Waymo's Driverless Cars Have Logged 10 Million Miles On Public Roads (qz.com) 129
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: Alphabet's driverless-car company Waymo announced a new milestone today (Oct. 10): its vehicles have driven a collective 10 million miles on U.S. roads. With cars in six states, Waymo has really been racking up the miles since April 2017, when it launched a program giving rides to passengers around the Phoenix, Arizona area. At that point, Waymo cars had driven not quite 3 million miles since the company's earliest days as a research project within Google in 2009. But in the last 18 months, the company more than tripled its road mileage.
Competing with other companies with autonomous-vehicle programs like Uber, Tesla, Apple, and GM's Cruise, Waymo is leading the pack in terms of road miles driven. [...] The company's next 10 million miles, CEO John Krafcik said in today's announcement, will focus on "striking the balance" between its safety-first algorithms and driving assertively in everyday maneuvers, like merging, and navigating bad weather. But it's worth keeping things in perspective: U.S. drivers rack up some 3 trillion miles each year, so Waymo still has some ground to cover.
Competing with other companies with autonomous-vehicle programs like Uber, Tesla, Apple, and GM's Cruise, Waymo is leading the pack in terms of road miles driven. [...] The company's next 10 million miles, CEO John Krafcik said in today's announcement, will focus on "striking the balance" between its safety-first algorithms and driving assertively in everyday maneuvers, like merging, and navigating bad weather. But it's worth keeping things in perspective: U.S. drivers rack up some 3 trillion miles each year, so Waymo still has some ground to cover.
covering ground being the operative word (Score:4)
Even if they put 3 trillion miles on their system, if they confine it to just a few geographical areas, I don't trust it very much. I'd like to see them driving in NYC, Boston, Chicago, New Jersey (even humans can't figure this one out), etc. Places where public investment in the roadways has either been compromised (i.e. stolen by politician for other bullshit), minimal, or there simply wasn't enough space to put proper roads in, so they did something else instead...
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Even if they put 3 trillion miles on their system, if they confine it to just a few geographical areas, I don't trust it very much.
Not just geographical areas, I wonder if they try it out on multiple different types of streets in multiple different times of day. An automated driving system that works fine on freeways and on wide, relatively untrafficed suburban roads may be better than one in complex city exchanges in rush hour.
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Maybe this information should be shared with the Google people. There's a chance they've never considered any of these ideas.
Re:covering ground being the operative word (Score:4, Funny)
Don't worry. Every slashdot comment is framed and hung up in the board room. True goldmine here.
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Maybe this information should be shared with the Google people. There's a chance they've never considered any of these ideas.
That they have considered it does not imply that they give a fuck.
If the goal is to sell to the majority who will buy a product, how it will affect minorities is not going to be a showstopper. It is, unfortunately, up to the government to ensure that the interests of those who will be negatively affected are protected and that manufacturers address issues.
In other words, until a senator gets severely delayed or his dog gets run over by by a driverless car, nothing will happen. Until then, the promises of
Re: covering ground being the operative word (Score:2)
Google has done that.
Waymos limits are tight geofenced and high resolution mapped areas in decent weather.
Which I would point out are 1,000 times more open than everyone else.
Next up as of last year was repeating phoniex's setup in detriot.
Which should cover bad roads and bad weather nicely.
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This is good, they must be prepping for best in class detection of burning barrels.
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Not just geographical areas, I wonder if they try it out on multiple different types of streets in multiple different times of day.
Yes, after all nobody could have ever come up with the idea of testing a SDC on different types of road conditions. Google will be sending your bonus over immediately.
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Even if they put 3 trillion miles on their system, if they confine it to just a few geographical areas, I don't trust it very much
Outside those areas, you wouldn't have to trust it, because they won't be driving there.
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First you are right in what you point out. Additionally, what they have been doing is a clinical trial on non-volunteers-- everyone who intersects their roadways. That's really really bad. They should haveracked up a million miles on test tracks before moving to anything with even limited public exposure.
However now that they have done this clinical trial, unethically/illegally or not, they do have a body of evidence that maybe worthy of a phase 2 clinical trial on less constrained public roads.
that is,
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They should have racked up a million miles on test tracks before moving to anything with even limited public exposure.
Why ? How many accidents did they cause ?
