[pbarnes_1]

I saw a Waymo come to a screeching halt in a split second as a... less than intelligent individual... skateboarded in front of a bus, into the extremely busy road.

If it was a human that person would have been dead, no question.

Sometimes I'm riding in a Waymo (which I do every single day, 4x) and it does something, and I double take. Then a second later I see whatever it was it reacted to, and I'm like "dang, why did I doubt you, robotic overload?"

The best part is that it works the same way in the day time vs the night time.

Magic.

[mike_d]

Waymo is amazing, knowing some of the stuff they do behind the scenes to ensure safety - I would feel safer riding in a Waymo than driving myself.

My biggest fear has always been that Cruise or Tesla would shit the bed so bad we don't get any self-driving, either because of regulatory constraints or ruining the public perception of them.

[ehsankia]

Absolutely. Glad California DMV is taking the more level headed approach here and evaluating them case by case based on merit.

[startupsfail]

In the case of that particular incident, it seems that the pedestrian was “thrown” into the lane with Cruise when it was hit by another (human) driver.

[TuringNYC]

Can any engineers in the field comment on whether the [very cool!] Waymo vs Cruise performance anecdotes being discussed here would have been the result of Google's millimeter-level scanning of SF? Or is it just better algos only? Or both?

[jprete]

I’d think better algorithms. A detailed scan of a city’s streets and layout is obsolete before it’s completed.

A driver (bot or not) needs very good reactions to bad situations observed in the field. And ideally a good sense for when a situation is one step from trouble. As a driver, if I can’t see through a bus then I’m going to assume a crazy pedestrian is waiting to jump in front of me.

(A lot of drivers are quite bad frankly and don’t do most of the stuff you’d want someone to do if they’re directing a one-ton blunt weapon around town at 35mph.)

[giantg2]

"A lot of drivers are quite bad frankly and don’t do most of the stuff you’d want"

I'd say 90% of driving is good/safe driving is mental, with at least half of that bening based on the decision making capability. Yet our tests are mostly focused on physical ability with a small amount of memorizing a subset of the rules.

[solardev]

I wish we put our drivers in driving sims the way pilots have to accrue flight sim hours.

[rrr_oh_man]

Pilots (at least to get the PPL) train at least around 40-60 hours on a live aircraft before flying solo. That's more rigorous, yet very close in principle to what we have in place to obtain a driver's permit, I'd argue.

[AustinDev]

Cruise vehicles have sufficient sensor payloads to produce a 'milimeter-level scanning of SF' with many fewer hours than they've been on the road there. I doubt that provides the biggest difference. It's all down the software at this point. Especially because they're not trying to do anything crazy like vision only.

[kbos87]

We keep hearing this is crazy, but is there evidence to back that up? At this point with hundreds of thousands of Tesla vehicles logging millions of miles a month, I feel like we’d be hearing non-stop reports of destruction on the highways if it really is as crazy as the average HN reader has been led to believe.

[Galaxeblaffer]

the only reason we don't hear non-stop about destruction is that you're required to keep both hands on the wheel/yolk at ALL times while FSD is activated. comparing the current cameras on a Tesla to the human eye is just silly really, sure they cover 360 which is superior, but in almost any other way, the human eye is superior having better dynamic range, better contrast, better resolution and best of all, we have eye lids. if you would just sit down and think about it for 10 mins you'll realize that gimping your self driving car by using cameras only is just a very very silly proposition when we have all this cool tech like lidar essentially giving the car super powers.

[kbos87]

If FSD drivers were having to constantly intervene because the car couldn’t accurately map obstacles, we’d be hearing a lot more about it. I drive with FSD all the time - I could give you a list of things it needs to improve on, but not a single one has anything to do with its accuracy of understanding its surroundings.

[electrondood]

No longer true. Now they use the camera to verify you're looking at the road.

Also, we can drive just fine with two cameras and a neural net, no LIDAR.

In engineering, you don't add something unless it's necessary, not because "well we may as well have it."

[trogdor]

>with hundreds of thousands of Tesla vehicles logging millions of miles a month, I feel like we’d be hearing non-stop reports of destruction

Why do you believe that Tesla vehicles are driving millions of miles a month on autopilot?

I suspect that autopilot accounts for a vanishingly small percentage of Tesla miles-driven. Mostly because it sucks, but also because of how hard it is to not miss a nag on a long road trip, with the result that you are locked out of autopilot until your next stop.

(Yes, even when paying attention to the road, with your hands on the wheel. Hell, autopilot locks you out if you exceed 85 mph for more than a few seconds by pressing the accelerator, such as when passing. This is true even in places where the speed limit is 85 mph, and the slower end of the flow of traffic is 95 mph.)

I love the performance of my Model S Plaid. Autopilot, however, is a joke.

