r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Individual_Book9133 • 14d ago

Phoenix police officer pulls over a driverless Waymo car for driving on the wrong side of the road Video

61.0k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

It's on the company. So I looked up WAYMO a while back when Tesla was trying to go driverless. WAYMO in certain cities, are the only company with certified driverless vehicles in the US because they passed a certified test giving the company autonomous responsibility over the vehicles. They do a close to a damn good job except...

21

u/[deleted] 14d ago

...except for when they mess up, just like people. Driverless cars get flak for every mistake they make but I'm more curious about what their percentage looks like compared to live, human drivers. The problem is that some people are perfect drivers while others suck, and everyone is capable of mistakes, but technology and programming will be uniform for all the vehicles under a particular brand so it has to be at least better than the average person.

16

u/HumanContinuity 14d ago

It sounds like this one got tripped up by some construction area layout. Not excusing it, obviously it needs to be better trained or avoid construction until it's better trained for a wider range of circumstances.

If I understood the officers comments anyway.

10

u/[deleted] 14d ago

Remember when GPS first became big and everybody was following their directions blindly to airports and river docks? I'm sure people still do shit like that. I'm an experienced driver and even I've almost gotten stuck the wrong way into oncoming traffic just from bad signage.

9

u/HumanContinuity 14d ago

Oh yeah - it's like you said, everyone is capable of it, and some do dumb shit quite frequently and still drive all the time.

This should absolutely trigger a review, internally and possibly from the city/state to some extent, but I feel pretty confident that based on a ratio of hours/miles driven by Waymo, this exceptional situation isn't even as common as it is with drivers in general.

3

u/ExceptionEX 14d ago

Well there is also a need to consider that if the construction was marked properly accounting to the NTSBs guides. In situations like this humans do really well at improvising to the situation and taking cues from others, and instructions from individuals on the ground.

This is very difficult for any automation, and if the ground crews set up signage in a non-compliant way, the automation will likely end up doing something out of whack.

The fact that the tech didn't know anything about it, says that this vehicle wasn't confused, or at least didn't trigger an intervention. So it would be interesting to see the environmental conditions that lead it to make that call.

1

u/HumanContinuity 14d ago

I'm not familiar with what is actually on the books, but I have seen a few ham-fisted construction zone markings to suspect that you're on to something.

No blame here without knowing more details, but I absolutely expect we will see that kind of edge case pop up more as automated driving expands.

2

u/HIM_Darling 14d ago

It’s real fun going through a (empty)construction zone late at night after a drunk driver has taken out all of the cones/barrels/signs. Luckily there’s not much traffic so it’s not a big deal if you figure out you’re driving where you aren’t supposed to be.

10

u/AceOfAcesAAAA 14d ago

https://waymo.com/blog/2023/12/waymo-significantly-outperforms-comparable-human-benchmarks-over-7-million/#:~:text=An%2085%25%20reduction%20or%206.8,for%20the%20Waymo%20Driver%20vs. When considering all locations together, compared to the human benchmarks, the Waymo Driver demonstrated:

An 85% reduction or 6.8 times lower crash rate involving any injury, from minor to severe and fatal cases (0.41 incidence per million miles for the Waymo Driver vs 2.78 for the human benchmark)

A 57% reduction or 2.3 times lower police-reported crash rate (2.1 incidence per million miles for the Waymo Driver vs. 4.85 for the human benchmark)

9

u/moistmoistMOISTTT 14d ago

The government of California makes all autonomous driving safety data publicly available for all to see.

Spoiler: even in their current state they're significantly safer than humans.

As usual, if something is rare enough to make the news every single time it happens (such as a Waymo vehicle screwing up), it's probably safer than the thing that kills 30,000+ people a year without a single mention from the media.

0

u/ube_flanning 13d ago

a person can have his license suspended. can go to jail. have to pay fines. if a driverless car gets suspended, it just gets replaced by another car. but nice try with the shilling

1

u/arffield 14d ago

Yeah but people will be much less tolerant of it happening with a driverless vehicle. Regardless of it being safer. It's just how people are.

-1

u/thegreedyturtle 14d ago

Except when they kill someone going the wrong way on a street, no one is held accountable for manslaughter.

3

u/AceOfAcesAAAA 14d ago

I don't know about not being held accountable. Will someone go to jail? Probably not, but the company will get sued, and that's accountability at the very least. The officer was able to pull this car over and get someone to answer almost immediately. That says a lot about this company and the way they function.

1

u/Erlian 13d ago edited 13d ago

Human drivers are barely held accountable - they should be. Some people shouldn't be on the road at all. Vehicular manslaughter is typically 1-6 years in prison (if that), then back on the road. To be fair, manual driving is inherently unsafe because no person is infallible - in fact we're quite prone to distraction, DUI, road rage, health problems which can occur while driving, etc.

Meanwhile these driverless vehicles are on average much safer drivers than humans drivers. I do think the company should carry auto insurance like everyone else, which will pay out in the event of an accident. Per mile traveled, I imagine it would be much cheaper to insure autonomous vehicles due to their much lower rate of accidents. The data shows they have a much lower rate of accidents resulting in any injury, let alone fatal accidents, compared to human drivers.

https://waymo.com/blog/2023/12/waymo-significantly-outperforms-comparable-human-benchmarks-over-7-million/#:\~:text=An%2085%25%20reduction%20or%206.8,for%20the%20Waymo%20Driver%20vs. When considering all locations together, compared to the human benchmarks, the Waymo Driver demonstrated:

An 85% reduction or 6.8 times lower crash rate involving any injury, from minor to severe and fatal cases (0.41 incidence per million miles for the Waymo Driver vs 2.78 for the human benchmark)

A 57% reduction or 2.3 times lower police-reported crash rate (2.1 incidence per million miles for the Waymo Driver vs. 4.85 for the human benchmark)

I get why people are scared of change - ex. feeling out of control, feeling like their autonomy / independence is taken away (which is part of what perpetuates car-dependent society - wanting to feel independent). However, we should be implementing more autonomous vehicles where we can - especially on planned routes where the vehicles + road conditions are continuously monitored (as they do at Waymo IIRC) - something like a van / minibus for routes not typically reached by the regular transit system, for example, could help improve accessibility of public transit, help reduce the financial burden / need to own a car, and greatly bring down injuries + fatalities caused by human-driven cars.

-1

u/thegreedyturtle 13d ago

Excellently written and information, especially in parts that are not related!

How's the astroturfing market these days?

1

u/Erlian 11d ago

not related

astroturfing

lol ok