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It's not normal to be conducting trials where people are not given the option of refusing to consent specifically because things can go wrong
Thousands of people die every day because things went wrong they didn't consent to.
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1) There are a number of people out there who I think should not be driving. I don't consent to them sharing the road with me. But I am forced to accept that I must share the road with them because it is public infrastructure. Any member of the public who qualifies based on a pretty easy driving test is allowed to use the roads in a moto
Trust (Score:2)
Additionally, what they have been doing is a clinical trial on non-volunteers-- everyone who intersects their roadways. That's really really bad.
Disagree. One only has to look at the accident record of human drivers versus autonomous vehicles to see who is currently leading the standings to be the most dangerous. (spoiler: humans have the bigger body count by a wide margin) Quite honestly I trust Waymo more than I trust you (or any other human - it's nothing personal) to operate a vehicle safely based on the available data. My chances of getting killed by a human driver are FAR higher. Anyway it doesn't matter to a dead person whether the drive
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First off, these cars are not safer than the ones being driven by people. I'm not sure where you got that idea, but it's not true. These are cars that are being driven in good conditions, they're not being driven in conditions which lead to crashes. Waymo has fewer total miles driven than what regular drivers have every day. Meaning that the figure is likely less respresentative of the actual safety than it might seen.
And you're a fucking moron about the informed consent. Uber's car murdered one person, yo
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Self-driving cars have been racking up test track miles since the 1990s. I remember watching shows about it back then. The only option to satisfy you, apparently, is to stop every driver to get them to sign a consent form. Which is absurd.
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'd like to see them driving in NYC, Boston, Chicago, New Jersey (even humans can't figure this one out), etc.
Please add things like
- Twisty mountain passes during winter, with loaded trailers barrelling down doing the standard 9 mph above speed limit.
- Deserts with tumbleweed.
- Forests with deer crossings.
- Areas with bikers who like to ride abreast.
Re:covering ground being the operative word (Score:4, Interesting)
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How much does the environment need to change before the maps are no longer good? I feel like needing really good maps is a huge limitation towards overall usability - if I need good maps, I potentially couldn't self drive cross country. Granted regions in the middle of nowhere might need less frequent mapping compared to a major city.
Re:covering ground being the operative word (Score:4, Interesting)
Small changes in the environment shouldn't matter. In the future, they could automatically make updates to the map using the 3D scans from all the cars passing points that show discrepancies in the old map. Maybe they're already doing that.
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That makes sense. I was curious about thresholds since I'm less familiar with Waymo's approach. Say a city put up portions of protected bike lanes one night (as they did in my area) would that disrupt things for a morning commute. Or if a foot of snow fell (presumably they aren't there for testing yet) whether the car could handle that change.
I imagine that would be a logical solution for updating maps since I imagine the sensors for driving and mapping are similar. Still a bit concerned as it is likely the
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No, I said "small changes to the environment".
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SDC cameras surely must be capable of detected the absence of stop signs / stoplights by now, and deducing from the shape of the road that this must be a roundabout.
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In addition, in the North American and European road signage standards, drivers are supposed to be alerted to the presence of a round-about ahead by signs. (there is some variation in what roundabout signs look like though) All the au
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All good points.
But It still isn't "self driving" if you need to hold the cars hand all the time.
Where just one small unexpected input can lead to catastrophic failure.
You can always add more and more outside input to help the car appear to be "self driving", but the more you do the less it is.
Electronic "train tracks", even very flexible and adaptive train tracks, won't make a car self driving.
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also need free data and free data roaming if needs to download new maps as you make that trip.
Re: covering ground being the operative word (Score:3)
Then you need to Learn the differences in self driving systems.
Waymo is the only level 4 company and has tight geofenced areas, and high res maps.
Level 0 is regular cruise control
Level 1 is the newer speed changing in traffic cruise control
Tesla and supercrusie are level 2
Fully self driving starts at level 4 but limited
Level 5 car drives like humans can. No one has even started this yet.
It is why I laugh when people say self driving cars are almost here. Nope 20-30 years away at best.
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Humans are (often) shitty drivers (Score:3)
Even if they put 3 trillion miles on their system, if they confine it to just a few geographical areas, I don't trust it very much.
