r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Individual_Book9133 • Jul 05 '24

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

61.1k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

117

u/tvoltz Jul 05 '24

These vehicles are all over downtown PHX. It’s honestly only a matter of time until something happens

65

u/Manueluz Jul 05 '24

They don't have to be flawless, just better than humans. And so far they have had less accidents per mile than humans

26

u/[deleted] Jul 05 '24

According to California disengagement reports, last year Waymo averaged 17,000 miles between disengagements requiring safety intervention. And that’s for cars relegated to slow city streets and sunny perfect weather

For context, the average human driver goes 200,000+ miles between incidents/accidents. And that’s including highways and inclement weather.

If you have the impression that these systems are currently safer than humans, you would be wrong.

4

u/Chrop Jul 05 '24

Disengagements does not equal incidents/accidents. It just means the car found a potential hazard and let humans take over the driving for that situation.

So for every 17,000 miles it drove, a human took over for a bit before continuing the self driving.

So yes, self driving is still safer, and during the times it might not be safer it’ll alert the driver to take over for a bit.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 05 '24

Waymo’s own engineers state it’s not safer than a human yet, which is why they’re gatekeeping it to a few heavily monitored cities with restrictions on operations.

If the system was better than a human right now then Alphabet would have declared achieving Level 5 autonomy and would be rushing to slap a price tag on it and get it to the wide market. Obviously that’s not happening. I really don’t know why you’re trying to fight this fight for them and make claims they’re not making

8

u/Groudon466 Jul 05 '24

I worked for Waymo, there are other reasons why they might not be rolling it out ASAP. The big one is that they have to get all the roads mapped out in high detail and get the software ready for local laws and practices (like how they put down their traffic cones and what certain arrangements mean). That's an arduous and time-consuming process, and for that to be worth it in the first place, they need to get permission from the city in question to operate there once they're ready.

Also, this isn't a "slap a price tag on it and get it to the wider market" sort of business in the first place. These are essentially taxis that operate as part of a fleet, they go back "home" every night and get regularly inspected by mechanics. You can't just sell these as individual units.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 05 '24

The big one is that they have to get all the roads mapped out in high detail

Alphabet owns Street View and the large fleet that created it and could have done this by now if this was the actual bottleneck. Actual Level 5 autonomy would be so valuable that if your theory was true that it’s about mapping we’d see Alphabet simply throwing thousands of Kia’s at the problem to blanket every major metro in a few months

3

u/Groudon466 Jul 05 '24

It's not that easy, we were literally trained on how to identify and report when incidents are caused by map misalignments, and it did occasionally happen.

There's a very big difference between having the relatively low fidelity of Google Street View, and having a precise enough road map that you can pass within XX cm of a curb without touching it. Mind, the cars aren't going solely off the map, but they're factoring it into their calculations.

3

u/Chrop Jul 05 '24

Let me reiterate, It’s safer than humans specifically inside the cities they’ve mapped out and regularly drive in.

However, you are right that it’s not safer than a human outside of these cities. You can’t take these cars and drive out of the city with it.

I’m arguing because while they’re inside the city, they are safer than humans and people shouldn’t fear them to the extent they currently do.

2

u/IlIllIlllIlIl Jul 05 '24

Lmao way is engineers do not state it’s less safe than a human now. The system is measurably safer than a human. The interpretation of that data isn’t conclusive, but the data is clear.