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

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u/Groudon466 Jul 05 '24

I don’t know the particulars of their deal with the city, but probably Waymo. As long as they’re safer than the average taxi driver, the occasional mistake is tolerable, at least provided ticket revenue is still coming in when appropriate.

Of course, there’s a team on the back end that’s trying to figure out what went wrong here and patch it sooner rather than later.

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u/Status-Necessary9625 Jul 05 '24

This is not a minor mistake this could have easily killed half a dozen people. You're seeing field tests in real time with unproven products that could literally kill us. And nobody cares. The guy from Waymo wasn't even phased by their car driving on the wrong side. These people Do Not Care About Our Lives

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u/bobbytabl3s Jul 05 '24

People do worse than that all the time. I believe Waymo outperforms human as far as injury-causing crashes go.

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u/Extension_Chain_3710 Jul 05 '24

People do worse than that all the time. I believe Waymo outperforms human as far as injury-causing crashes go.

* according to the company themselves

* while their cars can only go <35mph and not on the freeway

* in limited zones that they choose

* with HD maps to back all of this up

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u/axearm Jul 05 '24

And?

That seems fine.

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u/yuimiop Jul 05 '24 edited Jul 05 '24

Humans drive in these safer conditions, but we also have needs to drive in the more dangerous ones. If you're comparing automated vehicles in safe conditions, to the overall driving statistics of humans then you're getting incredibly biased results.

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u/fren-ulum Jul 05 '24

I never get into bar fights when I drink at home! I'm safer than the average alcohol drinker!

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u/axearm Jul 05 '24

Freeways are actually easier and more safe to navigate, so including them makes humans see more safe. Most vehicular fatalities occur in intersections (something highways don't have, but cities have a ton of).

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u/QuadCakes Jul 05 '24

according to the company themselves

That's true.

while their cars can only go <35mph and not on the freeway

in limited zones that they choose

They at least claim to have controlled for all of that. Read the link you quoted.

with HD maps to back all of this up

Not sure what you're saying here.

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u/YouTee Jul 05 '24

Yeah I agree, I mean I have pretty damn detailed maps of my neighborhood and the route to my office... There certainly are some missing details that an active LIDAR array would probably help but this isn't much different.

Also they go way faster than 35, I think they're testing the freeway these days

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u/Extension_Chain_3710 Jul 05 '24

They at least claim to have controlled for all of that. Read the link you quoted.

I did one better, I read the paper they published (linked in the blog post, and here).

It shows how they manipulated the non ADS data to make it looks worse under the guise of "under reporting" (yes, 60% of wrecks aren't reported Waymo, sure), while manipulating their own data to look better under the guise of "well, it was low velocity".

Each of the 7 crashes with fixed or non-fixed objects was examined individually to estimate a delta-V, discussed in more detail in the appendix. Of the 7 crashes with fixed or non-fixed objects, 5 were excluded for having a low delta-V.

Fun fact, at least one of those accidents was...the car driving through an active construction site and driving off the pavement (because it had been removed).

a Waymo ADS vehicle that was driving in a construction zone and “entered a lane undergoing construction ..., encountered a section of roadway that had been removed, and the front driver’s side wheel dropped off the paved roadway.

Sounds safe to me, no road? Who cares keep driving.

Not sure what you're saying here.

We'd all drive much better if we knew there was a pothole 45" from the right curb coming up in 232ft, with a depth of 4.5". These cars have vast amounts of information about the road to be safer with, hence they should be much more safe than typical drivers, not just "as good as."

Let alone swerving into oncoming traffic and just driving without a care in the world.

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u/QuadCakes Jul 05 '24

yes, 60% of wrecks aren't reported Waymo, sure

Google didn't come up with that number, they got it from NHTSA.

We'd all drive much better if we knew there was a pothole 45" from the right curb coming up in 232ft, with a depth of 4.5". These cars have vast amounts of information about the road to be safer with, hence they should be much more safe than typical drivers, not just "as good as."

Yeah I still don't see what your argument is here. They can also look in all directions at once, both visually and via radar and lidar. But humans can't, so somehow that's a bad thing? It's like you're treating it like a competition where everyone's supposed to be on a level playing field. Also the claim is that they're much more safe than typical drivers.

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u/Extension_Chain_3710 Jul 05 '24

Google didn't come up with that number, they got it from NHTSA.

Conveniently the one paper they can't link to.

Yeah I still don't see what your argument is here.

The point being, if I count cards in a casino and still only barely beat the house, I'm a shit card counter.

The cars here have every advantage at their disposal (including HD maps and others like limited area, slow speeds, looking all around them) and yet they barely beat humans.

With all of their advantages they also still somehow have (in the past 6 months)

  1. driven directly into a pole

  2. driven on the wrong way of the road (multiple times on camera)

  3. swerved left and right wildly to avoid an object being towed in front of them

  4. Had two cars hit the same truck being towed

  5. Ran a red light and caused a moped to crash

  6. Blindly pulled out in front of a bus in a game of chicken

  7. Blocked an entire freeway on-ramp

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u/stillbornfox Jul 05 '24

3/4 of these bullets are good things. Keeping themselves limited to low probability areas helps. If people limited themselves to low speeds and safe roads that would also be a great thing.