It's great to see actual data reported since so many AV companies hide it behind as many walls and fluffy press releases as possible. I think this speaks to the maturity of Waymo's system at this point. Two key paragraphs for me personally:
"The most common type of crash involving Waymo’s vehicles was rear-end collisions. Waymo said it was involved in 14 actual and two simulated fender-benders, and in all but one, the other vehicle was the one doing the rear-ending."
-> This is consistent with previous reports from Waymo. If one of their vehicles gets in an accident, it's extremely likely that the other (human) driver was at fault. Of course, this is somewhat compounded by the fact that Waymo vehicles actually try to follow road laws like attempting to stop for yellow lights and making full stops at stopsigns, which human drivers often don't do (and may not expect other vehicles to do).
"The one incident where Waymo rear-ended another vehicle was in simulation: the company determined that the AV would have rear-ended another car that swerved in front of it and then braked hard despite a lack of obstruction ahead — which the company says was “consistent with antagonistic motive.” (There have been dozens of reports of Waymo’s autonomous vehicles being harassed by other drivers, including attempts to run them off the road.)"
-> This doesn't surprise me really, but is still pretty sad. Many drivers are just assholes and AVs are going to be an easy target for such people.
Interestingly I once had a near-accident with a Waymo car because I had a stop sign and thought it was a 4-way stop (which would mean I got to go first since I stopped first), but it was only a 2-way stop, and the Waymo had right of way.
That's right, in California, 4-way stops aren't [edit: consistently] labelled 4-way, so when you come up to an intersection with a stop sign you need to peek around at the transverse road (sometimes in the dark) to see whether or not they also have a stop sign to know whether it's 2-way or 4-way. All while looking out for cars on both sides.
The Waymo car stopped just in time and there was no accident. Not sure if this was because of the safety driver or because its algorithm had seen and extrapolated my car's motion and actively avoided the collision.
(Or if they are advanced enough, maybe they have mapped out all the stop signs in California and have labelled all the intersections that are 2-way stops in which a driver could accidentally think it's 4-way, and anticipate the possibility of an accident in advance at these dangerous intersections. I doubt that though.)
This is one of the worst UI decisions around driving in the US, in my opinion. Even if the "all-way" addendum was displayed below every stop sign without fail, the semantics of those two stop signs are so different as to warrant a different color and shape; if you mistake a "stop[just you]" for a "stop[all way]" then it's a really dangerous situation. It's easy to fail to spot the difference with a quick glance.
I'd be interested to see statistics on how many people die at these intersections, I suspect this is one of the needlessly dangerous aspects of driving in cities.
The list of horrendous UI decisions goes on and on. A big one for me is left turn lanes. Often there are 2 left turn lanes (let's call them A and B) and they turn into 3 lanes on the other road (let's call them X, Y, Z) and it's not obvious whether A->X, B->Y, or A->Y, B->Z. I've seen many cases of both instances. They really should paint down colored lanes or something to make it unambiguous.
Easy to say, but that's not true in all places. Here's one where the left 2 lanes are left turn lanes, and the leftmost left turn lane turns into the 2nd from left lane.
Big potential for accident for the right left turn lane to accidentally also turn into the same (2nd from left) lane and crash.
And NO, they don't know a priori that the leftmost lane of the street they are turning into is a left turn lane.
I've seen that as well and that only ever happens when the left most lane is also an exiting lane. It's not intuitive by any means but it's also consistent so if you know the rules and can see the road ahead, you'll be safe.
Many intersections in my area use curved dashed lines to indicate turn lanes... https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/intersection/other_topics/fhwasa... One of the stated reasons are intersections with multiple turn lanes, to help drivers know how to make the turn and stay in their lane.
They're usually faded out or nonexistent in most of the roads I frequent. I wish they just painted one lane bright red and another lane bright blue. The whole lane. If it fades 90% it's still in-your-face clear and hard to mistake.
Or if you're worried about colorblind people, use patterns. Fill one lane with random dots and another lane with random stars.
Perhaps I am alone, but after moving to an area with the 'Stop All Way' signs, I initially misinterpreted them as exhorting drivers to stop 'all the way', as in to come to a complete stop.
Too often a "Do not enter" sign is in an awkward place where there are two different roadways side by side, and at a glance it's not obvious which one is verboten. Frustrating UI.
There’s a few ‘Stop: Full stop’ signs in my neighborhood in NYC where cars have to cross over a sidewalk because they realize people’s idea of ‘stop’ is normally ‘drive across sidewalk with blind spots on either end at 10 mph with face in phone’
Stop signs in general are hugely abused as a method of speed limit enforcement.
The (European) alternative of a simple set of rules seems more attractive: at an intersection of two different roads, the larger road has the right of way. When two same-priority roads cross, the driver on the right has the right of way. Ambiguous intersections are governed by yield signs. Only in situations where there is actual danger (bad visibility, dangerous shape of the road etc), then stop signs are used.
When they're scarce, people heed them. When they're everywhere, people instinctively determine that they're kind of meaningless, and respect them only to avoid fines from the police.
Easiest way, and I do this every single time, is treat the Stop sign as a Stop and yield to everyone else sign unless it is explicitly marked as "All-way."
Conversely, sitting in the middle of the road with no incursions possible simply because a lightbulb is the wrong color is pretty bad UX. People are going to have to make decisions on when to proceed, and even motorcycle crash statistics indicate that drivers turning left at controlled intersections are much less likely to cause a collision.
Part 2 is specific to signage. Turn to Part 2B.05:
At intersections where all approaches are controlled by STOP signs (see Section 2B.07), an ALL WAY supplemental plaque (R1-3P) shall be mounted below each STOP sign. The ALL WAY plaque (see Figure 2B-1) shall have a white legend and border on a red background. The ALL WAY plaque shall only be used if all intersection approaches are controlled by STOP signs.
In other words, the intersections you're running into are not in compliance with the Caltrans MUTCD.
Yup, and I run into dozens of non-compliant intersections every day. See my other comment below in which I listed several examples on street view that I dug up within a few minutes.
I understand, but your comment was: "That's right, in California, 4-way stops aren't labelled 4-way" which is true in practice but not any more useful than saying "4 way stops aren't labelled 4-way anywhere" because some intersections may not be up to code.
They are SUPPOSED to be labelled. You can probably get them fixed by reporting it to the local government.
As an Australian I find 4-way stop signs to be a form of madness. They don’t exist here. Put an island in the middle and call it a roundabout, or just choose an arbitrary street to have right of way. Either change makes the rules entirely objective.
I’ve driven in the US and Canada, and I never understood the 4-way stop sign. Why do they exist? Non rhetorical question.
They're good in residential areas with smaller streets - one lane in each direction, and cars on the sides of the road.
With a 4-way stop sign everything works well, and traffic stays slow since you're not going more than one block without stopping: no room to accelerate to fast speeds. Roundabouts take a lot of space. 2-way stops are dangerous because traffic can be going a bit fast for the small roads, and visibility is low. There's a two way stop near my house and it's always hard to see if another car is coming, until they're almost inside the intersection. Most of the intersections in the area are 4-way and they just work.
These are hillarious when they do implement them in the US. People stop anyway to yield. If anything it makes it a little more dicey to bike through because people also don’t signal when they are exiting.
> Put an island in the middle and call it a roundabout, or just choose an arbitrary street to have right of way. Either change makes the rules entirely objective.
1. What is not objective about "everyone stops"?
2. Picking an arbitrary street to have right of way doesn't sound objective to me!
If you're talking about what happens when multiple people approach, there are rules for that, just like rules are necessary when multiple people are using a roundabout at the same time.
1. It’s not the stopping that’s a problem, it’s the starting. You have to track up to three other vehicles to ensure they have the same perception and are following the same rules as you are. Either of my alternatives significantly reduces this problem.
2. The choice of priority road, once made, makes it not arbitrary. The point is to reduce the complexity of the intersection, by giving one road priority. For the purposes of my argument, it doesn’t matter which one.
3. Relying on the assumption that everyone knows how to act in a situation that requires evaluation of up to three other people’s perception and intention is dangerous and unnecessary.
We’re not talking about nightmare roundabouts like the “wheel of death” in my city, which are clearly not fit for purpose. We’re talking about roundabouts as an alternative to 4 way stop signs.
In a small residential roundabout there is a single lane going in a circle. Either you can safely enter the lane, or you can not. The roundabout serialises the traffic flow so that a driver entering the roundabout need only deal with the next vehicle in the lane. You don’t have to worry about the (potentially unsignalled) intent of any other drivers, make eye contact with them, time their arrival, etc.
To be honest though, I think you know all of this, and you’re simply engaging with me in bad faith.
> You don’t have to worry about the (potentially unsignalled) intent of any other drivers, make eye contact with them
It's very possible to have situations at a roundabout that aren't binary. It can be legitimately unclear if the person in the next entrance is going to enter the roundabout before you, especially because the exact moment a car counts as "in" the roundabout is a fuzzy measure that people could disagree on. If they're going slower than you, then whether you or they are supposed to yield can be unclear. So you have to handle their intent, not just follow a checklist.
This is a rare situation, but so is having to worry about the intent of other drivers at a 4 way stop.
> time their arrival
You definitely have to time the arrival at roundabouts. Cars can't stop instantly, so any situation that involves yielding means you have to time things.
> The roundabout serialises the traffic flow so that a driver entering the roundabout need only deal with the next vehicle in the lane.
You need to pay attention to other cars coming up too, the ones that will be in front you at the roundabout in addition to the cars that are in front of you while approaching the roundabout. This could easily be more than three.
And if a 4 way stop is experiencing a lot of traffic, it goes into a mode where cars alternate in pairs, so you only have to look at the turn signal of the car across you. This specific case is actually easier than a busy small roundabout!
> To be honest though, I think you know all of this, and you’re simply engaging with me in bad faith.
I'm not engaging in bad faith at all. You're overestimating the problems with 4 way stops, while arguing as if [small] roundabouts are perfect. Neither one is perfect, and neither one is dangerous.
It's not arbitrary. A large street will always get right of way. If there is a grid of smaller streets running through a suburb of similar size, it alternates so every second street is a stop sign.