[sgustard]

Wow, I've had much more positive experiences with Autopilot on multi-hour highway trips. No shutoffs, no phantom braking in the last year or two. Autopilot on the highway is so much better than any other car I've driven with adaptive cruise. Anyway, the parent is comparing city and highway self-driving and they are completely different.

[kbos87]

Tesla reported that there were 400,000 cars in the US and Canada who had access to FSD Beta in January 2023, so I don’t think that’s at all hard to believe.

Edit: Looks like back in January they were adding 10M cumulative miles driven per month (roughly) - https://insideevs.com/news/633328/tesla-fsd-beta-now-active-...

[_ea1k]

I probably use AP >80% of the time on the highway. From observing comments in the local Tesla groups, I'm sure there are plenty of people who behave similarly.

Millions of miles per month doesn't surprise me at all.

[nohuck13]

"This is true even in places where the speed limit is 85 mph, and the slower end of the flow of traffic is 95 mph."

Where do you drive where the speed limit is 85 mph?

[F-W-M]

> This is true even in places where the speed limit is 85 mph, and the slower end of the flow of traffic is 95 mph.

Once traffic rules are enforced by autonomous cars that don't let you go over the speed limit, we can start raising the limit to more realistic levels. I guess currently it is priced in that everyone goes over by x km/h.

[amelius]

It's the sensors and Lidar.

[qeternity]

> knowing some of the stuff they do behind the scenes to ensure safety

Any info on this? I would love to learn more about what they're doing.

[xnx]

https://waymo.com/safety/ is probably your best resource. You can follow the links from there to learn about all the things they're doing with simulation, etc.

[coding123]

I know most of it was PR but the stuff Waymo did about showing a test course they built and actually having "unit tests" related to driving showed me they're not dumping these things on the road to make money, they're trying to get it right.

The competition:

Uber kills someone and turns out they disabled "breaking due to objects in the way" because it makes it jerkier.

Tesla is often killing the drivers because they marketed it as "auto-pilot"

Cruise rolled over someone for 20 seconds.

I would have to agree. I honestly hate regulatory capture in most industries, but perhaps Waymo's "unit tests" should be turned over to the DMV and made as the gold standard driving test for AI drivers.

[littlestymaar]

> My biggest fear has always been that Cruise or Tesla would shit the bed so bad we don't get any self-driving, either because of regulatory constraints or ruining the public perception of them

Exactly this. When I saw Tesla releasing their half-backed crap I feared they will damage the public perception so badly that we wouldn't have self-driving cars for years.

[nonethewiser]

> Waymo is amazing, knowing some of the stuff they do behind the scenes to ensure safety

Such as?

[unshavedyak]

I can't wait till those are generally available. I'd go out more if i could have a nice night and not have to deal with coming home later. Hell i live about 1.5h from Seattle and i never go because it's just awful (to me) dealing with cars there. If i could get a cab all the way there and back? Oh man, amazing. Or even park and ride would be nice. Cities seem so much more approachable to me if i don't need to drive them. It's a me-issue, for sure, but still.

[runarberg]

If feel like Seattle needs an all day and weekend Sounder service, more than it needs self driving robo-taxis. 1.5 hours away you might be at the edge or beyond Sounder reach so this may not help you much unless you get a local bus to your closest station, but you can probably still just drive to your closest station and not having to have to deal with driving in the city.

If the Sounder would run like the ferries do (say every hour until like 8PM and then a couple more trips before midnight) it would really take the hassle of going to the city for much more people than robo-taxis ever could.

[Symbiote]

I am staring aghast with European eyes at a city of 4 million people where the commuter rail doesn't run outside peak hours. How do you get home if you go out for a couple of drinks with colleagues, or stay late for a call?

You shouldn't be asking for a couple of trains between 8pm and midnight. They should be every half hour, or more! Midnight until 6am on Saturday and Sunday could be every hour or two.

(I live in Copenhagen, half the population of Seattle. Commuter trains run every 20 minutes from 5-24h, every 10 6-18, all night on Friday and Saturday nights. Other trains also run, and the metro is 24/7.)

[coryrc]

We taxpayers already spend >$30 per person-trip for the Sounder. It currently doesn't connect well to transit on either end (most users drive to it), and half the city is fighting to make sure it doesn't connect directly with the new "light rail" station. Also our light rail is longer end-to-end than the Paris metro and half the stations are on the freeway with massive parking garage and no pedestrian amenities. Riding transit in the Seattle area is insulting and demeaning.

I've ridden the train in Copenhagen. The stops are near things! Stores and parks! Apartments and hotels! Shopping malls! Like, actually right there! There's a few stops like that in Seattle, but they're also the ones with junkies nodding off, con men "looking for some gas money", and other anti-social behavior.

[Zigurd]

We sabotage our transit. The Rail Runner doesn't go all the way to terminals at ABQ. That's insane! Were the Santa Fe airport people against it? What gives?

