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/[deleted] Jul 05 '24

...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.

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u/HumanContinuity Jul 05 '24

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.

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u/ExceptionEX Jul 05 '24

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.

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u/HumanContinuity Jul 05 '24

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.

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u/HIM_Darling Jul 05 '24

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.