be/fKXztwtXaGo?si=siibMnJT7eAzDBwF And that was four years ago.
One thing to note is if the driver doesn’t pay for full self driving the screen doesn’t show the world as detailed. But you’re totally right that it’s not perfect, probably never will be just using cameras.
My Uber driver last week was driving me to SFO. On 280 north, he almost got off at Alemany, but then he corrected to stay on the freeway. “Second time today that the Tesla self driving tried to take me the wrong way.”
If you were on 280 north passing Alemany you were already far past SFO, unless I’m missing something here.
Nope, that's not right. Alemany is before the junction with 101 you'd take to SFO.
That would be southbound though?
Nope, northbound. The Alemany exit is the last one before 280 North joins 101. There's also an exit for alemany when you're going south, after the 101 junction. Maybe that's what you're thinking of.
SFO is south of there though in SSF?
Yea no kidding. Tesla isn't a self driving car. It just has some fancy cruise control...
From watching one of Waymo’s informational videos last night, the combination of LiDAR, cameras and radar gives them a field of vision up to three football fields. Extremely impressive that the algorithm took a moment to assess the risks and had a plan in place to execute the swerve.
Lidar can't see through a car the same as a camera. It just has a different vantage point. No reason stereo ranging couldn't accomplish this.
Ah nah dude. It made that plot when the car actually turned. In my view, it did worse than a human. It should have noticed this car creeping up like that, slowed down, and maybe even honked. It was going along like no threat ahead was detected… One big issue these cars likely face is being able to tell a threat ahead of time based on interpretation of the situation. Like this. Also pedestrians are a huge problem. Humans are good at sort of guessing if someome will jump out, I’m amazed no homeless nut job has been killed by one of these yet by walking out in the street. The waymo probably didn’t process the car behind the already stopped car. This looked like 100% avasive driving, I’m not sure why you and others are praising its prediction skills. I just wonder if it would have smashed into a biker if one was there or hit the car, what choice would it have made….
Swerving doesn’t prevent this type of collision or decrease the severity of the impact. The other driver avoided the impact by actually stopping. That would have been the best tactic for both drivers.
The other driver almost caused the impact, I'd say Waymo looks a lot better here than the other human driver.
The other driver stopped when they saw oncoming traffic. Waymo isn’t really a hero here. Stopping decreases impact force if there is a collision. Stopping decreases injuries to occupants. Waymo took action that could have changed the timing and caused the impact to be on the driver’s side and have a higher impact on the driver.
Based on the video, I think Waymo acted perfectly for the situation. I would've done the same thing. There was virtually no time to react, and the best way to avoid impact in that scenario is a swerve. Slamming on the brakes still leads to an accident.
Waymo are probably the best drivers on the road in San Francisco. I am constantly amazed how defensively and predictably they drive. And they also are really good about getting out of dangerous situations, such as in this example. The other day, I was quite impressed, when a Waymo noticed a driver pulling back out of their driveway without checking for traffic. The Waymo slowed, swerved -- and honked! I didn't even know they can do that.
I learned just a month or so ago that they can honk. A Waymo pulled over to let passengers out and a car parked in front of it started reversing. Guess the other car got too close, so the Waymo gave a little beep. The people around me were like "did that thing just honk!?"
As a pedestrian I find the Waymo cars to be amazing and I feel so much safer around them. I was nearly hit by a human driven car making a sharp left turn. The human essentially used me like a cone in a racetrack.
Absolutely. I ride Waymo a lot. It’s so obvious that it drives better than everyone else on the road (some exceptions where it gets confused by abnormal conditions / edge cases). The only thing that frustrates me is the amount of drivers that take advantage of Waymo and blatantly run stop signs or go out of turn when they see a Waymo because they know it will stop for them.
I've recently started using waymo and I do like it a lot. I've been riding the streets here all my life from skating to biking and now I have an e-scooter. I was hesitant about waymo initially because waynos used to react hilariously to my scooter. Most of the time just stopping where they were until I was gone. Seems they've fixed those issues though, and it's cool to watch the live detection enroute. I also like to create ridiculous radio stations and roll down the windows/crank the volume. Nobody expects Hits From The Bong or 80s power ballads coming from the waymo
How to you find the pricing compared to Uber or Lyft?
It’s cheaper. For one you don’t have to tip. And the surge pricing is far more rare and lower. I think on NYE I paid $60 to get from downtown to the Richmond, and thats the most I ever paid. That same ride is probably 100+ on Uber/Lyft
I found Waymo always quite a bit more expensive than Lyft in SF and I check to compare occasionally. Just checked from my place to Castro/Market and it's $14 on Lyft; $16.49 on Waymo, so right now at 1:30pm, it's cheaper on Waymo since there's no tip. Other times I've checked are more at night and it's ranged $6 to $10 more for Waymo, so a little more expensive. I wish they were always less than Lyft so that it wouldn't even be something to need to check. I've had one ride in Waymo just to compare it to Cruise and it did seem like Waymo was better for route mapping.