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

In the wee hours catching a train and bus to get home is kind of annoying in Malmö. Mainly the buses basically stop running more than once an hour between 1-5am.

Most US towns are basically uber/taxis only at that time. I live in Austin where you could theoretically be one of the lucky 1% of the population that both lives near a train station and wants to go somewhere near where that train station is. Even then you can’t use the train past something like 11pm on weekends. Capmetro’s hours are a pretty decent source of consternation for us here

[Symbiote]

Malmö is a fifth of the size of Copenhagen, or a tenth of Seattle. Once an hour at night isn't so bad for a city that size, isn't it? The trains to Copenhagen run all night, so I can get home...

[TaylorAlexander]

I feel this way too, having gone down the online rabbit hole of urbanist content. We don’t need cheaper Ubers, we need trains!

[prmoustache]

Even before talking about traina, you'd need to get rids of the suburbs and the clear separation of housing and commercial stuff.

There is so much thing to undo and people are so overly sensitive of the value of their property it is nearly impossible or would take centuries to fix.

[jeffreygoesto]

One war will do. Ask Europe.

[shiroiuma]

Trains are very expensive to build and maintain, so they only work if your city has enough density to support them with sufficient ridership. America really screwed itself by building cities for cars instead of people, and it's hard to change this at this point, especially when every effort at making cities there more walkable and dense is met with fierce opposition.

[TaylorAlexander]

America has loads of cities and metro areas with way more density than European cities with effective rail systems. You’re right that it’s hard to change due to historical choices, but it may still be worthwhile to transition as soon as possible rather than continue down the wrong path.

[runarberg]

I think the main problem with the Sounder is not a lack of density (Seattle and Tacoma are both plenty dense; also both the rail corridor and the rolling stock already exist; only missing expensive part is the crew) but rather it is on a very congested freight corridor (particularly the north part to Everett) owned partly by the freight company. So it is hard for Sound Transit to negotiate more usage of the corridor for increased frequency.

[concordDance]

Dunno where you are, but trains suck arse here in the UK. Its half the price to fly to Edinburgh than to take a train and my wife recently took a stressful (delays and cancellations and missed connections) two and a half hour train ride that would have taken an hour.

Honestly I think busses are far superior due to not having so many dependencies.

[thevillagechief]

I would have thought this was hyperbole had I not experienced this living in Kent years ago. It's in fact worse. It was twice as expensive to take a train from Canterbury to Stansted than it was to fly from Stansted to Glasgow. Still, having experienced public transport in the UK (the Underground is everything) and everywhere else, the US car culture is the worst. It keeps poor people poor. Your car breaks down, your license gets suspended you cannot go to work. And the acres of parking tarmac filled with cars that are stationary 95% of the time. It's so ugly and such a waste of resources. I happened to live and work along one of the few routes in my city where I could get the bus to work when I first moved to the US. People at work thought I was too poor to afford a car, it was always funny to explain that public transport is the norm in most of the rest of the world.

[dontlaugh]

Trains are much worse in the UK than on the continent, for sure. Especially when it comes to price.

[seanmcdirmid]

Ya, nothing in the states is set up for that outside of maybe NYC. We just grew our urban planning post war based on cars. It is absolute insanity. Seattle is even considered one of the better cities for public transit.

[blincoln]

The Sounder is a heavy rail train on rails that are shared with other trains (e.g. freight). It runs about 7 times per day in one direction and about 10 times per day in the other. There's no reason to run additional trains on that line, because taking it depends almost entirely on finding an empty space in parking garages that are full by about 6AM.

The Seattle area has a newer, dedicated light rail system (Link) that runs every 5-10 minutes from about 5AM to about 1:00AM. The stations are located much more conveniently and frequently, because they were placed based on where a commuter train should stop, not trying to piggyback on existing freight lines. There still isn't as much parking as there should be, but at least the stations are placed so that more than a tiny handful of people can get there without driving and parking.

[runarberg]

I’m not so sure about that. The North line connects to Edmonds which is a major ferry terminal used by a fairly large number of people on the Kitsap peninsula, Port Townsend etc. plus another ferry terminal on Mukilteo for Whitby island. These are major connections which are unusable in the 4 trains a day frequency (Sounder only runs 2 trips and Amtrak Cascade the other 2; latter does not stop at Mukilteo). The link is good and all that but it won’t reach Everett for another 20 years and it won’t connect with the ferries either.

The South direction is a little better (and is improving even further with more Cascade runs on the horizon) but it is the same story. For example, Pyuallup and Sumner are both decent sized towns wit centrally located station, which won’t get light rail and the 1 line won’t reach Tacoma until 2035 at least. There is also a decent transit center at Lakewood, however I would argue it should probably be better to run the 620 all the way to Tacoma, from where Olympia people could jump onto a Sounder or light rail.