Why? Human drivers are demonstrably dangerous and the body count to date heavily favors the computers as the likely safer option. While I'm not suggesting autonomous driving vehicles are ready for prime time yet or that it's a slam dunk that they are safer, I think people like yourself are not really doing a very good job of evaluating the actual risk data. Honestly I don't really trust YOU as a driver either. Nothing personal - you shouldn't trust me either or any other human driver. But the point is
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Why? Human drivers are demonstrably dangerous and the body count to date heavily favors the computers as the likely safer option.
So? Driving is a calculated risk, where people see the benefits as outweighing the risks. When reducing risks causes the benefits to go down, this changes the equation.
If people really were interested in safety above everything else, no one would ever buy sporty cars or drive above 35 mph.
A small risk of accidents and fatalities is an acceptable price for the freedom of driving, as it was for the freedom of riding for those before us. Reducing the risk by taking away the freedom is just not acceptable fo
Freedom? (Score:2)
A small risk of accidents and fatalities is an acceptable price for the freedom of driving, as it was for the freedom of riding for those before us. Reducing the risk by taking away the freedom is just not acceptable for many of us.
First off your argument that autonomous cars somehow reduce your freedom is nonsense. The freedom that cars provide is freedom of mobility which is in no way being threatened. If you enjoy driving that's fine but your freedom to drive isn't being impinged by autonomous vehicles also being on the road. Even if computers replaced all human drivers your freedom of mobility isn't being affected at all. The ONLY point is that YOU as a human driver are very likely a bigger threat to me (and vice versa) than
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First off your argument that autonomous cars somehow reduce your freedom is nonsense.
How do you go on a joyride in an autonomous car?
The freedom to take your car (or motorbike or horse) "out there" is a part of American life. If you never enjoy that, I feel truly sorry for you.
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How do you go on a joyride in an autonomous car?
You get in the car and tell it where to go. Then you enjoy the ride.
Oh did you mean the joy of driving it? Last I checked, go carts are pretty cheap and racing tracks still have public days. You can still drive off road in many places where roads don't exist. You can also visit another country where autonomous cars aren't mandated.
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In other words, you have no idea what a joyride is.
The whole point being that there is no destination.
You go where the road and whim takes you. Discover new places you didn't know about. Enjoy the freedom of not having to go to any particular place, at any particular schedule. Make impromptu decisions when hitting crossroads. Stop at a kid's lemonade stand or ice cream store you didn't know existed. Or where there turns out to be a good view. Or not stop at a
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I see you're easily entertained. But you know, you can tell the car to go somewhere and then tell it to stop anywhere along the way. They might even make cars that take directions from you, turn-by-turn.
Or you can do what I do, which is to explore it online, maybe read about its history, learn about local politics and economy, look at photos or streetview, read some reviews, watch some videos other people took, then decide whether I need to visit in person. I can visit way more places virtually and learn ab
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They might even make cars that take directions from you, turn-by-turn.
Oh, they do that. The technology is called a steering wheel.
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19th century: Wagons and trains. No automobiles. No highways. No car joyrides.
But certainly a horse culture that included riding for the joy of it.
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The problem is, once autonomous driving has a proven track record of being safer than human drivers in an overwhelming majority of situations, it is likely and perhaps even inevitable that legislation will be passed restricting humans right to drive on public roads. Right now, the big concern is that humans may be placed at undue risk by robotic use of the public roads. O
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40,000 people died last year in the US alone from human driven vehicles and I'm pretty sure some of them and their loved ones might prefer a different outcome if we had the technology. If we replace the human drivers with computers and drop that number to a smaller number (maybe even zero) then you are going to have a VERY hard time arguing that huge body count is a worthwhile price to pay.
40,000 is a small number compared to number of drivers, passengers and miles driven. Heck, it's less than the number of suicides in a year (and even includes a number of suicides that weren't classified as such).
And if the end justifying the means is your argument, why not apply a technological solution to bigger problems too?
Deaths in the US in 2016:
Heart disease: 635,260
Cancer: 598,038
Stroke: 142,142
Diabetes: 80,058
Most of these were likely preventable. Self-administering food appears to be incredibly d
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So? Driving is a calculated risk, where people see the benefits as outweighing the risks. (...) You can live in a padded room if you like, but don't impose it on others.