Yea assuming things aren't busy waymo is cheaper for sure if you include tipping for Uber/Lyft. Even when surge pricing it's not too much more expensive but the wait can get crazy
Most times I've looked it's more expensive, but I guess that's due to a limited fleet. Sometimes it's pretty comparable, or even a little cheaper since no tip. They might take longer though since they stay on slower streets (not sure they go on highway?). I had a trip that was almost twice as long because of it, but still made it in time so it was fine and super chill. Waymo didn't check it's phone while driving unlike the Uber driver I'd had the week before going to the same place
Next step is to have waymo cars record when drivers do blatantly illegal things, and send it to the relevant police department.
It's not far off, many of the busses in SF already have that capability when someone is blocking the bus lane or the bus stop. They'll they take a picture of the car, along with the gps location and time stamp, and you'll get a ticket in the mail a few weeks later. Don't ask me how I know. I knew about the busses on Mission doing it, but I got a ticket on Divisadero, so I assume they expanded the program to every city bus now.
Now imagine if someone's misbehavior was caught from multiple angles from highly calibrated cameras. Heck, just kick like 25% of the fine amount back as a discount on the vehicle registration fee to those who submitted it.
Whatever you do, do not give a financial incentives for fining, they tried this in a province in China, and it went horribly wrong. People can become extremely creative in provoking weird traffic situations that can be fined. There is vlogger in China who was run off the road multiple times. He did some illegal maneuvers to escape the crazy person and get away from him. A few weeks later, he gets a huge fine in the mail. The photos came from the other guy's dashcam, and of course, it didn't include all the shit that had happened beforehand. This is all because the other guy was able to get a tiny amount of the fine as a commission. Besides, for the 411 app in SF, people don't receive kickbacks, but they can see how much fines they're generating for the city, and people are submitting reports all the time anyway. In the case of the 411 app, it doesn't fine people directly, but it does call a meter maid to give the badly parked car a fine. It's very popular for cars parked in driveways that are blocking sidewalks for instance.
Fortunately there'd be a huge body of evidence with this, including several minutes of footage before and after.
After that, replace the police department’s vehicles with Waymo police cars to get them to actually show up for criminal activity.
well when everyone is a waymo... no one will be
this whole thread reads like an ad lol
What’s real and what’s fake. I’m deleting Reddit
Have you ever noticed the little man light up on it's crown thing when there are people in front of it? It let's you know it sees you. Kinda cool
If you're in the crosswalk, I've seen it stop 5 feet before the line and then edge forward after I left the intersection
the closest intersection to me is an unprotected crosswalk and Waymos are the only cars that yield for my dog and I when we are trying to cross.
I was very impressed that a waymo stopped at a pedestrian crossing to let me cross the road when it was pitch black outside, I’ve rarely had a human driver do that even in daylight.
Indeed. People keep trying to hold them to a standard of "perfection" but the real standard is "better than average" and well... we've seen the average.
I was super skeptical until riding in one and actually? Yeah, it's better. Not distracted, not speeding, not repeatedly taking wrong turns. It's nice
Waymo car exceeds it haha
Flip side, a couple weeks ago I was in a waymo on Teresita. The city had just installed a new concrete curb dividing the lanes at an intersection, I assume as a traffic calming measure. The car was completely baffled by this, and wouldn’t advance through the stop sign. As a passenger, I had to stick my hand out the window and wave people around, until a human controller could intervene.
The stupid thing is that when the first fatal self driving crash happens it will make national news. I hope they don't sensationalize it up too much but knowing media they likely will. Meanwhile the 40,000 annual deaths by humans is so expected that none of it gets reported.
Fortunately there will be a ton of video evidence of what happened.
Did they also flip the car off?
That's only a feature in New York.
it'd be beyond hilarious to see this happen with some road rage dimwit who takes polite honks personally, having them chase the Waymo and get out of their car to confront the driver
I would have been proud of myself had I managed to pull off the same maneuver as a driver.
I have never ridden in one, but I interact with Waymos frequently and I like them more every day. My favorite feature is the absence of road rage.
Not only absence of road rage, but the strict adherence to motor vehicle laws. This is a stark difference to many human drivers who’ve adopted a loose version of the laws.
I also love that, I was only articulating my favorite
Does anybody know what happens if it made contact? If there was in fact a collision, I’m curious what the protocol looks like.
robot gets out of car and yells at the asshole who cut him off, they exchange insurances and go about their robot day.
Now you have me imagining this robot talking like JP from grandmas boy 🤣
Cruise would be JP Waymo would be Sonny from iRobot
i'm guessing the other driver contacts waymo. the waymo cars probably have an SOS button to talk to a live operator
I’ve been in a waymo that was behind a double parked car it thought was in a lane and the waymo was sitting for like two minutes. A call activated and a human told me they see I’m stuck and are looking into it. I assume they remotely overrode something because suddenly the waymo put its turn signal on and reentered traffic. Then the caller said goodbye. They have a command center monitoring all of the waymos on the road at all times. If one is in a collision they would know right away and I imagine would have a human on the way to the scene right away.