[runarberg]

I agree. I actually live a bit closer to Seattle then OP, only 40 min on bus + boat (add 20 outside of commuter hour for a second bus). The Sounder doesn’t actually run anywhere near me, (well I could take the 118 south to the Tahlequah ferry terminal, 10 min boat to Point Defiance, a Pearce transit bus to Tacoma, and ride the Sounder from there; which urbanists call the “long way”). so this doesn’t affect me personally.

But you are absolutely right, Tacoma and Everett are 3rd and 4th largest cities in the state and are in the same metro area as Seattle. The north line is actually worse, only 2 trains a day (plus 2 Amtrak Cascade trains) even though there is major Ferry terminal connection at Edmonds (and a smaller but significant at Mukilteo). The Sounder service is dismal and needs to be improved (thankfully we are getting more service on the Amtrak Cascades which runs the same corridor but goes all the way to Portland and Vancouver BC. but not nearly enough)

That said, the bulk of the population in the Seattle metro area is serviced with the Link light rail. They are almost done with an extension east to Bellevue (turns out building rail on a floating bridge is hard) and eventually it will reach both Tacoma and Everett. Then they will get the frequency they deserve.

As for me, how do I get home. My ferries actually run all night (although with up to 3 hour gaps in the middle of the night) and frequently enough. If there isn’t a bus on the island, I usually just call my partner and she picks me up at the terminal, sometimes I also meet someone I know in the ferry.

The funny bit is that I actually immigrated here from Europe, and my tiny European island in the North Atlantic actually has way worse public transit system as Seattle. So for me this is a huge improvement. I’m actually going home to visit and am planning to see a friend of my play at a concert it a town 40 min from the capital, but there are no buses, so I actually have to call my mom to pick me up when the concerts are done.

[seanmcdirmid]

I live in Ballard, so the sounder goes right by me. We (my kid and I) even watch it go by sometime. Nowhere near to get on, though, so I’ve actually never been on one before. It would be a cool way to link Ballard to downtown Seattle by rail before 2040.

[Symbiote]

Faroes? I visited during Covid, so there was no need to try staying out late.

But the population of the whole country is 1/100 of Seattle. Buses in some place during the day, and taxis at other times, is proportionate to what's available in Copenhagen.

I grew up in a small village in England. Choices for a night out were staying over at a friend's house (much preferable) or splitting the £15 taxi between several teenagers, which was a decent price as far as our parents were concerned. (Or walking for two hours and keeping the money, don't tell mum.)

[runarberg]

> Faroes?

Not quite that tiny. Iceland. The public transit system inside the capital area is decent (probably better then Spokane’s despite being similar of size) but after midnight it is really nothing, and on the weekends the frequency gets kind of bad (not North America level bad though). However ones you go outside of the capital area the system really sucks. Despite receiving over a million tourists which more then justifies an airport train, there is only a bus every couple of hours to the airport and adjacent towns (with a pathetic shelter).

[brewdad]

While we’re at it, could we get at least one late night/overnight Amtrak Cascades train? I’d go to a lot more Mariners or Kraken games if it didn’t mean choosing between the hassle of driving and parking or needing a hotel room after the game. If sports aren’t your thing substitute any activity that goes beyond 6pm.

[fhub]

The current ride pricing feels about 10-20% less than an Uber in SF - but I haven't really checked properly. So don't expect the rideshare product (Waymo One) to be a super cheap option.

[gmassman]

This morning my coworkers rode in together in a Waymo. One told me it was $16 while an Uber would have been $35.

[fhub]

From my personal experience they are priced cheaper for all rides. But rarely that much cheaper - perhaps a surge time?

The variable that differs is time to pickup. I've found Waymo is generally pretty good for me in off-peak times - perhaps on average 2-3 minutes further away on average. But I have got the odd "20 minutes away" and I then just order an Uber.

But I will always pick a Waymo over an Uber if they are the same distance away. I love playing my own music and just being in my own world without another human to consider. It is truly a relaxing commute.

[KKKKkkkk1]

> But I will always pick a Waymo over an Uber if they are the same distance away. I love playing my own music and just being in my own world without another human to consider. It is truly a relaxing commute.

Not to ruin your commute, do you know if there are interior-facing cameras monitoring the passengers?

[n2d4]

Per Google, there are cameras inside the car: https://support.google.com/waymo/answer/9190819?hl=en

[nemothekid]

Are you able to play music on the car speakers from your phone? The process on iPhone seems very awkward (talking to google assistant instead of just selecting a song).

[fhub]

I do it the awkward way too. But I typical play an artist that I loved two decades ago and crank the volume. So "My music" wasn't the best way to describe it. More music that is just for me. I don't find their inbuilt music channels you can play from the center console to be that good. There is lots of UX things that could be done with music that wouldn't be hard.

[willsmith72]

isn't that just because the waymos are still funded by VCs? an uber might've been the same 10 years ago, but now they've achieved world domination it's time to make a profit

[semiquaver]

Waymo is fully owned by a public company. Economically they are indistinguishable from Uber (other than having a huge ad profit center to subsidize them). What VCs are you referring to?