4 way stops sound like bad design to me, it seems like it would leave room for an aggressive driver to take off when they're not first in to an intersection, bullying their way through.
Roundabouts and standard intersections in Australia do not suffer from this, as in both cases there is a clear right of way. If an accident happens, it's generally obvious who is at fault without the need for dash cam footage.
Take that up with the comment I replied to, because they specifically said to choose an arbitrary one.
> If there is a grid of smaller streets running through a suburb of similar size, it alternates so every second street is a stop sign.
So on the positive side that's fewer stops, on the negative side you still have a lot of stops and you have watch out for crossing full-speed traffic every other block.
I'm not saying that method is wrong, but it doesn't sound like a significant improvement.
> 4 way stops sound like bad design to me, it seems like it would leave room for an aggressive driver to take off when they're not first in to an intersection, bullying their way through.
Someone can bully through any small intersection.
> Roundabouts and standard intersections in Australia do not suffer from this, as in both cases there is a clear right of way. If an accident happens, it's generally obvious who is at fault without the need for dash cam footage.
Why would it be obvious less often in a 4 way stop? And since everybody stopped it should be extremely hard to have an accident without both parties being at fault.
And roundabouts do not have perfect clarity either. If I'm about to enter a roundabout, and someone on the crossing street is about to enter in front of me at a slower speed, it can be ambiguous who actually gets into the roundabout first and who has to yield.
That's a rare scenario, but so is confusion at a 4 way stop. If someone enters first, they get to leave first. If two people enter at the same time, the one on the right goes first.
As an immigrant myself, my first assumption had been that the oil industry had lobbied for it, since it's a perfect recipe for frequent, often unnecessary stops and fuel consumption.
My neighborhood (In the Seattle area) has intersections with small, 4 way roundabouts that are combined with 2 way stops (there’s a main street no stop with 2 side streets with stop signs)
Ha! I was about to comment the same. Sacramento has the exact same thing, I regularly heard car accidents on this corner when I lived there. https://goo.gl/maps/YR29vXMf4HnNawT68
Making a left turn? I lived there for 5 years and I still don’t know who has the right away
Combining a traffic circle with stop signs is a recipe for confusion.
One thing that Seattle has going for it here is it's very narrow streets, probably 1/2 the size of that intersection in Sacramento: https://goo.gl/maps/A1epH93AE8R28rZH7
That said, we also have 4-way intersections with no stop signs and no roundabouts. This is complete madness.
> which would mean I got to go first since I stopped first
Careful with that. No one has the right-of-way at four-way stops in some (most? all?) states. Whoever enters the intersection first gets the right-of-way. Same reason you have the right-of-way to finish a left turn after your light turns red, if you were already in the intersection waiting for cross-traffic to clear/stop.
Be careful with reliance on what many would consider to be a fairly obscure right-of-way rule. More commonly if it's not clear someone just waves someone else through. It's like depending on people knowing obscure operator precedence :-)
Following my rule, you would always either yield or verify that they have yielded. Seeing a wave can be a good verification.
The annoying thing from people not knowing the rule is the “Mississippi standoff” with two cars at a 4 way stop sign waving at each other and not moving. :)
This must be handled by the city or county level as where I live in California there's usually (always?) a little "4 way" sign under the stop sign when it's 4 way.
Either way, this should be made consistent across the state and all of them definitely should have it added if they don't.
I wonder if I could get them to pay me a meaningful amount to identify all the intersections that need such a label. Like say, a bounty of $X for each non-compliant intersection or whatever. I think I could automate it with some simple perception neural nets. Or does the government just not give a damn about this kind of stuff ...
To whoever downvoted me: I wasn't suggesting that I would not report the ones I already know without pay, but rather that if I was funded, I would be able to carve out time to write code to find non-compliant intersections on a mass scale.
Here in Australia sign upgrades or road modifications or both tend to occur either pre-emptively for no apparent reason in an effort to make traffic flow worse, or only after multiple people have died and the local community has been complaining for a decade.
Not usual, IME they’re rare. I called SF 311 and requested such a sign at an intersection where people often seemed to be confused (10th and Moraga in the Sunset, IIRC). To SF’s credit, they reviewed the accident history at the location, and a traffic engineer called me back to explain that 1) they did not see a history of accidents there and 2) they don’t like to use too many of those signs, because they don’t want people to assume that the intersection is an ‘all way stop’ if the sign is not present.
In New Jersey, on the other hand, sometimes, the subjectively most "major" road has the right of way both going in and out of the roundabout. People already in the roundabout have to actually stop for the major road people to enter the roundabout. If you're on the major road you can theoretically pass through the roundabout and not worry about the fact that it's a roundabout. A couple examples of this is seen here, where you're IN the circle but have to yield to incoming traffic:
One of my colleagues jokes that we'll know we have truly self-driving cars when they can handle driving through Powder House Square, one of the Boston area's strangest "roundabouts".
Try as we might to keep chaos at bay with our laws, stop signs, and blinking orange lights, it peeks through the seams when you watch the traffic patterns there.
This pattern sort-of exists in France too. The smaller streets have appropriate signage.
In fact France has several dozen different signs that as a US driver I had to learn and relearn. My wife who grew up there keeps pointing out my mistakes every time we visit.
I like roundabouts too, but which choice is most appropriate depends on circumstance. The US is big and spacious, which makes spending extra on roundabouts not too appealing in many places. And in some circumstances four-way stops flow more traffic.
> And in some circumstances four-way stops flow more traffic.
There's no way that's true, is it? What circumstances would a four way stop sign allow for more traffic flow than a roundabout?
I'm pretty sure it's purely cost-cutting. Four way stop signs are extremely cheap compared to roundabouts. There's no other advantage that I can think of.
Roundabouts are safer (there is no opportunity for t-boning at a roundabout), faster and simpler to navigate than four way stop signs (a roundabout you just give way to people already on the roundabout, a four way stop sign requires you to keep track of who arrived first and then do a weird dance if you both arrived at the same time, and you still need to watch out for people attempting to go out of turn -- which is not possible with a roundabout)
> There's no way that's true, is it? What circumstances would a four way stop sign allow for more traffic flow than a roundabout?
Heavy traffic. In most situations a roundabout will do better, but when completely saturated, the 4-way has a slight advantage. This is probably due to how 4-way stops with dense traffic develop an predictable alternation pattern that eliminates ambiguity and reduces the clearance requirements.
What I've seen here is that traffic will sometimes back up into the roundabout from a blockage down the road, and then things grind to a complete halt, which a 4-way stop should never suffer from.
There's a 6-way roundabout I know of that frequently has one of the 3 intersecting roads dominate the traffic, so people just go full speed from that road. In that case, the other roads can be completely starved, so a 6-way stop would have been better for those roads in those times.
As for t-boning, you can definitely have someone enter a roundabout early/late and hit another car on the side, or dart in front of a car that's in the roundabout (especially possible if the roundabout is not perfectly circular) and themselves get hit on the side.
And people manage to go "out of turn" in roundabouts all the time, by not yielding, or by tailgating.
I'm in the bay area and adecnotally it has been very inconsistent for me. Here are a few I dug up in just a few minutes of 4-way stops without 4-way labels. This has led me to mostly disregard the absence of a 4-way label as a source of information.
I'm "that guy" in my area that reports and tracks and eventually shames-via-local-newspapers anything I find like this (and trash dumping etc.) Maybe you could be that guy too? This seems sort of dangerous.
I could, though I really don't have time to drive around on street view and keep doing this. I found these violations within a few minutes, I'm sure I could spend hours and map out several hundred such intersections.
Rather, I would be more interested in mapping out all the violations on a mass scale using neural nets, though I'd want my time funded to do something like that, considering it takes away time I could use to do other things.
I hear you. Our time is limited. But I would argue that most good occurs due to many small interventions. And seeing these interventions and the improvements can encourage others to intervene. Maybe reporting these kinds of issues is too hard and that's the problem? Maybe a blog post describing how you just wasted 25 minutes filling out a web form and how a safety issue like this does not look good for the local governance? (This is all really obvious, but I'm clearly just trying to reframe what "that guy" could mean to you and anyone scrolling by :-) )
> This is consistent with previous reports from Waymo. If one of their vehicles gets in an accident, it's extremely likely that the other (human) driver was at fault.
It looks like in 2018 Arizona had 1.4 crashes per million miles https://azdot.gov/sites/default/files/news/2018-Crash-Facts.... and Waymo released data that they had 2.9 crashes per million miles, over twice as many. 7.7 if they hadn't had human intervention, almost at another order of magnitude than the average driver. That's rough.
I'm really not interested if the other driver is almost always at fault, that's not the number to get down. Their mid-term goal seems to be to drive on public roads with mostly human drivers, so they need to get better results. If they're getting bad results over lots of data, it's not just bad luck: the way they're driving is causing more crashes, even if they're not at fault. Additionally, fault classification is worrisome, since there is the potential for bias.
Various factors might make this remark wrong
- "Crashes per mile" isn't the right metric: injury, fatality, or similar should replace or augment it.
- I compared data from Arizona to data from Waymo's zone, which might be more crashy.
- Crashes in the doc I linked underestimate total crashes, since many go unreported.
- I am not comparing apples-to-apples -- new commercial minivans might be far more crash-prone than the average vehicle.
This report [1] seems to imply that around 35% of minor crashes aren't reported which is significant, but not enough by itself to move the needle too much.
Another factor is highway vs surface miles. Highway miles would seem significantly safer on a per-mile basis (but I can't find any numbers to back that up), and with Waymo excluding highways for now they'd be all surface miles. I can't find data that breaks down crash rate by street type, but I suspect surface traffic has a much higher crash rate than highway miles.
Have you driven in Arizona? There are thousands of miles of road where you can be almost completely alone. Waymo is not driving on those roads. I think you'd need data on human-caused crashes within the test area to have a reasonable comparison.
I have - I've driven across it on the highways and in the Phoenix metro area. One thing that I noticed was that when I was in Phoenix, there were lots of people...most of the people in Arizona, actually. My hope in matching up those statistics was that they did most of the driving too, so it wasn't too apples-to-oranges, but of course I did bring up this factor that made my comparison suck. I would have loved to find the right statistic to compare to--did you have any luck finding it?