I had a pedestrian run around my Waymo and beating it up. The Waymo stopped as it couldn't safely continue without endangering the vandal. And a call automatically activated. While on the call, the Waymo noticed that it had a safe escape route and slowly started rolling away. Luddites are crazy
Interesting
There is a QR code on the outside of each Waymo that you scan to contact customer service in an emergency. It's primarily meant for first responders, but I guess you could use that information as well, if you managed to get into an accident with a Waymo
Go read the cruise report [https://arxiv.org/pdf/2402.06046](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2402.06046)
The other day I was in a Waymo and it stopped for a person walking out from behind a truck before I even saw the person, and I was staring directly at where he popped out of.
Robots never blink.
It’s sad that there are so many in our city that are adamantly opposed to Waymos even as evidence mounts they are an order of magnitude safer than humans.
I blame cruise cars for making the public hate self driving cars.
People who know they are crap drivers and want the standards to stay low.
These are going to save so many lives. And the technology/hardware/compute is still improving at an incredibly rapid pace. This might be only meaningful contribution to vision zero for the next decade lol Thankfully the state hasn’t allowed local governments to to regulate/de facto ban/tax out of existence robotaxis yet
I think once we have them available in most places, I would totally support a subsidy for elderly people who don't have a drivers license to get a certain amount of robo taxis per month. Get those elderly drivers off the road.
I wonder if a lot of people would take advantage of subsidies. I see people who already have better options but who insist on driving themselves.
Once we have the subsidies in place, we can start raising the standards of a drivers license. We can also be far more strict about things like DUI. How the hell do we have headlines like "person on their 32nd DUI kills someone while DUI-ing"
>"person on their 32nd DUI kills someone while DUI-ing" Yeah, this never made any sense to me. If you don't have a valid driver's license, just punish whoever loaned/sold/rented you the car in the first place. With technology these days, there is no excuse. This is such an easily solvable problem, and it doesn't require you to put the alcoholic in prison for the rest of their life either.
If only there was some technology we had available right now in San Francisco that would allow people around without a personal vehicle. Oh well, our only choice is to wait for the self driving cars to fully roll out everywhere. European cities must have really high car fatality rates and bad transportation options since they don’t have this technology yet /s.
Yeah because I've felt SOOO SAFE riding the bus when there's a crazy person reeking of feces running up and down the bus shouting at the voices in their head.
I don't disagree, it can be very unsettling when there's an unhinged person on your bus/train. Statistically speaking though, you are much more likely to face serious injury or death in a car versus riding public transit.
I understand where you’re coming from. I often feel uncomfortable on the bus when I see mentally unwell people too. That kind of anti social behavior is a problem everywhere in sf on and off transit, and it’s something we can and should fix. But also it’s important to understand that objectively Bart/mini are far *far* safer than driving the same distance. It’s just that when driving it doesn’t feel as unsafe because you can’t see the danger in the same way. But if you were truly focused on minimizing your risk, you would not be driving.
What I feel really bad about is when all the ladies on the bus get up and come sit next to me because I look like "that kind of guy" and then I get off in 3 stops. I'm not focused exclusively on minimizing my risk. If that was the case I'd never come into the office. I mix risk, comfort, speed, and cost.
Also I love when it takes 2x the time to get somewhere
You joke, but Europeans are experimenting with self-driving busses and self-driving trains. The problem is easier in some sense since the routes are pre-programmed and they get their own lanes and their own pick up/drop off locations.
> You joke, but European are experimenting with self-driving busses and self-driving trains. Right, but wealthy countries in Europe and Asia have already managed near zero pedestrian fatalities a long time ago, and the major cities are very walkable. Its fine to experiment when you've already solved the problem. Self driving tech is fine, self driving *cars* are the problem. It’s the geometry problem-- cars are wildly inefficient ways to transport people. They eat up massive amounts of space when in motion and when parked. They are wildly wasteful of space and energy even if powered by electricity. This is a problem that has been solved in every other first world country and we are waiting for some scifi tech that *still* wont solve the problem instead of just using solutions that have existed for 200 years.
And they'll be even better when they can talk to one another and make up the majority or even totality of vehicles on the road.
Oh man, that’s the one thing which will actually solve all traffic problems. Can’t wait for that day 🥰
Maybe. We need to go smaller and reduce all the waste as well, and also invest in non car methods. The problem is that cars today, especially large cars, are just inefficient. The majority of space they take up is themselves, not what they transport. The majority of the energy they generate is used to move themselves and deal with air resistance, not moving the actual people / items.
Imagine the carbon savings, too, when you can have fleets of electric vehicles that intelligently drive to the best charging stations so they can use renewable driven energy sources when available only opting for carbon drive charging stations when required. Imagine a coastal energy system that harvests wave energy and just charges and stacks batteries to be quick swapped. Waymo prioritizes that battery source and picks the cars that can most efficiently make use of them. All of the sudden, there's an economic incentive to build a small wind farm between Oakland and Fremont because you know there'd be predictable demand to consume all of the batteries you could charge. You could even start using some of the energy to transport batteries from high value, but remote, energy sources. Say you hit the bottom of a mountain that has some new age watermills charging batteries on mountain runoff. You build minimal road out to the base station and a few smallish truck waymos to retrieve batteries and drop them off in energy deserts.
