[BIair]

I used to think my daughter may never drive, because autonomous vehicles were rumored to always be just around the corner.

Now I think she may never ride in an autonomous vehicle. Do autonomous vehicles drive in the rain? We live in a northern state where snow remains on the ground for months at a time in ever shifting depths and banks along roads. Lidar is unable to see through the snow. Road surfaces are sometimes wet, sometimes snow covered, sometimes ice. Visibility can drop to zero.

I wonder if tech companies will spend the time and expense to solve these difficult problems for a rather small percentage of the population.

[nexuist]

Baby steps. Once the majority of human drivers get off the road we will almost certainly see an evolution in traffic control systems which will allow self driving vehicles to conquer poor weather conditions. As of now, each vehicle can only rely on its own sensor package to understand the world.

Tesla already has a system in place that lets one car learn from thousands of others; ie if everyone disconnects autopilot at a certain turn each car will learn to slow down even if they have never encountered that turn before. The future will have more of this.

Self driving has mostly been a solved problem, it just only works in ports, warehouses, docks, and factory floors. You might say those are tightly regulated spaces, but so are roads! All it takes is political will to scale up the same systems that guide robots today and install them onto every highway and main road.

[rayiner]

> Baby steps. Once the majority of human drivers get off the road we will almost certainly see an evolution in traffic control systems which will allow self driving vehicles to conquer poor weather conditions

That puts the cart before the horse. The cars need to be able to handle weather before “the majority of human drivers get off the road.” In most of the US, not being able to drive in bad weather will make self driving cars a complete non-starter.

[ambicapter]

> In most of the US, not being able to drive in bad weather will make self driving cars a complete non-starter.

This strikes me as complete hyperbole. "Most of the US" population wise is in cities, which have weather management (snow plows, bright lights), and plenty of people will buy a car that "self-drives" 80% of the time-most people's driving miles are boring highway commutes, not off-roading.

[rayiner]

Most of the US population lives in the suburbs, not cities: http://www.newgeography.com/files/cox-uza-3.png. It can take days for local suburban roads to be cleared after a snow storm. Rain is also a significant impediment to self driving.

“Most people” (the criterion specified by OP, above) will not buy a car they cannot drive during a snow storm or rain storm. Peoples’ driving might mostly be boring highway miles, but for example here in the southeast you still need to get to work during the regular summer downpours where you can’t see the lines on the road.

[MAGZine]

I have every confidence that once self-driving cars have done a pretty good job of mastering city/fair-weather driving conditions, that ML will be able to handle poor weather just as good or better than humans. For example, humans are susceptible to panic when they start to lose control of the vehicle and do unproductive things like lock up the brakes. Even experienced drivers do this. Self-driving autos won't.

But yes, in the short term, self-driving is a non-starter for many regions during winter months or inclement weather.

[kolleykibber]

I'm curious. What is so unique about perception through weather that ML cannot handle now?

[rubyskills]

I have to imagine that the duty of clearing roads of snow and such will be an early problem set for autonomous vehicles to tackle at much slower speeds when we're sleeping.

[tptacek]

Chicago does what it can during the winter months, and is doubtless pretty competent at what it does, but the streets are still often treacherous, and the city's ability to mitigate weather effects varies between arterial roads and smaller roads. A self-driving car in Chicago would need to be able to deal with inclement weather in all the ways you'd intuitively expect it to have to do so out in the countryside.

[wil421]

Disagree we have huge thunderstorms and no snow. I’m not sure bright lights will help anyone. If it can only drive in clear conditions and on the the highway that’s not autonomous that’s a car with driver assist features.

[jfoster]

But they won't only drive in clear conditions on highways. That's the easiest case to handle, but it doesn't mean they won't go further. It's obvious to go further.

[rm_-rf_slash]

Splitting hairs a bit: the qualifications and regulations for driving in ports, warehouses, docks, and factory floors are far more stringent than public roadways, and the conditions on roads are far less predictable and controllable.