To put Waymo's 7.7/million accident rate in perspective, it would mean an average driver, who drives 13,500 miles in a year, has one accident in 10 years.
In other words, I don't think this is a concern at all. It's similar to humans already and will only get better.
I think economics and scaling are the main challenges and unknowns for Waymo. I hope they will soon finish phase 1 (perfect self-driving in a small area) and start pahse 2 (expand as fast as possible).
It sounds like it's not similar to humans in Arizona according to the Arizona DOT, although I find it surprising if the average Arizonan only gets in one accident about every 50 years.
I wonder if a huge amount of the driving are things like OTR trucking and have a low accident rate compared to the average civilian commuter.
I would argue that the type of crash matters quite a bit too. Low speed delta rear end fender benders are one of the most benign forms of traffic accident.
I can’t imagine driving recklessly at a camera-covered car. Seems like Waymo could/should just forward videos of clearly trying to cause an accident to the local police
In my city you can have video evidence of someone driving up to your house, license plate visible, stealing you property, and driving away and they will take a report, pass it along to the prosecutor, and he or she will proceed to do absolutely nothing.
In Seattle my car was stolen on camera and was later found with a million identifying pieces of information in it, including the thief's security guard uniform complete with name badge, along with receipts at local pot shops with their name and phone number and... nothing happened.
It's hard for me to imagine they're going to running around trying to ticket people for abrupt lane changes.
Similar thing happened to me in San Jose. They acted annoyed that I was even wasting their time by filling out a report so I could make an insurance claim.
Why is it hard for you to believe something isn't working as expected?
I live in Seattle, but even before that I've not lived in a large city in the US before where you can get the police department to go after petty theft.
In Seattle, WA if it's a >$5,000 class B felony theft, then yea, sure. Living in the suburbs? Yes, sure.
Couple years back someone stole a bunch of prescription drugs out of my neighbor's car (pharmacist - they were for his job), police wouldn't touch it. Now they're even less likely, because the city isn't prosecuting as much.
And by not as much, I mean even lower than where we were at last year. Seattle went from a >80% prosecution rate in 2007 to a ~50% prosecution rate for non-traffic in 2017.
Ya, this is another reason the SPD has lost so much goodwill. Bellevue, in contrast, will investigate property crimes aggressively and if someone even tries to sleep on a bench in the park you’ll see 3 patrol SUVs there in 15 minutes.
I've had similar experiences in Los Angeles. The problem is not that they are negligent but rather that there is so much for them to do that they don't have time to get around to crimes such as this.
Inevitably, one of the autonomous vehicle companies, eventually, will.
Therefore letting the aggressive, reckless drivers build up a sense of immunity and excitement seems like a Sun Tsu move to me.
When the camera-covered car has its first day in court, it may be that all the cases are filed at once (by that company, and Waymo may not be the first to pull the trigger on the lawsuits).
Statute of limitations in California is a bit tricky, but just as a baseline, assume this Sun Tsu-esque company collects evidence for 5 years. Judges may actually look favorably on the company waiting to make sure their cases can be decided en masse. Of course, the media will be all over it.
That doesn’t really make sense. The cases wouldn’t be able to be decided on in mass. The court would still need to review each incident individually so dumping them into the court system all at once is an asshole move.
It's not clear-cut, no, and I am not a lawyer, but mandatory authority (vs. persuasive authority) in California basically means that the plaintiff's lawyers could actually file all the cases at the same time. And then get a judge to view that as a favorable move, not asshole at all.
(To be honest, I think any hostile move such as a lawsuit is an asshole move, so I think I'm agreeing with you?)
They wouldn't need to claim the cases were grouped together, just that the inevitable appeal would be more likely to be found binding if the cases were all still being adjudicated.
Or something like that. No court case is a slam-dunk.
If they did this I think it would a massive PR issue. People would probably start destroying Waymo cars if this happened. I sure wouldn't be happy if self-driving cars became mass surveillance tools.
> If they did this I think it would a massive PR issue.
Strongly disagree. There amount of contempt people have for asshole drivers is massive. Videos of people driving like assholes and getting caught is a mainstay of subreddits like http://old.reddit.com/r/IdiotsInCars and /r/InstantKarma
>which human drivers often don't do (and may not expect other vehicles to do).
This presents an interesting problem. It's obviously easier to program something to follow the law, given it's unambiguous. But the question is what are we optimizing for? The fewest crashes? That's probably the right thing to do given crashes are bad. In that case, isn't it better to do what people would expect other cars to do? But are Waymo constrained by the fact that if a self-driving car is programmed to get a ticket they could be held liable? Probably.
I think the moral side of self-driving cars is just as hard or a harder problem than the technical side, and we haven't made the decisions as a society that we need to. If the government doesn't step up soon to lay out how this is going to work, the corporations will. And guess what: they'll choose whatever costs them the least amount of money. Not what's best for society.
> isn't it better to do what people would expect other cars to do?
You--a human driver--have no idea what the other cars will do either. Some people run yellows, some people don't. The only reasonable thing to assume the other car to do is follow the law, but be prepared for the unexpected.
Unless Waymo cars are doing something unnatural like braking significantly harder or faster than a human would, the Waymo car is not at fault for being rear-ended.
Once we pass ethical muster (meaning don't ship knowingly buggy code, don't sell cars you expect to crash a lot, etc), I have a hard time seeing what the moral issues are here.
I haven't gone through this article, but I've read several incident reports from testing in Mountain View and seen several test vehicles driving around in that area.
Waymo cars are often unnaturally cautious, which is usually a factor when they get rear-ended. Ex: vehicle behind expected waymo car to turn left when there was an opening large enough for it, but it didn't.
These are probably worse because there's a safety driver who is probably actively engaged. If you can see the (apparent) driver looks actively engaged, you'll expect them to see the gap, and go for it. If the car had no one in the driver seat (or they were looking at screens/passengers), you might be more cautious.
Added: of course, that doesn't mean it's waymo's responsibility; this type of collision occurs with human drivers too, and it's the driver to the rear's fault, but either driver could have avoided the error: the front driver by going when it was safe to do so, as expected; and the rear driver by waiting to confirm the front driver actually went. Sometimes it's tricky because the front driver releases the brakes and then reapplies them; the rear driver saw the brake lights turn off and moves forward while watching oncoming traffic, but doesn't see the brakes were reapplied.
Added later: I read the verge article. It sounds like Waymo is working on not getting rear-ended, so they acknowledge there are things they can do (and that, in many cases, the safety driver was able to do).
I'm very cautious when making left turns - way more than the average driver. If I'm not I'm liable to screw up in either direction and no one wants that.
No one has managed to rear end me, but I obviously don't have 6.5 million miles driven. And even if they did, I would trade a high speed t-bone for a low speed fender bender any day of the week.
I've been told by researchers that unprotected lefts are one of the hardest problems for self-driving. They're so situationally dependent and can rely on social signaling.
If traffics is light, it's pretty easy of course. But get into congested areas and you pretty much have to be at least somewhat aggressive and even take things like Pittsburgh lefts. And if you're not at least somewhat aggressive, cars behind you can start honking horns and taking dangerous actions because, from their perspective, you're blocking the road. (No criticism intended; you have to do what feels comfortable for you.But it's probably one of the routine driving tasks that takes the most judgement.)
I remember once I had a protected left but saw the car coming (hundreds of feet out) and didn't like the look on his face (which was barely visible), like he was too into his music. I didn't take the left and the guy flew through the red light and slammed his brakes halfway through. I think back to that situation when I think of AV.
I had no idea that wasn’t considered normal! I sometimes even wait a second if I see someone on the opposite side of the intersection with a left turn signal on for just this reason
It is pretty normal at least in the congested areas I know. (That left is called by a lot of different city names.) But it's not strictly legal because you don't have the right of way to make a turn. But it's one of the zillion things that people do (including jaywalking when it's hopefully safe) that people do in order to get places and, so long as they're not obnoxious or dangerous about it, no one gets either hurt or ticketed.
> You--a human driver--have no idea what the other cars will do either. Some people run yellows, some people don't.
But one of them may be more likely, and therefore result in more collisions if you assume it isn't.
In addition to that, many yellow lights are timed too short. That makes it possible to be far enough from the light that you won't make it through the intersection before it turns red, but still close enough that stopping before the intersection would require braking rapidly enough to yield a significant probability of being rear-ended. The problem there is the light timing, but the car can't fix that and still has to make a choice.
Isn't that exactly the problem? People doing what they normally do kills 20k people in the USA every year. Google won't get away with that kind of blood-sacrifice. I look forward to the opposite: a generation of young drivers who copy the robots as examples and driver error plummets. Screw idiots who anticipate empty spaces that aren't actually there. Rear-ending someone is always your fault unless someone entered your lane.
Sorry this is a little off topic but I think there's some things we can do now to prepare yourselves for eventual self driving cars.
Our phones should SUGGEST slight changes to our driving to improve efficiency. For example there's a jam ahead. Google/Apple know our phone's speed and the speed of those around us already.
A lot of backups are due to a lack of information transfer. The wave of stopping/slowing is the propagation of that information. If our phones informed us beforehand to slow slightly we could smooth the way out much faster.
I know it's a privacy nightmare right now but it's doable and everyone that's driving would potentially benefit.
Waymo customers have confirmed that the car currently does behave very similar to a human in situations like yellow lights. It will keep going quickly if it makes more sense to do that than stop abruptly. A lot of times that is actually the only safe way to handle it.
That doesn't mean that it can't still get rear-ended by being more cautious than some impatient and unsafe human drivers, for example when it decided there is plenty of time to stop safely.
Are there a lot of situations where it is a strict choice between following the law and doing what other drivers expect?
I don't think there are that many really. Speeding is one, but most of the time following the speed limit doesn't dramatically increase the risk of accidents. Then you have stuff like turn signals. Using them isn't going to hurt anything, whether drivers expect them or not.