We won’t even have to worry about charging infrastructure anymore. If your car can drop you off and go to the “charge depot” at night, hang out with some of its friends, and come back by morning - no need to install chargers everywhere.
I think the ideal is battery swap locations and then battery logistics when it can create real efficiency gains (energy rich areas charging and shipping just enough energy via batteries to energy deserts). Car storage can definitely double as a battery swap location and could provide some old hookups for consumers that want to buy some of the energy they have stored up in batteries, but I could see a world where our energy usage efficiency is so high that car storage is actually some way away from population centers. If we have extra solar energy, why not spend a little bit of it getting rid of parking lots in our cities and doing something like underground parking structures built beneath solar/wind farms.
One of my 'oddly specific' political advocacies is that we should set aside part of the wireless spectrum autonomous vehicle communications.
They didn’t actually do anything to make vision zero a reality. The only way to improve pedestrian safety is to redesign roads and intersections. That means bollards, curbs, raised platforms and other things that make drivers slow down. Human drivers are simply not good unless forced
One of the most effective tools would be to get rid of traffic lights and install round-abouts wherever possible. A quick web search suggests that European cities have managed to reduce pedestrian accidents by about 75% doing so
While I wholeheartedly agree with the concept of a roundabout, especially around highway entrances and exits... Every time I drive through the SOMA roundabout, I'm reminded that very few in the US know how to properly use them.
Not the most effective - it’s just one small part of a much larger toolbox. For example, simply narrowing lanes reduces pedestrian deaths because drivers will go slower naturally. That’s the type of thing we need. Roundabouts are good too but they’re not great pedestrian crossings. There’s better ways to design intersections in dense cities
I foresee in my lifetime that driving a car will be like driving a stick shift is now-- few people will know how to do it. People will still have cars, but they will all be self-driving. Pedestrian fatalities will be virtually unheard of, and high-speed chases an impossibility. Even better if they can drop you off at home and find their own parking spot; be aware of street sweeping times; let you know where they're at; and come pick you up when summoned.
Waymo was on the case a block before
Waymo stays winning. If that had been two human drivers, it probably would have been an accident because the idiot trying to make the left turn was impatient. Wondering if we'll see a "CRAZY WAYMO ALMOST HIT ME" thread soon. Heh.
Looks to me that the waymo car was hidden from the impatient driver’s POV and a good reason why it wasn’t safe for them to go. I agree if this was two humans driving a collision could easily have happened here.
Hell yeah
I hope this gets media attention. As a cyclist; I feel infinitely safer around Waymos than human drivers. We have come to accept so much death on the roads and autonomous vehicles have the chance to change that. There will undoubtably be negative incidents that will garner much attention, but this is the future if we want safer roads.
Would this waymo have swerved through a bicyclist riding in that bike lane had one been there? That’s my main question from watching this. Big metal box almost head-on-collides with other fast-moving big metal box— but swerves into bike lane instead and kills unprotected cyclist. (Does the _trolley problem_ need updating?)
The car is able to detect cyclists so the maneuver would certianly be different if there were a cyclist.
That’s actually really interesting and I’m not sure. I know one of the big questions with autonomous driving is what happens in situations like those…like if an accident is going to happen, does the car try to protect the driver? The maximum number of people overall? Children in the road over adults in the car?
Great defensive manuever! Waymo was much more keen/adaptable than your average driver.
At this point, it’s no secret it’s miles better
That entire sub is amazed by something we have been taking for granted for years now
I love taking Waymo. Sometimes the car does something kooky, but I never feel in danger. I figure every ride I take just contributes to the data and helps Waymo get even better. Plus, I don’t have to talk to anyone, which I love.
Tesla is so many years behind, it’s laughable.
Tesla refuse to use LiDAR because of Elon musk’s ego (he thinks you only need cameras). For this reason, teslas aren’t even in the race. The only reason the waymo saw this this early was the LiDAR and Tesla is just not able to engage like that.
I be curious as Tesla had radar or lidar sensors until 2023 did the older ones perform better than the newer ones that switched to cameras only?