Wouldn’t want to end up like Klaus: https://youtu.be/-oB6DN5dYWo

[fouc]

> Once the majority of human drivers get off the road

This leads to a dystopian future. When the majority have given away their driving freedoms to machines controlled by corporations, the outcomes are not good.

[KineticLensman]

> All it takes is political will to scale up the same systems that guide robots today and install them onto every highway and main road

Well, that and a massive amount of infrastructure spend.

[steelframe]

>> All it takes is political will to scale up the same systems that guide robots today and install them onto every highway and main road

> Well, that and a massive amount of infrastructure spend.

And before we put anything close to that kind of money toward autonomous cars, I demand the spending go toward urban micromobility infrastructure first.

[mopsi]

Many places in the world already have reflectors installed into all major and many minor roads. Seems like a reliable and very cheap way of detecting lane geometry. https://www.worldhighways.com/_resources/assets/inline/custo...

Snow isn't a problem either, because reflectors can be (and often are) mounted onto plastic poles. https://c7.alamy.com/comp/EC79CD/reflector-signal-white-post...

[steelframe]

> if everyone disconnects autopilot at a certain turn each car will learn to slow down even if they have never encountered that turn before.

That can't be the bar. Full self-driving technology must be able to handle any situation as well as the bottom ~1% of human drivers the first time any vehicle on the road encounters it.

[cryptozeus]

Check tesla auto driver mode in rain. They handle it very well so I am sure waymo will as well. These are classic problems and you can trust those curious engineers to at least think about these issues before they even started coming up with the driverless car program. Vision technology has improved 10 fold in last decade.

[esotericn]

I own an MS and it has no idea what snow is. Once the road markings disappear, you're done.

If there's a car track, then it'll think that the cut-out created by warm cars or a plough form the edges of the road.

But if there's just snow, it has no idea. It'll easily mistake parts of the roads where snow has been crossed by tires as being dashed road markings as well.

The highway by me - well, you can stick autopilot on if you want. You'd better watch closely though, because unexpected snow patterns on the road surface will have you close to a median barrier quite quickly.

Generally if the road is fully snow covered AP is disabled. If the sensors are covered, which they will be if you've left your car outside in -10c or so, then basically everything is disabled.

Works great as a car though!

[icebraining]

MS?

[steelframe]

Multiple Sclerosis. Also, Model S, if you frequent online discussion boards that also like to abbreviate "Model 3" to collide with a very well-known BMW.

[javagram]

Model S (MS) presumably

[icebraining]

Thanks!

[esotericn]

Sorry, yeah, Model S as the other poster stated.

[paulcole]

If I’m getting in a car I’m going to need to trust a lot more than a few curious engineers.

[chrisseaton]

> Lidar is unable to see through the snow. Road surfaces are sometimes wet, sometimes snow covered, sometimes ice. Visibility can drop to zero.

All these problems apply equally to people drivers and their eyes. Why can't automated systems at least match us?

[rm_-rf_slash]

Because people can learn on the fly, and these systems can’t.

Sure, you can aggregate the data from a fleet of cars and use that to train a better model (or set of models for vision, driving, etc.) that updates the old one, but that process takes time and isn’t as immediate as a human reaction. Not saying it can’t ever happen, but rather that it’ll take a lot of time and effort before a self driving car can handle extreme weather, rather than the calm conditions of California (which, to be fair, took an awful lot of work to get functional there, too).

[icebraining]

Waymo has been testing outside of California: they're in Washington since 2016 and in Michigan since 2017 (for Winter testing): https://twitter.com/waymo/status/846438598421336064?lang=en

[throwawayhhakdl]

Humans are good at filtering out bad information because the whole system is understood. I can’t see some of the road, because it’s snowing, and I can quickly stop paying attention to the non useful parts of my vision.