[svachalek]

It's still in the R&D phase though. It's not out there to make a profit like Uber or Lyft.

[belltaco]

I read that Waymo is losing 2 to 3 billion dollars a year.

[tanseydavid]

Uber lost $9.1B in 2022.

https://fourweekmba.com/uber-losses-by-year/

[raylad]

Last time I checked (in SF), Uber was $16.70 for a ride I wanted to take and Waymo was $25.40.

All things being equal (or anywhere near equal), I'll pay the human driver rather than the bot.

[selestify]

Funny, I’d choose the opposite.

[raylad]

Why, you don't like people and prefer paying big companies?

[superfrank]

Don't forget no pressure to tip your Waymo

[morelisp]

There will be. "Donate $1 to Waymo's autonomous safety research fund?"

[b112]

No, it will be the United Way. Or to help give poor children blankets.

And it will be offered, when Waymo's onboard AI detects you're on a date, verbally, so the date can hear.

So even if you give to charites in a meaningful way, you'll end up doing it again or look crass and be embarrassed. And as with many of these "at the till" charity collections, there is a fee given to the collector.

Who will be Google! Plus, not only do they get to track your co-riders, eg who you associate with, and where you go, and even all conversation in the car (anonymized, of course), now they get to track your charitable predilections, by offering choice.

[mattsan]

Ok so say hypothetically they have the balls to record conversations in your car. Wouldn't they already be recording from your pocket?

(I know it's sarcasm and you're spot on about the charities lmao)

[nedrylandJP]

"It's just going to ask you a question"

[perryizgr8]

In the long term, prices will be determined by what the market will bear. It will be irrelevant if Waymo is cheaper to operate because they don't have to pay a driver. And if Waymo is the only game in town, as it seems to be far ahead of everyone else, expect only a minor discount over the regular human driven cab.

[j1elo]

Just curious about prices there. How much would a cab, Uber, or Waymo cost for a trip that takes 1.5h to do?

To me (European) that would cost a fortune... probably doing that distance for a night out would be something to do by local train or bus service.

[unshavedyak]

I took an Uber to/from Seattle Airport, but that was like 7 years ago back when they were in undercutting price mode lol. Iirc it was in the $80 range (per trip).

Well worth it to me because i dislike traffic and parking that much. However i bet i could find a park and ride that's easy and save myself a decent chunk. .. not sure how to find a _safe_ park and ride, though.. heh.

Autonomous rides would be great for me though as they represent stability. Getting a driver was always a mixed bag. Would they be creepy? Talk a lot? Drive poorly? etcetc. Down in Florida i had one break the law several times and in general drive like a maniac. I don't take that many ubers/etc, but the ones i have have really felt like a mixed bag. A dice roll on all the variables, more bad than good.

[bhelkey]

Does Uber not fill this need today?

[unshavedyak]

No, at least not for me. As my other comment[1] mentions, there's enough friction with ubers that it's not an enjoyable experience. I'll use them in a pinch, but i avoid them if possible.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38012649

[gerdesj]

Good grief, two skateboarders lives saved by a Waymo in two consecutive comments.

A couple of weeks ago I came across a biker partially lying in the road, trapped by his bike. I parked my van at an angle, so if it was hit from behind it should roll past him. I jumped out and performed an assessment (I'm a qualified, OK: certificated first aider). I diagnosed "pissed" and ascertained he was unharmed. We got his bike in the back of the van with the help of some concerned pedestrians who initially thought I'd hit him. I drove him home.

I'm not sure a machine would have noticed an odd lump next to a lamppost, with a civic rubbish bin next to it, in the rain. What sort of sensors do these Waymo things have? They will have to be really, really clever and seriously expensive.

I don't deny that eventually a vehicle with enough decent sensors and some fancy processing will outperform me but I've managed 30+ years on the road with just a few scratches, a broken wing mirror and a rear ending from an articulated lorry.

I've managed to return a hire car around Napoli (Italy) after a couple of weeks without any issues! That may not sound too impressive but have a look at the state of vehicles around St Antonio Abate etc - it looks like the locals play bumper cars. May I also note that I'm a Brit and we drive on the left. Italians don't. So I can adapt to local conditions. I have also driven across large parts of the rest of Europe and the north Americas. I can adapt to local driving styles from the "use your entire car as the indicator" as seen in the Amalfi coastal area (int al) to "no after you" as you tend to see in large parts of the UK and Eire. I can deal with all the different regulations. A classic European one you don't see elsewhere is the white diamond sign with a yellow centre that indicates that you have right of way until it is cancelled with black stripes. Then there is the French "priority to the right" thing (which has also pervaded the UK somewhat wrt roundabouts).