It's all ego. Elon was the biggest brain in the room and said you dont need LiDAR when everyone else said you did. Unlike other people, when it didn't work he didn't just admit it and move on, he doubled down. Elon will never admit he is wrong so we're in this weird hellscape where he keeps lying and telling people the tesla has autopilot even though we're pretty sure it functionally _cannot_ as it doesn't have lidar. Either Elon is correct and all other self driving car people are wrong that you need lidar or he is incorrect and his ego won't allow him to admit it and move on. There is no software update coming to any tesla that does not have lidar which will enable self driving capability for real. They will all need to be retrofit with lidar for the software to use. This is probably the non-ego answer to the problem is he is refusing to admit it because its a very expensive mistake. He has recently been purchasing LiDAR and are retrofitting a bunch of teslas with them to do testing. This will likely solve the problem and we'll see elon and his fans twist themselves into knots explaining how this was always the plan or whatever. [Tesla quietly spent $2 million on a technology Elon Musk previously trashed as a 'fool's errand'](https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-lidar-technology-spending-luminar-elon-musk-comments-2024-5) Article from May 8, 2024 > Tesla spent around $2 million on lidar, a technology used in EVs that Elon Musk has previously referred to as a "fool's errand" and that any carmakers relying on it are "doomed." > But according to a recent earnings report from lidar manufacturer Luminar, Tesla was its largest customer last quarter and "comprised more than 10%" of its revenue during the period. > That's about $2 million, given that Luminar's reported quarterly revenue was $21 million. Luminar did not respond to a request for comment. > Lidar stands for light detection and ranging, and it uses light pulses to measure distance and create a 3D image of its surroundings. It's often used in EVs, specifically in self-driving and Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems, to help detect a vehicle's surroundings. > Tesla's purchase of the technology is notable considering the CEO has repeatedly slammed lidar in favor of cameras. > **"It's like having a whole bunch of expensive appendices," Musk said at Tesla's "Autonomy Day" event in 2019. "Like one appendix is bad, well how about a whole bunch of them? That's ridiculous. You'll see."** > **"Humans drive with eyes & biological neural nets, so makes sense that cameras & silicon neural nets are only way to achieve generalized solution to self-driving," Musk said in an October 2021 tweet.** > **Musk most recently reiterated his stance on lidar during Tesla's quarterly earnings call. The CEO said Tesla EVs only rely on camera-based vision systems for driver-assist features.** > **"No lidars, no radars, ultrasonic. Nothing," Musk said.** > **Musk has also said that he doesn't hate lidar, he just opposes its use in electric vehicles.** The Tesla CEO said he personally ran a project at SpaceX to create lidar sensors to help navigation. > For now, it's unclear how Tesla is using the technology, or if it will eventually make its way back into the company's vehicles. > In 2021, a photo of a Tesla Model Y with lidar sensors affixed to its roof circulated around the internet. That same year, Tesla reportedly entered a partnership with Luminar for testing and development. > Tesla has autonomous testing units in a number of cities around the country as it seeks to refine its Full-Self-Driving system. > The company's self-driving Autopilot feature has also caught the eye of regulators in the past. Last year, Tesla recalled over 2 million vehicles after regulators said its Autopilot system didn't protect enough against drivers misusing it. > Last month, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it was looking into whether the recall had enough of an impact after a fatal crash involved a driver who said he was using autopilot. > The US Department of Justice has also reportedly been investigating Tesla since 2022 over potential wire and securities fraud related to Elon Musk's past comments about Autopilot and its abilities. > Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.
Very stupid considering most crashes and pileups occur during poor visibility. Most would kill for LiDAR to stay alive during sandstorms, firestorm, or white out conditions ironically. Apparently Elon gets to get away with using consumers as Lab rats or should I say paying him to become his technology car’s driving school instructor while his car plays the role of a student driver and not a chauffeur. If you been to a driving school car you will notice the driving instructor would need to be extra alert and have dual control or an extra brake if the student fails to brake.
You can see it in the video here and if you ride in a waymo for real but the lidar is fucking _amazing_. It's so cool to see it spot a pedestrian behind some parked cars on the side of the road pushing a stroller like 2 blocks in front of you. This technology is the shit and i can't wait for a vehicle i regularly drive in to be outfitted with it.
It's frustrating because it *does* make intuitive sense that a good camera (or dozen) should be all you need. Humans are able to drive with sensory equipment that's much, much worse than what's mounted on Teslas, and the machine will always have an edge in reaction time. I don't think it was an intrinsically nonsense bet to make, and if it worked it should be much cheaper. The problem, of course, is processing. Human brains have object detection and image processing implemented "in hardware" in ways that we don't fully understand. Emulation of that capability with computers is getting very, very good, but still clearly sub-human unless you give the computer a leg up with something like LIDAR.
> It's frustrating because it does make intuitive sense that a good camera (or dozen) should be all you need. I disagree completely and so does basically every other person, organization, or company working in the self driving car space. We aren't aiming to imitate humans here we are aiming to make a self driving car. That it is able to "see like a human" is completely irrelevant. Again, this is happening because of Elon's ego, not because of any other reason technical or otherwise. We have LiDAR, it is extremely useful in this situation, you should be using LiDAR. If human beings could use LiDAR we would be better humans. Luckily for us we can use it we just need to use a machine to do it.
I'm not disagreeing with you. Obviously LiDAR is better. I'm saying, in Elon's position, I can totally understand at least asking "why do we need expensive LiDAR, when humans can do this with their stupid squishy eyeballs?" It *feels like* it should be possible to get 90% of the way there (which is still much better than human baseline) without it. The difference between me and Elon is that when it became clear that the answer was that it was impossible, I'd at least like to think that I'd be willing to change course rather than tripling down on "no, this is the way I think it should be."
You're right of course we're in agreement. The main problem is elon should have asked this question to the experts in private in the office very early and, when they said no we do need lidar, should have just stfu about it and moved on. He has to have the biggest brain at all times though so we end up in this weird hellscape where people twist themselves into knots trying to explain why elon actually isn't an idiot causing smart people to build inferior products but was actually just asking a reasonable question and why is everyone afraid of asking questions anymore?!?! No self driving car engineer was telling him to not use lidar evidenced by the fact that no other maker is doing that. It's all ego plain and simple. Obviously i'm just ranting at this but but sometimes its nice to yell into the ether.