It’s definitely a hard problem, but I don’t think it’s insurmountable

[xeromal]

Honestly, tech companies should spend their time building cars for the city. That's where most of the people are and that's where the congestion reduction will benefit the most number of people. Rural areas should be the last to update

[drngdds]

That seems backwards. Dense cities are where mass transit is a viable alternative to cars. It would make more sense to focus on that in cities and focus on self-driving cars where individual cars are unfortunately a requirement, like the suburbs.

(Ideally we would Upzone All The Things and the vast majority of Americans would live in places dense enough for cars to be unnecessary, but making NIMBYs stop NIMBYing is harder than just making better tech.)

[paulcole]

Car culture is so engrained in the US suburbs that people will insist that they need to keep driving themselves. You see it if you ever bring up bicycling or god-forbid walking.

Cities are the only place where alternative transportation is somewhat normalized in the United States.

[xeromal]

Exactly what I imagined when I wrote the comment

[jacquesm]

No, tech companies should do their best to get rid of cars in the city. Cities should be built for people, not vehicles.

[icebraining]

You can never get rid of wagons in the city; the goal must be to reduce their use, and for that I think you must convince people that they don't need to own one, because if they do, they're more likely to use it, since the fixed costs are large compared to the marginal (per ride). And to convince them of that, you'll have to make them trust they'll have an available, affordable and comfortable alternative for those situations were they really need one.

[baking]

Seems the opposite to me. Congestion and pedestrians present the greatest challenges for driverless cars. Also, they will only increase congestion both by increasing the number of cars on the streets and by being overly cautious.

[dilyevsky]

Cruise does just that (in SF).

[ma2rten]

They had to start somewhere. Waymo is doing testing in Florida right now for the rainy season. They have also done testing in snow.

[smileysteve]

> sometimes ice.

I'm curious what the expectation is here, as what cars do on ice can't be described as driving, with the exception of spiked (not just studded) tires.

[fenwick67]

Sometimes ice is an impassible skating rink, but usually it's either in patches or only partial ice.

[seanmcdirmid]

Can people see very well through the snow? If visibility drops to zero (in human terms), then don’t people just stop driving anyways? Is “use the force” really a thing on the road?

During a heavy snow the accident rate shoots up anyways. If waymo does a taxi service, it would make sense for them to stop service even if the car could drive just as well as a human, it just isn’t worth the risk.

[notatoad]

>Lidar is unable to see through the snow

humans are also unable to see through snow, but mostly still manage to drive their cars in the winter.

[TaylorAlexander]

I believe the plan at the start is that bad weather will cause the vehicle to pull over and require a human driver. But that’s not really a big problem in large areas of California and Arizona where they’re starting off. And all the companies are researching bad weather driving and that feature will roll out later. Self driving cars will basically migrate north as the technology allows.

But they’re already testing in snow and rain and working on that too. I don’t think they’d really deploy to northerly areas until the tech works as well as all the rest. With enough testing experience and engineering time, they ought to be able to solve it.

[maxerickson]

Computers already manage traction on most new cars, a relatively simple feedback loop is better at it than most humans.

[ta999999171]

Snow density with radar is being worked on.

[gdy]

Sounds like almost any place in Russia. Yandex is working on its own self-driving car.

[jfoster]

Yep. Here's a video of Yandex driving after a snowfall.

https://youtu.be/Bx08yRsR9ow

[icebraining]

After snowfall, but also after a cleanup by snowplows. What about when there's a thin layer of white snow everywhere?

[jfoster]

What's your actual point, though? Is it that they won't try to solve the case where there's some snow on the road, or is it that this case is somehow not possible?

[icebraining]

My actual point is that Yandex hasn't yet shown an attempt to solve that case (unless there are other videos), and therefore we can't gauge if they are even ready to attempt it.

[jfoster]

Suppose they haven't started working on it yet. What's to prevent them from starting next year and having a solution ready in a few years?