>But the question is what are we optimizing for? The fewest crashes? That's probably the right thing to do given crashes are bad
Another thing to take into account is that not all crashes are equally bad. I wouldn't be surprised if getting rear ended 10 times was safer than a single t-bone or head on collision
I wonder how they'll deal with badly behaved pedestrians, especially in denser cities. As self driving cars take over, you could imagine pedestrians knowing that the cars won't hit them (and nobody will get out and yell), and walking into traffic. On some cases that's probably fine - why have lights anymore in a sparse suburb? In a place like NYC though I could see traffic just stopping.
This, just because you're the one rear-ended doesn't mean you bear no fault, although you have some presumptions in your favor. Indeed, the quotation itself plainly argues for front-vehicle "antagonistic motive" in the one case disfavoring Waymo.
Another interpretation is that the digerati are wrong, crashes don't really matter that much. Nobody gives a fuck who is at fault as long as someone pays. End of story.
Waymo could be 100x as crashy. So what.
Vehicles were much more dangerous in the past, and yet people still drove them.
Fatal accidents happen all the time. People still drive.
There's a lot of media and PR handwringing over safety. It doesn't matter.
People fall asleep in their moving Teslas. (1) Traffic is horrible, commuting is horrible, nobody wants to be doing that crap.
I broadly agree that a lot of drivers would accept the risk, but there is reasonable concern for everyone outside the vehicle, which translates to a reasonable concern about regulation. And unless progress here has stalled, waiting a few more years for a safer version that doesn't have this tradeoff.
> -> This doesn't surprise me really, but is still pretty sad. Many drivers are just assholes and AVs are going to be an easy target for such people.
I would cheerfully bet good money that the Venn diagram of "people fucking with Waymo cars" and "people who run cyclists off the road" is close to a circle.
I mean given how much unusual braking Waymo cars do, causing human drivers to rear-end them, I wouldn't have any sympathy for them if an antagonistic driver succeeds in brake-checking a Waymo car and causing a collision.
It is the responsibility of the driver to not hit cars in front of them. Doesn't matter if it's a normal stop light, or a deer crosses the road, or the car decided to break randomly just for fun. In every case, aside from cutting someone off, the driver should maintain the proper distance and speed to prevent a rear end collision.
Does someone know what a "simulated collision" is? How is it relevant? Or are those still collisions in the real world?
EDIT: it is in the article, I read it too fast:
> The company says it also counts events in which its trained safety drivers assume control of the vehicle to avoid a collision. Waymo’s engineers then simulate what would have happened had the driver not disengaged the vehicle’s self-driving system to generate a counterfactual, or “what if,” scenario. The company uses these events to examine how the vehicle would have reacted and then uses that data to improve its self-driving software. Ultimately, these counterfactual simulations can be “significantly more realistic” than simulated events that are generated “synthetically,” Waymo says.
I still don't understand "in simulation", though, because of this line:
> But the company highlighted eight incidents that it considered “most severe or potentially severe.” Three of these crashes occurred in real life and five only in simulation. Airbags were deployed in all eight incidents.
There were 8 real accidents on the road. In all 8 of those real accidents the airbags were deployed. Safety drivers were in some of those cars and took control of the vehicle at some point. When the safety drivers in the car took control; they performed evasive maneuvers that reduced the potential outcome from "most severe or potentially severe" to something less severe.
When the engineers reviewed all of these 8 crashes they played them back watching what the humans did, then they put all of the constraints into their simulation and let the AI take over. When they say "Three of these crashes occurred in real life and five only in simulation" that means that 3 severe crashes happened in real life and the AI would have cause 5 more "severe" crashes had the humans not taken control.
'In order to provide more information about event severity within the S1 designation, S1 severity events have been separated into two columns in Table 1 based on whether each event is of sufficient severity to result in actual or simulated airbag deployment for any involved vehicle. Of the eight airbag-deployment-level S1 events, five are simulated events with expected airbag deployment, two were actual events involving deployment of only another vehicle’s frontal airbags, and one actual event involved deployment of another vehicle’s frontal airbags and the Waymo vehicle’s side airbags. There were no actual or predicted S2 or S3 events'
What doesn't make sense? Surely it shouldn't be too hard to even say "air bags deploy when there's x amount of force, so they would have deployed in the simulation" let alone have an actual physics simulation going on.
In all of the incidents, air bags deployed. 5 of the 8 incidents were in simulation. The simulations likely have extremely realistic models for safety critical features such as airbag deployment (which relies on specific sensors in the vehicle).
Almost, it should how much improvement the AI needs to avoid collisions a human driver did avoid. The AI might avoid collisions that the human didn't.
In other words, you need 0 simulated collisions to be strictly better than a human driver (in the same setting). Not ~equal with sometimes better and sometimes worse.
>Waymo says its vehicles were involved in 47 “contact events” with other road users, including other vehicles, pedestrians, and cyclists. Eighteen of these events occurred in real life, while 29 were in simulation. “Nearly all” of these collisions were the fault of a human driver or pedestrian, Waymo says, and none resulted in any “severe or life-threatening injuries.”
While Waymo's statements may have been technically true, the pedestrian blaming at least strikes me as a bit tone deaf. Of course, pedestrians can do really stupid things. But, generally speaking, drivers have a lot of responsibility to still avoid hitting them under most circumstances.
ADDED: The language that caught my eye is the Verge's and Waymo is just the facts. But pedestrians and cyclists are in general concerning because it doesn't take much. Even though a a pedestrian walking into the side of a suddenly(?) stopped vehicle is probably not generally a bad outcome.
"There were also no collisions (actual or simulated) in which the Waymo Driver struck a pedestrian or cyclist. There were three events (one actual, two simulated) in which the Waymo vehicle was struck by a pedestrian or cyclist. In each instance, the Waymo Driver decelerated and stopped, and a pedestrian or cyclist made contact with the right side of the stationary Waymo vehicle while the pedestrian or cyclist was traveling at low speeds."
"in each of the 3 actual and simulated events in which a pedestrian or cyclist struck the Waymo vehicle at low speed, the Waymo vehicle had decelerated and stopped immediately prior to the contact or simulated contact in a way that may have differed from the cyclist’s or pedestrian’s expectations. This illustrates a key challenge faced by AVs operating in a predominantly human traffic system and underscores the importance of driving in a way that is interpretable and predictable by other road users."
(Disclosure: I work for Google, a sibling company of Waymo, speaking only for myself)
They just don’t drive like humans. I almost walked into the side of a Cruise vehicle a few years back because the car did a double stop at a stop sign when I expected it to keep moving forward after the first stop. There was no other traffic and I wasn’t distracted - but it just stopped in the middle of the crosswalk after starting to go forward.
Pedestrians assume certain things that are not necessarily true for self-driving vehicles, just as if I started acting erratically as a pedestrian it would really mess with cars.
All in all, though, I’d much rather take that failure case (At least when walking) over the human failure case of hitting me while turning.
It's not the Cruise system's fault that you almost ran into them. They should absolutely be able to stop again to access the situation before continuing, regardless of the traffic situation. And who knows, maybe there was another pedestrian or animal running around on the other side of the road that you didn't see.
It's like rear ending a car at a stop sign because they did a double stop and blaming the front car. That's just not how it works.
This absolutely can be a liability. I've been 'hit' by a car that made a left turn into their driveway across the bike lane. If there is a small animal or another pedestrian that isn't the biker's fault - the car is still liable at that point. Blocking orthogonal lanes of traffic is not a driver's 'right'.
That's a much more vague situation. Did they actually hit you? Did they cut you off and force you to hit them? Those are much different situations than them having plenty of time to make a turn and having to stop for whatever reason, and you assumed that they wouldn't stop so you didn't slow down. And to be clear, I don't care what the law says in this conversation; I care about what I think is the correct outcome.
A double stop at a stop sign is a very simple situation.
I'll address your questions second, but I want to put forward the most lucid scenario that I feel addresses the double stop situation.
We have an intersection where one direction is controlled (There's a stop sign) and the other is not. If a bike or pedestrian is moving in the uncontrolled direction, should we allow a car in the controlled direction to be able to block uncontrolled traffic - car, bike, pedestrian without by default being liable.
My answer would be no - the car coming from the controlled direction cannot impede the uncontrolled lanes of traffic when proceeding. If something suddenly appeared, like an animal, then we should allow drivers some leeway to resolve that trolley problem. However, I would add that there should be an expectation that things are proportionate - allowing a cat to survive should not force a biker or pedestrian to hit the car.
I think we can generalize this further by introducing right-of-way and other concepts that make fully controlled intersections more difficult, but I feel the results will be roughly similar.
To your initial questions, the body of the car moved into the bike lane when I had insufficient time or space to deviate my path to avoid the car. I hit the hood of the car and flew over it.
I am in agreement that if I'm following someone through an intersection and rear-end them based on them double stopping, I think it is less so when we are dealing with orthogonal lanes of traffic.
If I am driving in the uncontrolled direction and see a car crossing in the controlled direction, then I slow down enough in case the crossing car slows down or stops unexpectedly. If the crossing car doesn't give enough space (i.e. cuts people off), then they're at fault. Otherwise the uncontrolled direction is at fault.
To simplify it: Everyone should give everyone enough space/time to stop before hitting something. Everyone should use that space/time when something unexpected happens. Anyone who breaks either of those should be at fault.
Again, just my opinion about how it should be. I have no idea what the law says.
These AI cars are like that driver that's been in a million accidents but insists they're a good driver because they weren't "at fault" in any of them they're a good driver.
If you violate the expectations of other road users you're gonna get in a hell of a lot of accidents. Sure you might not be to blame in any particular one of them but when you're the common factor eventually it's hard to pretend like you're blameless.
Eye contact is a big thing when driving at low speeds - if you don't make eye contact with a driver you can assume they either don't see you or are not going to give you right of way (e.g., if you're jaywalking). I can imagine moments of confusion at intersections where pedestrians are unsure what the AV car is "thinking".
Similarly with other situations where you might leave a gap in traffic for someone to make that left turn across your congested road (would an AV even do this?), it helps to see that other driver wave you across (even if technically you don't have right of way).
I'd love to see some kind of indication that a car is in autonomous mode. That would let others adjust their expectations.
Especially cops, it could be legal to be asleep/drunk if the car is autonomous!