I can negotiate this with ease: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5628345,-1.7713341,110m/da... and this on a wing and a prayer: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@48.8654026,2.3222455,464m/dat...

I'd love to see a Weymo navigate those.

[tim333]

Though Waymo et al aren't really competing with unusually good drivers, more with average drivers and they are probably safer there, on the roads they have been trained for.

(one study - 100% reduction in the frequency of bodily injury claims and a 76% decrease in property damage -https://www.ktvu.com/news/waymo-says-its-driverless-cars-saf...)

[prmoustache]

The thing is most drivers should not be allowed to drive given their low training, driving standard, general lack of empathy and/or medications or substance abuse issues but society incorrectly assume driving is a right while it should be considered a privilege you earn and that can be revoked anytime based on regular tests + eventual tickets.

I estimate at around 20% the amount of drivers that really should be allowed to drive given their current driving standards. Possibly more could be allowed after additionnal training and showing better driving standards knowing their license is at risk.

[daEmpathyMon]

Ironically, it is very unempathetic to claim 80% of drivers lack empathy.

Your super-claim that you are indeed empathic because you're concerned about everybody else does not justify the lower-level empathy violation.

You have been P.C.'d

[prmoustache]

> Ironically, it is very unempathetic to claim 80% of drivers lack empathy.

Well I may not have phrased it correctly but I am not claiming that. Lack of empathy is one of the various causes of a majority of drivers being unfit for driving.

[lynx23]

Ahem... "lack of empathy", how do you plan to quantify/measure that.

Also, I was under the impression that in most countries on this planet, the priviledge of being allowed to drive a car is handed out with the drivers licence, which in most countries, you actually have to have training and a test for. I also thought it was normal practice that these licenses also get revoked, based on tickets...

The only gripe I have with the system is that elderly are not automatically subjected to a regular test of their mental faculties and remaining sight. I am getting sick of 90 year old grandmas killing 3 year olds "by accident".

[prmoustache]

> Ahem... "lack of empathy", how do you plan to quantify/measure that.

That is a tricky one.

> Also, I was under the impression that in most countries on this planet, the priviledge of being allowed to drive a car is handed out with the drivers licence, which in most countries, you actually have to have training and a test for.

Training which varies a lot depending on the country. I did a lot of hours + 3000kms under supervision of my father + dedicated classes with emergency from 90kph to 0 braking on varying surfaces, including having 2 wheels on gravel and 2 wheels on pavement to be able to handle situations where the car would naturally go sideways. My Mexican partner in comparison took a handful of classes using an automatic car and only passed the test using a simulator and there you go she had her license.

> I also thought it was normal practice that these licenses also get revoked, based on tickets...

It needs an absurd amount of them for it to happen and we should still require periodic tests and knowledge refresh of the rules of the road.

> I am getting sick of 90 year old grandmas killing 3 year olds "by accident".

I am pretty sure they represent a marginal fraction of the accidents/killing compared to distracted drivers.

[mschuster91]

> I am pretty sure they represent a marginal fraction of the accidents/killing compared to distracted drivers.

In Germany, if seniors end up in traffic incidents, they are in a vast majority of cases ruled responsible for causing them [1]. They may not be the group that causes the most accidents, partially because they drive less than someone in their 40s commuting for hours every day, but the difference of at-fault cases is nonetheless significant.

https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/verkehrsunfaelle-senioren-1...

[lynx23]

Distracted or elderly, we seem to agree that regular re-evaluation of drivers would be necessary.

And yes, I know that the standards of different countries are vastly different when it comes to obtaining a drivers license. I could have bought a drivers license while in south america. I am writing this because I am blind. Entertained the thought just for fun and to be able to show how broken the system is.

[gerdesj]

"I estimate at around 20% the amount of drivers that really should be allowed to drive"

I don't know where you are but in the UK the driving test is pretty tricky. I failed it twice before passing and that was before it had the theory test added on. That was 30 years ago.

We all have our own perceptions of other drivers but you do need to try to think in their shoes. Today, whilst driving home I noticed a police car lights to the left and decided to indicate and move from lane one to two to give them room. The land rover behind me decided to undertake me and blunder through in lane one. Now the LR made a perfectly legitimate move - stay on track. They then undertook me (naughty). They did their thing and came across as wankers.

[bumby]

I think this ignores the way society is governed. It's easy for an engineer-mindset to think the bar to be cleared is "better than the average driver". But these systems must operate in a society that is often employing something other than an engineering mindset.

I doubt the public and their political representatives (absent regulatory capture) would turn over control to a mere average robot. Do you think, for example, most people would be okay in a drone airliner that is equivalent to the average pilot? I suspect most people would balk at the idea. A large part of the public policy piece is about trust; humans have evolved to understand and predict the behavior of other humans which leads to mental models about who can be trusted and who can't. We don't have those same evolved intuitions about robuts and, when combined, with our natural risk aversion biases, it's going to take a lot more than "average performance" to get society as a whole to fully trust robotic safety critical operations.

