How is this mode not a standard part of their disaster recovery plan? Especially in sf and the bay area they need to assume an earthquake is going to take out a lot of infrastructure. Did they not take into account this would happen?
> While we successfully traversed more than 7,000 dark signals on Saturday, the outage created a concentrated spike in these requests. This created a backlog that, in some cases, led to response delays contributing to congestion on already-overwhelmed streets.
We established these confirmation protocols out of an abundance of caution during our early deployment, and we are now refining them to match our current scale. While this strategy was effective during smaller outages, we are now implementing fleet-wide updates that provide the Driver with specific power outage context, allowing it to navigate more decisively.
Sounds like it was and you’re not correctly understanding the complexity of running this at scale.
If the onboard software has detected an unusual situation it doesn't understand, moving may be a bad idea. Possible problems requiring a management decision include flooding, fires, earthquakes, riots, street parties, power outages, building collapses... Handling all that onboard is tough. For different situations, a nearby "safe place" to stop varies. The control center doesn't do remote driving, says Waymo. They provide hints, probably along the lines of "back out, turn around, and get out of this area", or "clear the intersection, then stop and unload your passenger".
Waymo didn't give much info. For example, is loss of contact with the control center a stop condition? After some number of seconds, probably. A car contacting the control center for assistance and not getting an answer is probably a stop condition.
Apparently here they overloaded the control center. That's an indication that this really is automated. There's not one person per car back at HQ; probably far fewer than that. That's good for scaling.
> "the resulting congestion required law enforcement to manually manage intersections"
Does anyone know if a Waymo vehicle will actually respond to a LEO giving directions at a dark intersection, or if it will just disregard them in favour of treating it as a 4 way stop?
I suddenly find that I really want an answer to this as well because I'm now imagining what might ensue if one of these attempted to board a car ferry. Typically there's a sign "turn headlights off", you're expected to maintain something like 5 mph (the flow of traffic should never stop), and you get directed by a human to cross multiple lane markings often deviating from the path that the vehicle immediately in front of you took.
I think that Waymo isn't concerned about those types of scenario because they only operate in a limited area, and can tune their systems to operate best in that area (EG not worrying about car ferries, human-operated parking lots etc)
This was found to be one of the early challenges of self driving: reading traffic signal gestures of traffic agents. It does it. But the jury is out if it does it well.
Seriously. People are outraged about the theoretical potential for human harm while there is a god damn constant death rate here that is 4x higher than every other western country.
I mean really. I’m a self driving skeptic exactly because our roads are inherently dangerous. I’ve been outraged at Cruise and Tesla for hiding their safety shortcomings and acting in bad faith.
Everything I’ve seen from Waymo has been exceptional… and I literally live in a damn neighborhood that lost power, and saw multiple stopped Waymos in the street.
They failed-safe, not perfect, definitely needs improvement, but safe. At the same time we have video of a Tesla blowing through a blacked out intersection, and I saw a damn Muni bus do the same thing, as well as a least a dozen cars do the same damn thing.
People need to be at least somewhat consistent in their arguments.
Hey, I hear you. And I'm sad. Because I'd like to say that the right way is to:
build infrastructure that promotes safe driving, and
train drivers to show respect for other people on the road
However, those are both non-starters in the US. So your answer, which comes down to "at least self-driving is better than those damn people" might be the one that actually works.
On the contrary, I would prefer HN detach all threads expressing "concern." That way we don't have to make a subjective call if a comment is "concern" or "concern trolling" at all - they are equally uninteresting and do not advance curiosity.
I suspected this. They were moving, but randomly to an observer. I’d seen about 2 out of maybe 20 stopped Waymos navigating around Arguello and Geary area in SF Saturday at 6PM. What was worse was that there was little to no connectivity service across all 3 main providers deeper in the power outage area as well - Spruce and Geary or west of Park Presidio (I have 2 phones, with Google Fi/T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon).
Interesting that some legacy safety/precaution code caused more timid and disruptive driving behavior than the current software route planner would've chosen on its own.
Do Waymo’s have Starlink or another satellite based provider backup? Otherwise, what do they if cell service goes down and they need to phone home for confirmation?
People downvoting you may think that this is an uninteresting quibble: we may not find it very surprising that sometimes Waymo asks for human guidance, and we don't necessarily think "autonomous" is an all or nothing designator.
Definition in the Oxford dictionary: "Of, pertaining to, or characterized by autonomy; self-governing, independent; free of external influence or control."
Self-driving car advertisers like Musk or Waymo just want to co-opt this term because it sounds cool. The term also deliberately hides the fact that these vehicles surveil and track you.
EDIT: It is the full definition in the printed Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (which is a large two volume publication). It is understandable that morons downvote it.
Most things aren't absolutes. This is no exception. The vehicles can operate on their own the majority of the time. That is a form of autonomy, albeit incomplete.
You are subject to road signs, traffic, police directions, etc while driving. In the event of a natural disaster it seems feasible that you could end up in a situation where you don't know how you ought to proceed. So neither are you "free of external influence or control" in an absolute sense.
A human driver does not have to call a remote operator if the traffic lights are off.
This situation does not require a sophistic argument that we are not autonomous because we rely on the sun. If a child walks alone to school without asking for directions, it walks autonomously. If it has to call its parents or uses a GPS phone, it is not autonomous. This is really not that hard.