That being said, it would be great if autonomous cars kept up with traffic. I've seen autonomous cars going 50mph on hwy 101 when other traffic is going 70mph, or 5mph over normal highway speeds. Not a great situation.
Pedestrians "assuming" certain things (aka acting irresponsibly) is the worst.
I often see people cross the street halfway to only stop at the last second when a car is about to pass them. For people driving at 50km/h this is terrifying because they have to trust that the pedestrian is fully aware of his dangerous position. If you maintain your speed there is a good almost 100% chance that you will pass the pedestrian before he even reaches your lane but if you slow down then there is a non zero risk that the pedestrian didn't see you and you are about to run him over. So nope, defensive driving is not the answer and can actually increase accident risk in this specific scenario. It was all up to the pedestrians to follow safety basic rules and they broke them to cross the street a few seconds faster.
The car is also assuming how the pedestrian will walk, I'm pretty sure we're just describing an adversarial game here. If the pedestrian guesses wrong they might be hit by the car, if the car guesses wrong the pedestrian might be hit. This means you can have easy rules that look clear cut, but in practice the risk for both parties makes me a pretty defensive pedestrian and driver.
You drivers are the ones who stole massive amounts of prime land from the commons for your cars, and now you want us to adjust our behavior to make driving easier for you too?
As a cyclist, this says nothing to me about the safety of these cars. I was biking and I "struck" a car that was heading opposite my direction and making a left hand turn across my path in the bike line and crossing my right of way. I struck the car on the side near the front passenger wheel at "slow speed" and was thrown over the hood of the car and then onto the ground. This incident was the cars fault for making a turn without consideration of my right of way even though I, the cyclist, was the one who struck the car.
An SDC that freezes in front of cyclists is still dangerous to cyclists.
If we are truly talking about "contact events", I have seen on multiple occasions, pedestrians walking into the side of stopped vehicles. This is definitely an area where data speaks louder than words, so good on them for releasing it.
Edit: skimming through the paper, it does appear that at least one of the events was exactly this scenario.
it's truly remarkable. granted this is an exceptional case given the general mental state of people at burning man, but I have seen a cyclist ride straight into the back of a fully parked, Very Brightly Lit art car before.
> the pedestrian blaming at least strikes me as a bit tone deaf. Of course, pedestrians can do really stupid things. But, generally speaking, drivers have a lot of responsibility to still avoid hitting them under most circumstances
Can you explain exactly what you think a driver is supposed to do to stop a pedestrian literally just walking into your stationary car?
If you’re responsible for avoiding that, you tell me what you would have done?
If you’ve ever almost walked into one the failure case is really clear. They use stopping as a default mitigation strategy when something unpredictable happens - this isn’t always a good solution especially when suddenly blocking transit (Crosswalks, bike paths, railways, traffic) instead of just crossing it. This is a failure case humans can get cited for - I hit a car in the bike lane once when they did a left turn in front of me and it was legally the driver’s fault for blocking that path.
It is just another characteristic they need to figure out in a complex problem.
I can construct situations where this can happen. In fact, perhaps an easy analogy will help. Let's say you're at a T-junction at a stop sign. Traffic perpendicular to you is freely flowing. You drive out into traffic and stop. Someone in the uncontrolled perpendicular direction hits you. Who is at fault?
They literally just ran into your stationary car. Clearly you can't be at fault. Or can you?
The “last clear chance” doctrine is a legal rule that says:
1. in personal injury cases, in which both the plaintiff and defendant were responsible for causing an injury/accident,
2. the plaintiff can still recover damages from the defendant, if the defendant had a chance to avoid injuring the plaintiff in the final moments before the accident."
By making the car act more like people expect it to
From the paper (which doesn't really pedestrian-blame as GP suggests)
> In each instance, the Waymo vehicle had decelerated and stopped immediately prior to the contact or simulated contact in a way that may have differed from the cyclist’s or pedestrian’s expectations
Okay? But that wasn't the question you asked. Part of the answer to your question is that cars should neither hit pedestrians nor do erratic things that set up a collision.
I agree with you, and yet at the same time I’m not sure how to word it for the general public so as not to be “tone deaf.” You would almost need to accompany such statements with video, or somehow humanize the actions of the car.
A human driver can feel remorse and/or psychological trauma when someone commits suicide by traffic even if there WAS something they could have done, but didn’t react quickly or appropriately enough. Because of that, we can sympathize with the driver even if, in retrospect, there was some better action they could have taken. Generally we wouldn’t talk to the driver about it, because we understand it was traumatic for the driver. A computer does not get the same benefit of the doubt.
Yup. A pedestrian can technically be "at fault" for using the side of an intersection parallel to the painted crosswalk. Getting run over by a 5000-lb minivan doesn't seem like fair punishment.
If the driver was not breaking any laws when they hit the pedestrian I bet nothing will come of it however. In NYC it seems like this is usually the case.
I strongly disagree. We can argue where exactly the line should be, but most people should agree that pedestrian's shouldn't be able to just suddenly jump out in front of a fast-moving stream of heavy traffic and expect everyone to stop across all lanes for them.
As a society we have agreed that the laws in most places are "Pedestrians should cross the road at these designated spots, where they have right of way, sometimes only when given a specific signal". Sure, in some places it's become acceptable to cross the road outside of these "allowed" circumstances if you feel like there's no risk, but at that point you should also assume all liability.
FWIW I am for the pedestrianization of city centers and adding protected bike lanes everywhere possible, but I do think when there is a road, we all have to follow the agreed upon rules.
> As a society we have agreed that the laws in most places are "Pedestrians should cross the road at these designated spots, where they have right of way, sometimes only when given a specific signal".
For example this isn't the law in the UK. Yet our road death rate is a fraction of yours.
> we all have to follow the agreed upon rules
Yes we should... but the rules shouldn't be as they are in the US and Canada, with hostile rules like 'jaywalking'.
Actually the law in the UK is that Pedestrian's usually don't have the right of way outside of designated crossing areas [0]. Drivers are considered to have a "Heavy Duty of Care" since they are of course driving large dangerous vehicles and pedestrians are more vulnerable, but they still have the right of way on your average road.
Road death rate is a very broad statistic. As an EU citizen living in the US, there are certainly more differences than road-crossing rules and etiquette. For one, population density is almost an order of magnitude more sparse in the US (36 people / km^2) vs the uk (275 people /km^2). This, among other things means there's a dramatic shift in driving norms. There are also major cultural differences, eg talking on the phone while driving in Ireland is taboo (and illegal), but in Boston it's totally normal (and perfectly legal). Drink driving here is far more acceptable too. The list goes on and on.
> pedestrian's shouldn't be able to just suddenly jump out in front of a fast-moving stream of heavy traffic and expect everyone to stop across all lanes for them.
I don’t agree. If you are driving too fast to stop for pedestrians, you are driving too fast, period.
I’ll make an exception for protected major freeways, especially in rural areas. (Abominations like the I-5 going straight through the middle of Seattle should be illegal).
> I don’t agree. If you are driving too fast to stop for pedestrians, you are driving too fast, period.
no offense, but this is kind of ridiculous. on a street with parallel parked cars, an uncareful pedestrian can instantly transition from being totally obstructed from view to only a couple feet in front of a moving vehicle. I literally can't drive slow enough to avoid hitting them without slipping the clutch all the way through the city.
This is literally not a problem. I drive practically everywhere and love it. The way people act is pretty normal: they peek out between the cars, then sort of obviously act like they want to step out. And you're driving, what, max 30 mph in such a place? Easy to stop. Any time I'm a pedestrian people usually stop. Any time I'm a driver I usually stop.
I think it's good to point out once in a while that there is no right to drive a car, but there is a right to walk in public spaces. The responses in these threads always devolve to "But I have to drive my car, and if I can't do it safely, then people are just going to have to die."
If you really can't drive slowly enough, then avoid streets like that, ride a bike, walk, bus, cab, etc. In these kinds of crowded, pedestrian-filled areas, I'll drive 10 mph. I don't care. That's the speed I feel is right and safe for me and my neighbors. Speed limits really are limits. I _can_ drive slow enough.
> I think it's good to point out once in a while that there is no right to drive a car, but there is a right to walk in public spaces. The responses in these threads always devolve to "But I have to drive my car, and if I can't do it safely, then people are just going to have to die."
from a formal legal perspective, sure, but this kind of ignores the "facts on the ground" in the US. it's unfortunate, but most people in this country really do need access to a car to complete basic life tasks. outside of uncharacteristically dense places like NYC, it's a privileged minority that is able to get by without owning a car or having a reliable friend / family member that owns one. I live in one of the few truly walkable areas of my city, but I can only afford this because I have a good software job 25 miles out in the suburbs.
> If you really can't drive slowly enough, then avoid streets like that, ride a bike, walk, bus, cab, etc. In these kinds of crowded, pedestrian-filled areas, I'll drive 10 mph. I don't care. That's the speed I feel is right and safe for me and my neighbors. Speed limits really are limits. I _can_ drive slow enough.
even 10 mph isn't slow enough to avoid hitting a pedestrian in every possible situation. it takes around 0.7-3 seconds for a driver to notice a hazard in the road and start applying the brakes. if you are an exceptionally alert driver and hit the 0.7 s figure, you have already traveled 10 feet towards the pedestrian before you've even started to slow down. if the pavement is dry and your brakes and tires are in good condition, you will come to a complete stop in another five feet. if, as in my example, someone darts out from between two parked cars, you will hit them if you do not have at least 15 feet in which to stop (although you probably won't injure them severely at this speed). again, this is assuming absolutely ideal conditions for you and your vehicle.
keep in mind, people routinely bump into each other while they're both walking. no amount of caution is sufficient to prevent a mishap when one party is totally oblivious. this is what I'm responding to here. I totally agree that the driver of a 1.5+ ton vehicle has a greater responsibility than someone moving under the power of their own two feet. what I don't agree with is that a pedestrian can step into oncoming traffic at any time and expect the whole world to stop for them or for it to automatically be someone else's fault if they get hit. as individuals, we can't reorganize america's entire transportation infrastructure overnight to eliminate the need for cars. we absolutely can accept a few minor inconveniences to make transit much safer for drivers and pedestrians both.
also, random aside: why do so many people suggest a bus or a cab as an alternative to driving in these threads? a bus or cab driver does not typically drive any more carefully than I do. all that accomplishes is to shift the liability onto someone else. the liability is not really a problem for me in the first place. I already drive more carefully than is needed to avoid legal fault in these situations.