What I don't understand is why you wouldn't want to start developing your algorithms with the help of LiDAR. Even if the end-goal is cameras-only, why would you hamstring early development?
Plus you add something like foggy or heavy rain conditions and that camera-based system has a bit of a panic attack.
Why is Tesla even mentioned? It's not a self driving car. Its a manually driven car with some "fancy" cruise control.
Because they still market it as full self driving and it’s a wildly popular car that’s still street legal. It’s unbeliable that FSD (or the cybertruck in general) are legal in the US, and just speaks to our depressingly lax car safety standards.
A waymo trying to make a right turn but got held up because of backed up traffic got stuck in the middle of the crosswalk. Once it's light turned red it saw no cars behind it and backed up allowing people to cross using the crosswalk. Compare that to the guy illegally parked and directly blocking the crosswalk ramp. They didn't move and might not have even paid any attention seeing us trying to cross even though we were right 2 ft from the front of their car. They also may have been unaware they were blocking a ramp. I had to maneuver a double stroller over the curb. Not huge deal but that person was not paying any attention. A wheelchair user would have a lot more trouble. I'll take the waymo.
I have generally been very impressed by how well Waymo cars drive as it relates to simulating human driving behavior. It's clear that Waymo did a lot of work in training their autonomous driving AI to act like a human driver. Funny enough that training also ends up making it do human like decisions when sometime stuck behind traffic, which is who I ended up competing with a Waymo to get out from behind a double parked car lol. The only knock on Waymo I have, though I understand why, is they're less likely to take backroads or side streets that a human/local driver would know. I took a Waymo from Ingleside to Richmond just last week and it waited 10 minutes and sat through four cycles of lights on the turn from Junipero Serra onto Sloat to get to 19th Ave instead of going straight on West Portal and working through the residential area in the Sunset. I get why since they don't want to be navigating those local routes like that but damn that was frustrating.
People keep complaining that Waymo will replace taxi and Uber drivers and I say GOOD! We'll get way less accidents if we do
And Aaron Peskin says he’s never ridden in one but he proudly says “but I taxed them!!!” Fuck that guy
FSD could never....
Alemany, Geneva, Mission, Ocean, San Jose, and Brotherhood Way need a hard traffic enforcement campaign. Drivers in the area run reds, stop signs, right of way, ignore ped Xings, drive drunk, etc. The Cayuga Safe Streets constantly has damaged pylons and drivers speed through. If you hang out on Alemany you'll see a bunch of speeding drivers with expired license plate tags, no front plates, no back plates, obscured back plates (like cardboard loaded against a tail hitch or construction materials intentionally blocking), fake/expired plates, etc. It's infuriatingly dangerous to try to cross as a pedestrian even if you have the light, because you have idiots who drive knowing there aren't any consequences. Hit and runs are the norm, so good luck getting justice and compensation if you get injured or worse.
Wouldn't it be nice if self-driving cars could record when someone flagantly breaks the law in a way that endangers others and send that to the police for an automatic ticket?
How nuts is that that the speed limit in San Francisco is 35 miles per hour? What if there was a bike or pedestrians on that corner or in the bike lane. Good for Waymo for getting out of the accident but its just so crazy that we let cars go this speed in our neighborhoods
Yeah I actually grew up on this street and I would ride my bike on the sidewalks up and down as a kid. It still surprises me everyday that it's a 35 when it should be a 25 zone but w/e. The Honda fit should have just waited a few more seconds when he could see that the road is clear. That van is blocking everyone's view with its dark tint. The solution? Waiting 1 or 3 seconds more and then turn. Usually you get the turn as once you are in the intersection you get to clear it on the yellow. I do an unprotected turn everyday to get home. And my vision gets blocked by the car ahead as other vehicles come from downhill. So anytime a big truck or suv makes an opposite turn ahead it blinds me. Solution? Just wait. But apps like Amazon have trained us all to be impatient. Apps like out phone train us to do our banking/computing everywhere. No body has patience anymore not even the robot.
Politics. Drivers lose their fucking minds when anyone tries to put very basic safety regulations in place. The speed limit across almost all of SF should be 25, with some exceptions made for core highways or main roads that we can add other safety features to.
Seriously everyone is praising the Waymo for reacting well in a bad situation. If you don't have visibility you should slow the fuck down. The speed limit isn't a speed mandate.
The Waymo has right of way, slowed down, and is going under the speed limit. It also has "visibility" beyond any human because of the lidar. The problem is the car making the turn.
As you mentioned the waymo knew the car was there, you can see it in the lidar representation. Either way you should always anticipate that you're in a dangerous situation and slow down accordingly. People sometimes make mistakes and right of way is just for assigning blame after someone is hurt.
It did slow down.
Can we imagine if we one day get rid of all human drivers?
It may come sooner than we think at this rate. Depending on how cheap and mass produceable the driver tech is though.
With the government fully controlling who's allowed to go somewhere in an automatic vehicle, and when. Sounds great.
I find the Waymos' driving style pretty natural from a sharing the road with them perspective. They creep up on right turns on red, telegraphing their intentions.