A child only knows the way to school because outside influences have previously shaped the path that they are expected to follow. They're motivated to walk there because present influences seek to enforce the necessity of accomplishing this task.
Even the mere existence of a predetermined destination (in this instance, the location of a particular school that they did not choose themselves) is influential to their behavior.
If we use the definition that you're so defensively in favor of, then it is impossible for this child to be walking to school autonomously.
Certainly. However it shouldn't be too difficult to imagine a scenario where the typical human driver would not know how to respond in a safe manner. Thus the presence of "uncertain how to respond" in a limited subset of scenarios remains consistent with the term "autonomous" as it appears in general usage.
> If it has to call its parents or uses a GPS phone, it is not autonomous.
You ought to be able to imagine plenty of scenarios where this would be the case (ie the child got lost) and yet clearly you still believe the child to qualify as autonomous. Analogously, the vehicles are not necessarily disqualified as being considered such despite being unable to independently navigate in some subset of scenarios.
If it has to call its parents or uses a GPS phone, it is not autonomous. This is really not that hard.
Obviously your point here highlights your pedantry: autonomy is not absolute. Despite being a mostly functioning and definitely autonomous human being, I sometimes have to call someone who knows better to ask for directions.
In this context, I think I prefer to use this definition from the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary: "(of a vehicle) that has the technology to drive itself without a person in control"
That is a sad state of affairs, I hope it does not make it into the printed edition.
The same applies to "autonomous drones", which are the most remote assisted machines imaginable.
But of course the advertising departments want to evoke an image of the Marlboro man saddling his horse rather than a GPS tracked, surveillance riddled, face scanning, remote assisted contraption.
Sounds like it was and you’re not correctly understanding the complexity of running this at scale.
Waymo didn't give much info. For example, is loss of contact with the control center a stop condition? After some number of seconds, probably. A car contacting the control center for assistance and not getting an answer is probably a stop condition. Apparently here they overloaded the control center. That's an indication that this really is automated. There's not one person per car back at HQ; probably far fewer than that. That's good for scaling.
Does anyone know if a Waymo vehicle will actually respond to a LEO giving directions at a dark intersection, or if it will just disregard them in favour of treating it as a 4 way stop?
It's approximately one 9/11 a month. And that's just the deaths.
Worldwide, 1.2m people die from vehicle accidents every year; car/motorcycle crashes are the leading cause of death for people aged 5-29 worldwide.
https://www.transportation.gov/NRSS/SafetyProblem
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/road-traffi...
I mean really. I’m a self driving skeptic exactly because our roads are inherently dangerous. I’ve been outraged at Cruise and Tesla for hiding their safety shortcomings and acting in bad faith.
Everything I’ve seen from Waymo has been exceptional… and I literally live in a damn neighborhood that lost power, and saw multiple stopped Waymos in the street.
They failed-safe, not perfect, definitely needs improvement, but safe. At the same time we have video of a Tesla blowing through a blacked out intersection, and I saw a damn Muni bus do the same thing, as well as a least a dozen cars do the same damn thing.
People need to be at least somewhat consistent in their arguments.
build infrastructure that promotes safe driving, and
train drivers to show respect for other people on the road
However, those are both non-starters in the US. So your answer, which comes down to "at least self-driving is better than those damn people" might be the one that actually works.
Harvesting outrage is about the only reliable function the internet seems to have at this point. You're not seeing enough of it?
That would be like every traffic incident ever? I don't think US has public cars or state-owned utilities.
I doubt they have more than that.
Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46342412
https://brx-content.fullsight.org/site/binaries/content/asse...
Self-driving car advertisers like Musk or Waymo just want to co-opt this term because it sounds cool. The term also deliberately hides the fact that these vehicles surveil and track you.
EDIT: It is the full definition in the printed Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (which is a large two volume publication). It is understandable that morons downvote it.
You are subject to road signs, traffic, police directions, etc while driving. In the event of a natural disaster it seems feasible that you could end up in a situation where you don't know how you ought to proceed. So neither are you "free of external influence or control" in an absolute sense.
This situation does not require a sophistic argument that we are not autonomous because we rely on the sun. If a child walks alone to school without asking for directions, it walks autonomously. If it has to call its parents or uses a GPS phone, it is not autonomous. This is really not that hard.
Even the mere existence of a predetermined destination (in this instance, the location of a particular school that they did not choose themselves) is influential to their behavior.
If we use the definition that you're so defensively in favor of, then it is impossible for this child to be walking to school autonomously.
> If it has to call its parents or uses a GPS phone, it is not autonomous.
You ought to be able to imagine plenty of scenarios where this would be the case (ie the child got lost) and yet clearly you still believe the child to qualify as autonomous. Analogously, the vehicles are not necessarily disqualified as being considered such despite being unable to independently navigate in some subset of scenarios.
Obviously your point here highlights your pedantry: autonomy is not absolute. Despite being a mostly functioning and definitely autonomous human being, I sometimes have to call someone who knows better to ask for directions.
I think it fits the state of affairs well-enough.
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/eng...
The same applies to "autonomous drones", which are the most remote assisted machines imaginable.
But of course the advertising departments want to evoke an image of the Marlboro man saddling his horse rather than a GPS tracked, surveillance riddled, face scanning, remote assisted contraption.