> also, random aside: why do so many people suggest a bus or a cab as an alternative to driving in these threads? a bus or cab driver does not typically drive any more carefully than I do. all that accomplishes is to shift the liability onto someone else.
No, it reduces the risk because it's one bus, vs fifty selfish people in their own cars. Less potential crashes.
This would relegate your maximum speed to <5mph or so. That's less practical than just encouraging pedestrians not to be in the habit of darting out from between parked cars right into a lane of traffic.
No, 10 is fine, so long as you're paying attention.
> less practical than just encouraging pedestrians
By pedestrians, you actually mean "people". And it's all people. Little kids, people with mental disabilities, etc. What kind of "encouragement" is really going to keep everyone off the 50% of city land that we've turned into roads? Oh, except for the times you're allowed to be in the street. I've yet to meet an adult who even knows what an unmarked crosswalk is, but we're supposed to make sure every toddler knows this stuff or they die?
Having actually had someone dart out in front of me from between two parked cars when I was going about that speed, I don't really agree. Sure, I didn't hit them, but it was close and very dependent on reaction times for all involved.
> 50% of city land
It's more typically 30-35%
> Little kids, people with mental disabilities
Both hopefully supervised. It ain't just cars that will put defenseless people in peril.
I get that you have a very strong ideological opposition to cars, but let's be practical. They aren't going away. Arguably the utility offered by personal transportation in the last century has driven a huge amount of growth. So short of going backwards, we continue to find ways to live with them. Elimination is a pipe dream of a few super privileged people.
illegal lane change? no, its just a car getting across a road.
Like all things in life, we define patterns of use so we can more easily predict others' behavior. Sometimes these pattern definitions come from rules, others come from experience (rolling stops). Either way, pedestrian road crossing is defined in cross walks, typically found at intersections. If someone breaks the pattern, expect others around you to react unpredictably, which may include death.
This comment sounds very entitled, as if a pedestrian is entitled to the road whenever they damn well please.
> This comment sounds very entitled, as if a pedestrian is entitled to the road whenever they damn well please.
It's not 'as if' that's what I'm arguing - that's literally what I'm arguing. I literally think a pedestrian is entitled to the road whenever they damn well please. (Within reason, to genuinely cross it reasonably quickly, don't step out without giving cars at a reasonable speed enough time to stop, excluding purpose-built major roads.)
Look at it from the other angle.
Why should cars be entitled to the road whenever they damn well please?
Why should the pedestrian stop for the car, instead of the car stopping for the pedestrian?
Why is your default mental model that the car owns the road?
> Why should cars be entitled to the road whenever they damn well please?
I don't think this accurately describes any place I've lived. a driver isn't entitled to do whatever they want on a road. they have to stop for stop signs, signals, etc. that mediate intersecting rights-of-way. they are obligated to yield to pedestrians in a crosswalk, and even if the pedestrian is completely in the wrong, they are obligated to avoid hitting them if possible. what exactly do you want to change here?
I’ll offer 2 points of view.
1) I ride atvs in the sand dunes. There’s an unwritten rule that “tonnage rules” I.e. stay out of the way of bigger things. Regardless of right/wrong, you’re still dead if a dirt bike collides with a sand car.
2) cars are required to stop at cross walks, driveways, and other similar pedestrian interfaces. Cars are entitled to roads because roads are for cars. Otherwise we’d have sidewalks everywhere.
This is a common misconception. Usage fees (gas taxes, tolls, etc) only cover ~50% of road costs, and that doesn't account for any of the negative externalities imposed on society in terms of air, ground, water and noise pollution.
Is the land for the roads funded by gas taxes too? I doubt it.
Effectively you’re condoning stealing a bunch of land from the commons, because the thieves paid for the improvements on it? (Which only benefit themselves - non-drivers are perfectly happy with non-“modern” roads).
> Why should cars be entitled to the road whenever they damn well please?
Because that is the rule, and the rule was created to create predictability and thereby increase safety. You are arguing to reduce safety because you have an ideological opposition to cars.
Concrete example of how our laws prioritize driver convenience to a comic degree: in California if traffic typically travels above the speed limit on a certain road, the speed limit there must be increased.
A similar law for pedestrians might state that any location where pedestrians tend to cross more than X times/day must be a all-way stop.
> in California if traffic typically travels above the speed limit on a certain road, the speed limit there must be increased.
That's generally true everywhere, because it's the only answer that makes any sense. We know from lots of experience that even with heavy enforcement, just reducing speed limits doesn't have a big effect on actual speeds. About 10% of drivers rigorously follow the signs, the other 90% drive what's comfortable. So the practical answer is to design roads to be uncomfortable at high speeds. Makes them safer for cars and people both. Just reducing speed limits is a feel-good non-solution.
Well, the US has this rule that increases safety and the UK doesn't. Comparing major cities reveals that the UK does better than the US does, though.
I don't think you've adequately proven your point. For instance, it's not an outrageous hypothesis that frequent uncontrolled pedestrian crossings readies drivers for that event thereby increasing safety whereas rare uncontrolled pedestrian crossings mean that drivers are surprised for and unable to handle the situation.
In a systems thinking sense, it's not obvious that fixed pedestrian/car intersections are the safest.
> I don't think you've adequately proven your point.
It's not exactly controversial, so what else needs to be proven? You asked why things are as they are, I say it's because we implemented rules governing how we drive and walk on roads to create predictability and therefore safety. Don't like that cars seem to have more free reign? Change the road design, change the rules. But there are good reasons we have the system we have now.
Yeah. I see the clowns in Cambridge who dart out into a poorly lit road at night not at a crosswalk wearing dark clothing. I'm watching for them because I know people do it. But the idea that a pedestrian can do anything they want to get across a medium speed road is idiotic.
Yeah, I'm always terrified when someone crosses the street irresponsibly. Pedestrians are very unpredictable so often I just have to cross my fingers and hope they weren't stupid enough to make obvious mistakes but lazy enough to take dangerous shortcuts.
Because you are in a fast-moving, can't-stop-on-a-dime vehicle that society has agreed is useful and that society has agreed can (and should, for efficiency purposes) go certain speeds in certain areas.
Because someone may well maim or kill them sooner or later, if you're going to have cars, and will be a great bother for everyone involved. Look, I live somewhere people in all modes of transportation including foot mostly treat traffic laws as vague suggestions, but it's not so much a case of a driver refusing to stop for a pedestrian but the fact that pedestrians randomly crossing roads, especially at night and/or rainy weather, are running a non-trivial risk of getting hit.
Because pedestrians should have primacy. All areas should be for pedestrians by default, and minimal exceptions made. The majority of the street is a not a minimal exception.
You have to remember there are also people in the cars who are now put in unnecessary danger by pedestrians jumping out in front of them. The worst part is that they are at the mercy of others to avoid this danger. Even if they see you unexpectedly moving in front of traffic and react in time, the 2-3 cars behind them also have to do the same for everyone to avoid injury. If you jump in front of moving cars, you should be personally liable for any injuries and damages caused by cars trying to avoid you. And this is all avoidable if the pedestrian walks a little further to get to the crosswalk, or waits a little longer for a walk signal.
Why do we make it the pedestrian's job? You want the pedestrian to walk a little further, you want the pedestrian to wait a little longer. Why don't we turn it around and say the car has to wait a little longer if someone wants to cross in front of them?
Cars already do have to wait a little longer for pedestrians to cross - at traffic lights, stop signs, intersections and crosswalks.
Roads are literally built for cars to drive on. Having people on them makes driving far more dangerous, as well as meaning it takes longer to get places, not to mention taking a hit on fuel efficiency.
Should I be able to walk in front of a bus load of people and delay their commute? If we're allowing pedestrians unlimited full access to roads with full right of way all the time, then roads basically become sidewalks which cars are also allowed to inch along at walking speed. So what happens to busses now? Are we ok saying busloads of people now have to move at 3mph across a few miles? Again, I am for converting some downtown roads into pedestrian-only areas, but until we do that, we should treat these roads as roads.
If pedestrians should have right of way everywhere all the time, should a pedestrian be able to walk across a railroad crossing while the barriers are down and a train is approaching? Is the train expected to stop? Of course not, that would be ridiculous, but it's the same argument.
No, at least outside of the US roads were there before the car even existed. They were walked on before anything else. Then cars hijacked them, and now people have so long forgotten in the US that they've started writing laws to strengthen their land-grab as if it was always this way.
> Should I be able to walk in front of a bus load of people and delay their commute?
No I don't think you should be able to unreasonably obstruct the highway. You can't do that no matter what vehicle or no vehicle you're in. But crossing is completely reasonable in my mind.
> No, at least outside of the US roads were there before the car even existed
I mean yes, obviously the concept of a road does literally predate cars. But no roads that modern cars drive on today were built 200 years ago for cattle and wagons to use. Modern city planners built (or re-built) these roads specifically with vehicle traffic in mind (and in some cases maybe bikes). If they didn't want them to support vehicle traffic, they would have built them using different materials and designs.
> No I don't think you should be able to unreasonably obstruct the highway. You can't do that no matter what vehicle or no vehicle you're in. But crossing is completely reasonable in my mind.
This reads like you're saying you think it's completely reasonable to cross the highway even if it obstructs traffic? I could be misinterpreting the connection between your first and last sentences here...
Either way, at the end of the day I think it comes down to the fact that we disagree on what constitutes "unreasonable obstruction". I believe a single pedestrian wanting to slow down dozens of cars so they can cross the street 30 seconds quicker is unreasonable. Even if we're talking about all pedestrians, the aggregate time saved by pedestrians crossing slightly earlier is far outweighed by the time lost by everyone in a car who's now traveling at 5mph instead of 40mph. I believe the current system we have of batching pedestrians crossing using traffic lights is far more efficient overall. The "should there be roads here in the first place" argument is a totally different one however.
> This reads like you're saying you think it's completely reasonable to cross the highway even if it obstructs traffic?