[supertrope]

>(absent regulatory capture)

Yes trial attorneys will keep the bar very high for safety. As they should. But the bar in not infinitely high. Tech companies are salivating to disrupt the transportation market. They want a piece of your car payment, your insurance payment, your taxi spend. Insurance converts the minute risk of large accident costs into fixed premium payment. Lobbying helps convert financial capital into political capital and then into regulatory change. Our political process tends to follow the desires of the top 0.1% more than the bottom 40% combined.

Our current regime of car infrastructure was once unthinkable. Entire neighborhood were bulldozed to make way for highways. Yet today the government paying for highways, roads, and mandating each building be surrounded with amble parking is the status quo.

[bumby]

I’m not sure the original intent of the national highway system can be chalked up to the interests of the 0.1%. It’s generally attributed to national security, which is a very public interest.

[supertrope]

While Eisenhower was inspired by the German autobahn, military use of roads was a sales talking point. The real reason for highways was to allow favored Americans to live in detached houses while still accessing city jobs. We could have it both ways!

Rail is a much more efficient way to move troops and equipment. Modern warfare requires lightning fast movement which means cargo planes. Eisenhower himself used a “New Look” policy of relying heavily on nuclear weapons so that the army could be scaled back.

[tim333]

I probably should have said better than the average taxi driver as those generally don't include teenagers, 90 year olds and so on. Re the politics say human drivers in an area cause 10 deaths a year vs robot causing 6. Do you think voters are going to say we should have more deaths because humans doing it is better? That said I think people generally expect automated systems to be safe and probably self driving cars will be when they de glitch them. And then self driving cars will compete against other self driving cars more than against humans.

[__loam]

They have multiple radars, lidars, and cameras. They're far more capable of detecting obstacles than people are.

[wolverine876]

They have different capabilities, but it doesn't follow that such technology is better than the built-in tech in homo sapiens.

[xnx]

One under appreciated benefit they have is the "eyes" on a Waymo car are mounted at the corners and high above the roof, giving it a much better vantage point that just sitting in the driver seat.

[__loam]

It is demonstrably better. They see more and react faster. They can see around obstacles that humans can't and they never get tired or distracted.

[ClumsyPilot]

See more in the rain y dark? Sure.

But can they look at a driver's face and realise that they are distracted with their phone and haven't seen you?

[bumby]

This is an important point. Humans have evolved a way to intuit the thoughts and behaviors of other drivers. It’s why people who are mentally ill are unsettling; it’s very hard to pick up on their intentions and course of action. That’s why in think the hurdle isn’t “better than the average human driver.” Because humans won’t trust a machine in the same way as another human, the level of safety for AVs may have to be much, much greater before the public as a whole trusts them with safety critical decisions.

[__loam]

Yes they can. They are absolutely capable of looking at gestures. That matters a lot more when you're trying to determine the intent of a pedestrian than a driver. If it's another driver, the system can also do real time physics calculations to avoid a vehicle straying into the av's trajectory. And they might even do some kind of computer vision with other drivers to determine intent. Also if another driver just hits the car because they were distracted, why would the AV be at fault?

These are really sophisticated systems and they've really thought of a lot of issues. All of these companies have hundreds, if not thousands of engineers who have been working on this problem for over a decade, as well as an army of lawyers trying to get things into compliance. I don't think "well it can't do x as well as a human" is going to hold up in 10 or 20 years when these systems are clearly much safer. Human driven cars will eventually be uninsurable.

[wolverine876]

That comparison is a very common sales technique and fallacy: Take two products, list the things product B does better than A, and therefore B is better!

[__loam]

I'm not sure I get what you're saying. I'm saying the waymo is probably better than me at detecting and avoiding obstacles. That is the point of this thread.

[fhub]

I do want to clarify that my comment: the skateboarder would not have died. Waymo provided a larger margin of error for the board rider than a human could possibly have.

[gerdesj]

No need for this comment - you deployed an anecdote from personal experience. That's fine.

However you finish with an assertion with no evidence. Care to elaborate? What on earth does this actually mean:

"Waymo provided a larger margin of error for the board rider than a human could possibly have."

[tialaramex]

Humans cannot react very fast, this incident comes down to fast reactions and the good all around vision in the Waymo. On these measures a human isn't competitive.

[mistercheph]

And this is just something you've decided is true or...? One sensor with determinate output based on an input from a finite set, sure I won't argue with you, but in any domain with indeterminate outputs coming from inputs that are of an infinite set, there is no meaningful notion of reaction time, there are imperfect decisions made with incomplete information at a moment during the dangerous spiral of number of possible responses shrinking and information completeness growing, (should I react now or wait until I have more information about how effective each of the dwindling number of path s available to me are shrinking) too name just one complexity.