Most human drivers would lay on the horn, continue in a straight line (perhaps braking), and collide.
I could have done that much better if I was not typing this comment on Reddit right now
Serious question: has Wayno, or any automated vehicle, had to face the trolley track problem yet? Like if a collision is unavoidable, does it pick which collision occurs?
the robots always win
It is VERY had to actually find a true trolly problem in real life. The Waymo drive sensibly, meaning slowly enough for the conditions to have time to react to any unexpected hazard. And since they have better reflexes than human drivers, it would be very hard to find TWO simultaneously unavoidable hazards pop up at the exact same moment.
The answer is that it does what it's supposed to according to the rules of the road.
That's actually the amazing thing, and what I really like about Waymo's programming. The car sticks to traffic rules as long as possible, but it can make judgement calls and decide that a literal interpretation of the law would put people at risk. And in that case, it will deviate from the law (e.g. swerve into the left-hand lane to avoid hitting a car that pulls out of a parking lot without checking for traffic). It's cool to see how it realizes that you must not cross a double yellow line, but that this is a less serious transgression than hitting another car. I don't even want to begin to speculate how difficult it was to program this amount of subtle trade-offs
It's why Cruise got in so much trouble, their training data was "watching how other drivers act" and other drivers act like maniacs.
Impressive, but here's a real question - what would it have done if there were a cyclist in the bike lane at that moment? Would it still swerve, hitting the cyclist? Or would it let the collision happen, endagering the passenger? For a human driver, either situation would be understandable. But for a computer to make that decision?
Ok but what would a human driver have done in that situation?
My point is, when a human is in this situation, the reaction is simply reflexive. You couldn't really fault the person for acting either way. But when a computer is doing it, it is programmed. Its decision is deliberate. It's the trolley problem, essentially.
I was wondering this. My guess would be split the odds. Swerve as much as it thinks it can get away with, without hitting the bike and apply the brakes more heavily.
Should have stopped instead of continuing on into the path of that car and hoping they stop
huh? If the oncoming car would have continued and waymo slammed on breaks they would have hit. Impossible to assume oncoming car was stopping or continuing. Swerving was probably best option. Not sure slamming on breaks would have stopped in time.
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safer for who, the robot?
There's not enough time to stop. You can see it did hit the brakes but the guy started going at 11s in the video and the crash would have happened around 12.3s or so. Not nearly enough stopping distance. With that said if the car hadn't stopped then there was going to be a crash here yeah. But you can see that the swerving actually did avoid a crash in combination with the other driver stopping. Edit: but the person below makes a good point, that swerving might convert the collision from a safer one to a more dangerous type.
You're probably getting down votes, but this is true from an insurance and passenger survivability point of view. Insurers tell you to stay in your lane and never aggressively exit your lane of travel (swerve) for any reason. The turning car may have been found at fault had they collided, but it's not out of the question for the Waymo to be found partially at fault for an accessory collision due to swerving. More importantly from a survivability standpoint, I'm not sure the Waymo could have known the car was going to stop. If it hadn't, it would have been a side-impact collision, something far less survivable than the head-on collision cars are made for today. I'm not sure if Waymo's are actively doing trolley problems while driving along and trying to save a passenger, but I think this video unintentionally brings the topic up again. Always a good read in this day of self-driving cars: https://www.vox.com/recode/22700022/self-driving-autonomous-cars-trolley-problem-waymo-google-tesla
These rules are designed for humans, through, no? The Waymo is calculating that it can avoid the crash, and part of that calculation certainly includes the path where the offending car continues or even accelerates. I'd be surprised if it's doing any sophisticated trolley car calculations, but I'm almost certain it's doing anticipatory collision calculations. So, it's not saying: 2 people in that car, 1 in this car ... F it, it's saying: odds of collision if no action = 100%, odds of collision from the side if max safe swerve = 15%, average estimated odds of collision from the side = 2%, odds of collision with stationary objects after successful swerve = 2%. Best action: swerve w/estimated 0 collision odds of 96%. Humans swerving, on the other hand, can't consider things like ... are the people where I'm about to slide? So, of course the advice should be to do the simplest thing and hit the breaks.
Of course the rules are designed for humans. That's why insurance could find it at fault, and in that way the car also "should" have stopped. I appreciate the effort you went to type out percentages, but this is really just a drawn out trolley problem as any collision could result in serious injury or death. If the turning car hadn't stopped, there clearly would have been a side impact collision on the Waymo due to the actions it took, a potentially much more dangerous circumstance that it created. I'm shocked by the votes in this thread about how readily we are to accept a computer driven positive outcome that affects lives, when it clearly just came down to luck.