Yeah I do - as a pedestrian. I think you should get across as quickly as you can and shouldn't get in people's way unnecessarily... but yeah morally I think you should have that right as a human being on foot.
Letting cars have priority lets people with wealth and opportunity have priority.
> Letting cars have priority lets people with wealth and opportunity have priority.
I would actually argue the opposite. As the saying goes, "Location, Location, Location." Many of the wealthiest people / most expensive homes are either walking distance to or in the middle of big hubs. The next most expensive places are walking distance to public transport to take them to big hubs. You can get a much cheaper place if you go to somewhere that's an hour's drive outside the city with no public transport (or the only public transport available is by bus), and that's what many people do to cut down on costs.
You've also mentioned that cars probably shouldn't be able to go even as fast as 40kmph when pedestrians could cross... Should we be making all of our highways 30kmph now if we're saying pedestrians should be able to cross them at-will?
No I think UK law already makes an exception for highways (in the sense you mean), so no I don't think people should be able to cross for example three-lane roads purpose built for cars where people are going 70 mph.
This thread has digressed a bit. It was originally about jaywalking in cities. Should it be a named crime to cross a road in the middle of New York City? Come on - no - pedestrians owned those first and should still do.
The reason jaywalking can be a crime is because a pedestrian crossing a road with cars in it in a non-designated location or at a non-designated time runs the real risk of recklessly endangering others.
I know we're just going round in circles here... but why don't we make it the cars' responsibility to stop for pedestrians, instead of the pedestrians' responsibility to stop for cars?
Why are we starting from the point of the default is that it is space for cars rather than people?
Because cars take longer to stop? Well then how about the cars slow down in cities?
Because cars are more dangerous? Well that sounds like a reason to restrict them, not the pedestrians.
It's not one or the other, it's both. There are different types of routes. Some are:
- built for humans to walk on[1]. Cars are not allowed on here at all.
- built for cars to drive on[2]. See the big double yellow lines in the middle? That's how you know this part of the road was designed with cars in mind. However, because we don't have the money to build footbridges over every road, we put a zebra crossing in the middle of it so that pedestrians can cross between the routes that only they are allowed on.
Cars get the right of way on roads because that's what we built them (or in the case of old roads that existed before cars, repurposed/maintain them) for. Just like we built the sidewalks/pavements/footpaths/footbridges/etc for pedestrians (and sometimes cyclists).
Maybe part of the problem here is that you seem to be using "road" to mean "things people go on", when the rest of us are using the word road to mean "the things people drive on", and generally use other words to describe the things we've built specifically for walking on.
But how did the cars end up with the prime space? Look at how much they've got here. The pedestrians are pushed to the side and squeezed. Why do we accept that?
And why do we talk about pedestrians 'crossing the street'? How about instead we call crosswalks an extension of the sidewalk and talk about cars 'crossing the sidewalk'?
How did we let cars get the upper hand on people?
And why is anyone driving through a freaking city in the first place? Unless you're disabled, or delivering physical goods, what on earth are you doing? Get out!
> And why is anyone driving through a freaking city in the first place?
Because I can, and there is literally nothing you can do about it. Heck, sometimes I just get in my car and drive for no reason at all, just because I have the freedom to do so.
Mostly because tanks aren't optimized for getting normal people from A to B as quickly and efficiently as possible, so we don't build infra for that. Also because approximately zero people have tanks for the aforementioned reasons.
That being said, tanks aren't actually that big, so usually you can drive a tank on the road. Main problem is you need to stick to low speed roads because they don't go very fast.
I'm picturing somebody jumping in front of a fast moving horse wagon and expecting not to get run over now. I guarantee you everyone would have found that expectation equally ridiculous.
Of course, people can and do jaywalk all the time. I'm told it's different in some places but I am pretty sure that someone actually getting issued a ticket for jaywalking in Boston or NYC would practically be a newsworthy event. In actual life, (most) people do behave sensibly. Pedestrians cross empty streets at will and drivers mostly don't run over people who cross in the middle of traffic.
Whether you like it or not, there are cars in most areas of cities and pedestrians (and cyclists) mostly interact with them without too much carnage, in part because there are rules that most people follow most of the time.
By way of context as to the vigorous enforcement of this law, NYC gave out 300 jaywalking tickets last year. That is not a lot.
In fact that's only about 2x the number of pedestrian deaths in NYC last year.
And this is a city where everyone pedestrian or driver will take every inch they can. Any driver who hesitates is going to find an entire group waiting for a light taking the opportunity to just start crossing.
That's a fair point. Here's the new idea then: pedestrians have right of way on any road that was originally built with pedestrians in mind and has not since been updated with cars in mind.
I personally am not in favor of decreasing the efficiency of our entire economy so that pedestrians who think they own the roads can walk wherever they want and expect everyone else to defer to their whims.
Also, you've repeatedly asked the question "why should drivers get any right of way on the roads". Well, for one, I would imagine that the average car operator pays more towards the upkeep of the roads than the average pedestrian.
I have. They do not have the right of way. Vehicle operators merely have a high duty of care which can supersede right of way.
Also, the case you reference was a case of a pedestrian crossing at a designated pedestrian crossing, so I don't understand how that's relevant to your point – if anything it supports mine.
It depends on how the pedestrian is violating the rules.
But I hope that AV data will show that AVs are significantly better than human drivers at following pedestrian related rules such as automatically stopping to let pedestrians cross at crosswalks without signal lights. (As a driver, I’ve been guilty of not stopping in many cases myself, sometimes because I don’t look far enough ahead and to the side and notice the person waiting for cars to stop)
Firstly, this isn't direct at you, more at the title. I think the title of "47 events" is greatly misleading. While the simulations are definitely incredibly valuable, it's misleading to use the figures from simulations in any argument for how careless Waymo is. In fact, I think the heavy usage of simulation to model realistic events should be a plus, rather than how the title makes it seem like a bad thing.
Secondly, If you read Table 1 [1] of the paper, you'll see that there was only 1 actual pedestrian event (and I guess 2 simulated events), and that was a person walking into a parked car (it's funny that they could measure the walking speed of the person at 2.7mph).
Lastly, in Table 2 they enumerate all the events that "were the fault of the other human driver". Most of them are "failure to yield", for example-- "failure to yield to a vehicle approaching from the left while making a right turn at an unsignalized intersection."
This touches on your bit on driver's responsibility. While it is true that Waymo isn't at fault, it makes me wonder how much "defensive driving" Waymo is including in their models. In the case above, without video/full context, you don't fully know whether it was an avoidable accent or not by, say, swerving to the other lane, or if that option wasn't possible due to another car. It'd be incredibly interesting to know the exact number corrective actions taken/attempted and number of probable accidents avoided.
> I think the title of "47 events" is greatly misleading
If I understand correctly, it's not the title that's misleading but the term "simulation." They're only talking about simulating what would have happened if the safety driver didn't intervene in real life, not simulations generally. A better word would be predictions -- they predict that there would have been 47 events, but safety drivers were able to prevent the majority of them.
Fair enough. I did not read the actual paper. My bad.
>that was a person walking into a parked car (it's funny that they could measure the walking speed of the person at 2.7mph).
And heh. I can't say the car's likely at fault in that case although it may still have behaved in a way the pedestrian didn't expect. And as someone else noted, some of the language I was quoting was from The Verge. The actual report is much more just the facts.
To your broader point, a human driver could probably obey every traffic law and get into tons of at least minor accidents that would be technically the other driver's fault.
That's around 7.71 crashes/million miles driven by Waymo.
By comparison, US national statistics from 2018 [1] are around 2.08 crashes/million miles driven.
Seems like they're far from human performance. There are ton of ways to slice this data, though. I used national stats for accidents where the police showed up; maybe Waymo's data includes no-police accidents. It would also be interesting to compare injury statistics. And of course this is Phoenix-specific data from Waymo, which is a place with good road conditions.
I thought your Your 2.08 crashes/million miles number had to be wrong, since if that were true the average person would have about 1 accident every 50 years or so (which doesn't match my experience of everyone I know having accidents).
Your number was "police reported accidents" which was apparently 6.7M. Anecdotally, I have been involved in 10 accidents or so as a passenger or driver, and none were reported to the police.
So I can't find good numbers on what the real number is but I think its conservative to estimate it at 1/2 are reported to the police. In addition, "Crashes" mostly involve 2 cars, so the "police reported cars that crashed" is roughly 2x, or >12M.
Basically, those changes makes it roughly 8 crashes per million miles for normal driving, or Waymo being basically the same.
If you really want the comparison to be on an even footing, you should consider only the crashes that happen during miles driven by humans in Phoenix. Not all over the US.
In Phoenix only- because Waymo would have many more crashes outside Phoenix (e.g. New York or LA, from what I'm told of the traffic conditions there) and because so would humans.
I think even then, we do not know enough to make any such claim. When did the Waymo cars drive, during the day, in rush hour, at night??? Did they simulate the typical use of an average car or just drove around in the next suburb.
And yeah, only Phoenix, so I assume few rainy days, barely any mist, snow, freezing and so on. The info of driven miles is nice to have but does not translate to normal human driven miles
I think there's a solid chance that a 'near human capable' driving system will handle slippery roads better than the human average. The system will be in a modern vehicle with traction control and likely make conservative judgments about road condition.
There might also be differences in how accurately a human or machine can model which maneuvers can/can't be done without losing traction. I could see this going either way. Maybe a human will be able to identify spots (like puddles) where traction will be especially bad, but a machine can do a detailed physics simulation of a maneuver before trying it.
In whatever way a machine does adjust its behavior for slippery roads, it will probably be more consistent at it than a human. Humans have to deal with force of habit, so for example they may momentarily forget that they can't brake hard or they shouldn't take that turn at a familiar intersection at the same speed as yesterday.
also poor visibility. humans need to rely on their eyes, a car with a bunch of lidar sensors is absolutely going to outperform us in fog, blowing snow, or heavy rain.
I suspect that Waymo will do better compared to a human outside of Phoenix than inside it.
The hardest thing that Waymo will have to do is to interact with humans behaving oddly. Phoenix has those, just not as many as NYC/LA/SF. But one thing computers do exceedingly well is scale. Dealing with one strange human is very hard for a computer, but dealing with two or more of them is very similar.