I believe that we will get there and sooner than skeptics believe, but we are so far away from machines having driving skill equal to that of the average human driver, who happens to be driving while distracted 99% of the time.

[mlyle]

Here an objective difference is described: a Waymo vehicle reacted to new visual information in a direction that a human driver would not be likely to be looking.

[kaycebasques]

> I parked my van at an angle, so if it was hit from behind it should roll past him.

Good tip!

[barrkel]

The yellow diamond with a black stripe puts you into "French priority to the right" mode and it's not restricted to France, it's pretty common across the continent.

I like how it's indicated with road paint here in Switzerland, e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/Switzerland/comments/wp6clo/who_has...

[oceanplexian]

> I'm not sure a machine would have noticed an odd lump next to a lamppost, with a civic rubbish bin next to it, in the rain.

As opposed to what? You don’t have RADAR, or LIDAR, or echolocation, or any other way to “detect” a person in the road. You have human vision.

This is the idea behind Tesla FSD. If human vision is good enough, computer vision is good enough. We have cameras that can approximate human vision. All the other companies using sensors are doing so as a crutch, because they didn’t have the chops to solve the vision problem.

[n2d4]

The correct question to ask isn't "is computer vision enough", it's "if humans had LIDAR sensors, would they use them to cause fewer road accidents".

[gerdesj]

I really don't need LIDAR. I have roughly 3 billion years of evolution and the end result - eyes, brain etc.

LIDAR is simply a sensor and a very inferior one, in general, when compared to my visual system. For starters it needs something to interpret it. My eyes have a 52 year old brain stuffed with experience behind them and it isn't always a hindrance!

I can reason about other people's driving style and react accordingly. I can also describe my actions and reasoning on internet forums.

I really do not want an inferior sensor such as LIDAR inflicted on me, nor would I want it to be the sole source of information for something that conveys me.

[gerdesj]

Quite - I don't have those sensors but I do have madly myopic (sort of corrected) stereoscopic vision and a brain, with 30 odd years experience in it. Oh and I have ears. I generally drive with the window down in town. I can look left and listen right.

My office has an entrance onto the A37 in Yeovil (1) Bear in mind we drive on the left in the UK. Picture yourself in a car next to that for sale sign and trying to turn right. That white car will be doing 20-40 mph or much more. In the distance is a roundabout (Fiveways) which is large enough to enable a fast exit and people love to accelerate out of a roundabout. As you can also see this is a hill so the other side is quite fast because cars have to brake to keep down to the speed limit of 30 mph. That's just one scenario.

Anyway, back to your idea that Tesla FSD (Full Self Driving) ie RADAR, LIDAR etc is equivalent to "me" is debatable. I do have my limitations but I can reason about them and I can reason about what FSD might mean as well.

You assert: "If human vision is good enough, computer vision is good enough." People and computers/cars/whatevs do not perceive things in the same way. I doubt very much that you have two cameras with a very narrow but high res central field of view with a rather shag peripheral view which is tuned for movement. Your analogue "vision" sensors should be mounted on something that can move around (within the confines of a seatbelt). Yes I do have to duck under the rear view mirror and peer around the A pillar etc.

I have no doubt that you have something like a camera with a slack handful of Google Corals, trying to make sense of what is happening but it is really, really complicated. I actually think that your best bet is not to try to replicate my or your sensors and actions but to think outside the box.

Have you ever considered a drone?

Cheers Jon

(1) - https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@50.9471642,-2.6382854,3a,75y,...

[thorncorona]

tesla vision doesn’t have an agi behind it though lol.

and why gimp ourselves. if we had an extra sense to navigate with we would 100% be using it.

[diffeomorphism]

A rock instead of a hammer is also probably "good enough". Still a bad idea.

[HumblyTossed]

Surely, some of those "double take(s)" are because you're not driving and thus, not on alert like you would/should/better be if you were driving.

[ramblerman]

I wonder if this will become new pedestrian behavior? Once people learn that waymo will stop for them no matter what they can just cross in front of it.

[CalRobert]

Human drivers are supposed to stop too.

[mlcrypto]

Or maybe they know they can do anything in front of the car because it will always yield. It will be interesting to see the game theory develop when most of the roads are full of driverless cars so you can gain an edge on the road risk free

[kbos87]

I don’t know about “do anything in front of the car”… it’s still a several thousand pound mass that isn’t exempt from the laws of physics… but I for one would be MUCH more willing to be a cyclist on the road if most of the cars were autonomous vehicles behaving within the letter of the law.

[alfla]

s/overload/overlord

[Zetobal]

You are on a technology forum you should know better than call it magic, it's talent and sweat.

[bumby]

Yes, but.

Attributing every great outcome to "talent and sweat" is dangerous in safety critical domains. Often it's (at least partly) luck, and missing that distinction (combined with a lot of human biases) can make a team confuse "being lucky" with "being good". The problem with luck is it tends to eventually run out.