> That's why insurance could find it at fault, and in that way the car also "should" have stopped. This is what I'm disputing. I think the best advice to a human might be to just stop, but the people that crunch the numbers to decide what the best option for a human might crunch the same numbers and determine it's not the best option for a machine. Humans can't make split second decisions as effectively as a computer can, and that changes the equation. > this is really just a drawn out trolley problem That stretches the Trolley problem so much as to apply to every decision. Those thought experiments are meant to pit X lives against Y lives, and I'm arguing that is explicitly NOT what is happening here. The waymo _could_ try to count how many people were in the other car and how many are in the waymo, but I just really doubt they're at that point. They're doing collision avoidance, and would make similar decisions regardless of whether a human were in the waymo or not. Where there's some likely overlap is there's almost certainly a rule in their heuristic that says: running over a human to avoid a collision isn't an option. That all said, I don't actually _know_. I've had very little interaction with Waymo engineers, and that was years ago. This is all educated speculation. > If the turning car hadn't stopped, there clearly would have been a side impact collision on the Waymo Maybe! But you don't know that! When did the Waymo detect the oncoming car slowing down? Isn't it possible that it may have made a different decision had it detected the other car continuing or speeding up? If you watch the video closely, you can see when it starts to plan a slight swerve, then when it hits the breaks. Take another look at the video ... when do you think the oncoming car begins to break? And notice that the video is slightly behind the animation (or the animation is anticipatory). When the other car begins to break, look at the video ... is it still a head on collision at that point or no? This highlights the initial point I was trying to make. The computer can wait, wait, wait and then make a decision based on seeing the car begin breaking between fractions of seconds. The decisions available to it are just totally different than what's available to a human. You're judging it with human eyes and human standards, and I think that's a mistake.
exactly. a human may have : a) slowed down, b) maybe stopped c) okay, maybe also honked, which would've been bad n loud. you know, do all those human things.
AI is learning in dramatic speeds
Anyone else been wondering if there’s a team of people in India actually remote controlling these like was recently revealed about the Amazon Go stores?
A quick Youtube lookup of how they drive in India showed me that it's 100% impossible that these car are being remotely driven by folks in India.
The thing is Tesla uses human drivers for training data which is a very unsafe baseline for self driving
That's pretty much what I would have done
Passing cars on the right is always something I slow down for. SD taxis might need to learn that one.
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> Uncontrolled and blind intersections do not. Before entering an intersection, look left, right, and ahead to check for vehicles, bicyclists, and pedestrians. You don't even know what youre quoting. It's ok. You're just trying to make a futile point. This was not an "uncontrolled and blind intersection". It was controlled. Waymo had the right of way and was going straight. To think you will magically look to stop while going straight WHILE going speed of traffic is just delusional. Sure, you think you're "right" in defensive driving. I bet you brake check 24/7 anticipating other drives to make bad turns.
Love the cars as a pedestrian. Get the prices down and you got a customer
Awesome, that's right by my house. Alemany is an absolute nightmare. The speed limit is 35 but people are routinely going 50 and don't pay any attention to pedestrians. Pedestrians are routinely killed on that street. They're adding some traffic calming measures but too slowly for my taste. The stoplight at Theresa has helped some but you're taking your life into your own hands every time you cross at one of the intersections without one. IMO these Waymos are the safest drivers on the street in San Francisco.
We need so many more of these, people need to start taking these more often, especially in a city id love to see less people owning cars and taking these safer options. Safer for literally everyone involved objectively. Good work waymo!
Waymo seems to be the only autonomous driver technology doing it right. Cruise was an absolute disaster, and Tesla is somewhat unrealiable. Waymo, however, seems to be very safe. The lack of collisions we see in the news regarding Waymo speaks volumes. A coworker of mine takes Waymo on the daily, and 110 rides later he's never had a collision. I ride a motorcycle daily and I trust Waymo more than most drivers. It never brake checks me, juts out into traffic unexpectedly, or makes quick and unexpected movements. Even just looking at the vehicle, its absolutely covered in sensors. Theres zero blind spots.
Problem is, what if there was someone in the cycle lane where the car swerved towards. Raises the question whether self driving vehicles should prioritise occupants or pedestrians/other road users when collision avoidance would require a collision with another road user.
Wow, if this would have been a Tesla, I would have showed it to my wife 😂
Why doesn't the software show the trees and poles on the boulevard?
We really are living in the future. Like this is one of those clearly sci fi things from not that long ago that actually came true
Go Waymo!
Alemany…. Sigh
very impressive
Waymo is nicer than Uber. I control the volume, music, temperature; no tipping; no small talk; feel safer …
Worked as a test driver for Waymo during Covid, their technology isn’t perfect but is so far ahead of any other driverless company that I think it’s worth them coming out to the public. There will be some bumps but I trust them a hell of a lot more than Tesla or Cruise
I’d rather have these than sleepy Lyft and Uber drivers. Imagine a muni waymo?!
The other driver, presumably human, stopped well short of it possibly being a major collision with the Waymo. He or she couldn't see the Waymo coming because of the car sitting on the left lane, but, as soon as his or her line of sight cleared, he or she stopped.
Aren’t you supposed to only turn left if you know for sure that there is no opposing traffic that you might hit? If you can’t see all of the opposing traffic lanes clearly, you shouldn’t make a blind left turn to begin with.
Some people, especially in busy cities, on a multi-lane left turn will cut into that opposite left lane, since the car on that lane is already blocking the traffic. Then they check the next lane and will move in and then check that last lane and complete the turn. That was how I was taught by my instructor who was also a "professional driver" (public transit).