Snow / ice / rain on the roads means changing underlying models, behaving more cautiously. Computers can switch modalities much quicker/easier than humans.
Fog and other visibility problems are sensor issues. Humans are stuck with the old Mark 1 eyeball, but self driving cars have a mix of sensors. These sensors may currently be worse than eyeballs in fog, but may not be in the future.
Even given those advantages, you still start in an easy location. Going from 0 to 1 is really hard, give yourself all the advantages you can. But going from 1 to N is a lot easier.
Fwiw your conclusion is not really supported by the rest of your statement. Just because scaling from 1 to n is easy doesn't make scaling from zero to 1 feasible. And even if it is (feasible) there's no guarantee they'll be able to do it soon.
Maybe a stupid question, I don't know your exact calculations, but wouldn't you be half-counting the number of collisions, since a collision is almost always between two cars, so you're counting the miles driven by both cars, but only counting the collision between them as 1. So you'd be off by a factor of 2 if you compare that to a distance driver by a single car divided by its collisions.
Yes, thank you, definitely correct. So it's more like 4 accident/million miles from this dataset, although another poster made a good case that Waymo's data includes minor accidents that aren't in the data I looked at, which would make 12 accidents/million miles a better benchmark.
But is it 2.08 crashes/million miles of driving around extremely easy and empty suburbs? There's a reason they started where they have - it's the easiest driving in the world. That's very sensible but it does mean you can't just compare statistics like that.
They are also counting incidents where the relative speed was 1mph, or a person walked into the car. Perhaps fatalities per billion miles would be a more comparable number.
Simulations counts were times when a safety driver took control of the vechile, and post-incident simulations with the same data show that the AI would have crashed the car without the safety driver. So fair to include them.
That's comparable to the autonomous vehicle accident reports Google files with the California DMV. Minor rear-ending at low speed is the most common problem. The usual situation is where the Waymo vehicle has an obstructed line of sight at an intersection and enters the intersection very slowly. Then the system sees cross traffic and stops. The human-driven vehicle, following the Waymo vehicle, then fails to stop fast enough. There's one intersection in Mountain View which has a tree in the median high enough to block the LIDAR but clear at window height. That causes a very cautious intersection entrance. Waymo vehicles have been rear-ended twice there. As LIDAR units get cheaper and more are fitted, that problems should be fixed.
Autonomous vehicles may need a "Back Off" signal, like flashing the brake lights at ultra-bright levels when someone gets too close.
"The one actual, non-simulated angled collision occurred when a vehicle ran a red light at 36 mph, smashing into the side of a Waymo vehicle that was traveling through the intersection at 38 mph."
Not Waymo's fault. I wonder if Waymo went to court, with full video of the driver running the red light.
If you dig in and watch the vehicles, it's clear that the next barrier is communication with other road users pedestrians, cyclists, drivers (and passengers).
Pedestrians don't know where the car is trying to go or when it will start or stop. Drivers get annoyed and brake check the vehicles. Drivers don't understand what the car is about to do next and drive erratically to get around it.
I think it's reasonable to expect that overfitting is on the radar for Waymo (no pun intended) given that 1) their parent/sibling company's expertise in the domain and 2) that they've been extensively training outside of Phoenix both in real-world and simulation.
To continue down this path, I wonder how easy/hard it is for the Waymo "driver" to adjust to driving on the other side of the road.
If you consider the rules for human defensive driving as gospel, the safety side of this problem seems to go away. Defensive driving doesn't act based on predictions of what external agents _will_ do, which may have regional variation. It identifies what external agents _could_ do, which does not have regional variation, and engages accordingly with rules and physics e.g. by making sure that the vehicle always has a safe escape path if it needs to stop abruptly or swerve to avoid a collision.
In the mountains of Virginia, you are lucky to get 6 inches between two bumpers at 55 mph, especially up by Roanoke.
A defensive driving tactic might get you killed because you’ll have to literally stop to get more than a car length in front of you for longer than 1s.
Regional driving behaviors are to be expected, and they expect you to do the same. If you don’t, you might cause an accident. Humans are good at this. Machines, not so much.
I’ve driven around the country for several hundred thousand miles. Different parts of the country do things differently.
Is there any evidence that the Waymo approach involves "the AI" at all? I think you're projecting the approach of other, failed self-driving efforts onto Waymo.
Waymo uses ML/AI extensively. Here's a blog post from earlier this year about how they're forgoing CNNs for a "hierarchical graph neural network." https://blog.waymo.com/2020/05/vectornet.html
No, I understand they use NNs for object classification and so forth, but compare their approach to Tesla, where the overall architecture is camera → a miracle → steering actuators. It seems from the outside that Waymo relies less on the black box.
Google engineer not working on Waymo, opinions are my own.
I think "driverless" here is different from "self-driving", i.e. 'Waymo uses “driverless” here to refer to operations in which the ADS controls the vehicle for the entire trip without a human driver (whether in the vehicle or at a remote location) expected to assume any part of the driving task.' at page 5 of that report.
I think this driverless mode is only available to public on Oct 8th [0].
That's how I interpreted it too, but I'm still surprised it's not 10x. I would have thought that paying the drivers is a major expense, and collecting "real" data 24/7 would be a priority.
18 crashes in 6 million miles is pretty good. Middle-aged human drivers cause that rate of police-reportable crashes, and one injury per million miles.
The severity scale used in the paper is backwards. Their S0 means "no injury expected" and their S3 means "possible critical injuries expected". Google's Issue Tracker [1] uses the opposite scale [2].
Looks nice, but I'm little sceptical about the rear end collisions. From previous videos of self-driving cars (I don't remember whether it was Waymo) I have seen, they tend to suddenly stop for seemingly no reason. And although the driver has duty to keep safe distance, from point of view of other drivers it might seem no different than "anatagonistic motive" mentioned in the article.
I believe that the data-collection should be publicly escrowed for safety-critical research such as for autonomous vehicles, therapeutics, and so on.
It's too easy for employees to subtly edit or shape data to please their managers / directors / shareholders. It can be as subtle as "cleaning" the data by removing records with "noisy" or "unreliable" data, or "correcting" outliers.
In the Waymo case, I consider self-disclosure to be self-serving.
I'm not well versed in the different self driving techniques but isn't 6.1 miles a little low compared to say Tesla which is estimated to have autopilot miles in the billions [0]?
Waymo cars could be following the law and still be extremely difficult for other drivers to deal with.
E.g. I don't know how much they've improved since but a few years back I was in a short merge for my daily commute and there was a Waymo car in the lane I was trying to merge into which just drove parallel to me without speeding up or slowing down as most human drivers do to make way. This was the most difficult merge I had experienced on that spot in years of driving that same commute.
> Waymo says its vehicles were involved in 47 “contact events” with other road users, including other vehicles, pedestrians, and cyclists. Eighteen of these events occurred in real life, while 29 were in simulation.
If they drove 6,100,000 real miles and ~5,000,000,000 simulation miles, and had 18 real contacts and ~29 simulated contacts - that strongly indicates their simulation is not representative of reality.
Edit: My (old, now changed) numbers were wrong but my theory was right!
So they drove 6,100,000 real miles and had 18 real contacts. Between June 2019 and April 2020 they drove ~5,000,000,000 simulated miles and had ~29 simulated contacts.
So their simulator is 3 orders of magnitude safer than the real world. The only number that's really fuzzy here is 29 - the number of simulated contacts (because the dates don't match up perfectly, as this report from Waymo started counting in January 2019). But no matter how you slice it, there is clearly no way the simulated miles are representative of reality.
The 6.1M miles was self-driving in real life, with a safety driver in the car.
The simulation portion only comes into play if the safety driver intervenes in a real life situation. In this case, they go back and simulate what would have happened in the safety driver did nothing.
> that strongly indicates their simulation is not representative of reality.
If they take the common software testing approach where every time they discover a fault, they add a simulation that reproduces it alongside the code change that fixes it, we would expect the simulation to contain a great many scenarios where collisions don't occur.
Indeed, I would be more worried if they'd resorted to real-world testing before they'd solved the known problems their simulation had revealed.
Of course, whether quoting a number of simulated miles driven is relevant to anything is another question....
That's a good point. It still suggests there is no apples to apples comparison between the real world and simulation though, and that those numbers can't really be considered equivalent or even compared in a useful way.
If you're saying the simulation should've revealed more problems than the real world, wouldn't that mean there'd be more contacts through simulation (because that's where you discover them) and then you'd hope the fix exists before rolling it out to the real world, so you'd expect to have less contacts there? What they're reporting is the opposite of that though.
Obviously I don't have enough information to draw a scientific conclusion here - I'm just pointing out there is an enormous discrepancy between their simulated miles and their real miles.
Where did you get those numbers from? according to the article 6.1M miles was driven on the roads with safety drivers, and additional 65000 miles were driven without safety drivers.
"Simulated contacts" are when safety drivers engages, and Waymo investigates what would happen if they did not, so this is as close to the real life as it gets.
The simulated contacts are when Waymo investigates what happens after a driver disengages and concludes they would have had a collision, not the actual contacts measured from simulation.
"The most common type of crash involving Waymo’s vehicles was rear-end collisions. Waymo said it was involved in 14 actual and two simulated fender-benders, and in all but one, the other vehicle was the one doing the rear-ending."
-> This is consistent with previous reports from Waymo. If one of their vehicles gets in an accident, it's extremely likely that the other (human) driver was at fault. Of course, this is somewhat compounded by the fact that Waymo vehicles actually try to follow road laws like attempting to stop for yellow lights and making full stops at stopsigns, which human drivers often don't do (and may not expect other vehicles to do).
"The one incident where Waymo rear-ended another vehicle was in simulation: the company determined that the AV would have rear-ended another car that swerved in front of it and then braked hard despite a lack of obstruction ahead — which the company says was “consistent with antagonistic motive.” (There have been dozens of reports of Waymo’s autonomous vehicles being harassed by other drivers, including attempts to run them off the road.)"
-> This doesn't surprise me really, but is still pretty sad. Many drivers are just assholes and AVs are going to be an easy target for such people.