To most people, most of the time the benefit is getting from A to B and driving only a means to an end. And stop acting like we can't die in your crash. That's why we have laws on speeding and drunk driving, what you think is acceptable risk is not the final answer. I think we're extremely far from a ban on human driving, but your "maybe I'm high risk but I don't care because freedom" reminds me of half-blind elderly who refuse to turn in their license. I'm not going to hold on to it at all costs if it's ob
Huh? (Score:2)
Um, huh? Tesla's Autopilot had driven 1,2 billion miles [electrek.co] as of July. Two orders of magnitude more than Waymo.
10 million miles is really nothing. In the US, there's only one fatal accident per 86 million miles on average.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
Um, huh? Tesla's Autopilot had driven 1,2 billion miles [electrek.co] as of July. Two orders of magnitude more than Waymo.
Uh, Tesla's "autopilot" is a driver assist, not a self-driving vehicle. And it racks up the miles on expressways-- that's the easy kind of driving.
So, no, not the same thing.
10 million miles is really nothing. In the US, there's only one fatal accident per 86 million miles on average.
Indeed, that's the metric to compare to. But not all miles driven are the same.
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Semantics and legalities. It's still collecting data and allowing for the refinement of algorithms. Just over a hundred times more data.
If the article is going to claim that Waymo is "leading the pack in terms of road miles driven", they shouldn't explicitly list Tesla as a company that they've driven more miles than. Peroid. Because that's simply not a valid claim. You can argue that Waymo and Tesla's goals are different, but which
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it is a different thing.
Staying in lane, staying a constant distance from cars ahead of you, and occasionally changing lanes on a straight expressway-- these are all useful as driver assist, but it's not self driving.
If you want to compare miles driven on self-driving to things that are not self-driving, then a lot of cars have put in more mile
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Nothing you wrote changes the fact that what was written in the article is erroneous.
* If one considers Tesla's Autopilot to be in same category as Waymo, then the claim that Waymo has driven more miles than Tesla's system is simply false
* If one considers Tesla to not have a system in the same category as Waymo, then the claim that Waymo has driven more miles than Tesla's system is nonsensical.
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Tesla only has one system. Just different revisions of it. When they complete one revision, they deploy it and move on to the next.
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You can argue that Waymo and Tesla's goals are different, but which one has driven more miles is not up for debate.
Depends on what you mean by "driving". The Tesla system is a glorified passenger.
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Semantics and legalities. It's still collecting data and allowing for the refinement of algorithms. Just over a hundred times more data.
Teslas have far fewer sensors than Waymo vehicles, so they collect vastly less data. No lidar, for example.
And collected data is not a very good metric. Is the quality/utility of Tesla's data as good as Waymo's? Considering that they don't even look for many types of events and don't collect a constant feed from every camera it's very likely that they are missing lots of stuff that will be vital to reaching full self driving.
There is very little reason to think that Tesla is anywhere near Waymo on self driv
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Semantics and legalities.
No, technicalities. Tesla's auto-pilot does not have the capabilities that this thing has regardless of what you want to call it.
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It wasn't "semantics and legalities" when "autopilot" steered a vehicle into a highway divider [popularmechanics.com].
It wasn't "semantics and legalities" when "autopilot" drove into the side of a tractor trailer [washingtonpost.com].
Then it was the stupid driver who mistakenly used autopilot as a substitute for paying and attention because "autopilot" is not a self-driving vehicle system. Now, when it's convenient for you to argue so, it suddenly is equ
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"And it racks up the miles on expressways-- that's the easy kind of driving."
Some people here think this isn't a feat. I"m pretty sure thousands of human-driven vehicles result in death every year in ideal conditions. Not every accident happens when its icy/raining/tornadoing/etc.
Honestly, those wrecks that happen in bad conditions could often be avoided if humans weren't so over-confident in their abilities and not able to wait (often less than an hour) for more ideal conditions.
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Not just expressways (Score:2)
Uh, Tesla's "autopilot" is a driver assist, not a self-driving vehicle. And it racks up the miles on expressways-- that's the easy kind of driving.
It's also used on surface streets. It can follow cars, stay in complex lanes, and react to changes around it.
I would argue that Tesla has on balance as much important experience as Waymo does, because Tesla has a lot more info on the basics of driving determined in a general purpose way, with no prior knowledge of the road you are on. Waymo's approach is more a
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Wouldn't it be better to compare fatalities/accidents broken down by the type of driving (highway or city) since they are a whole different beast, and the highway driving is easier, but likely to result in harder collisions where the city driving is more complicated but much lower speed but hopefully less likely to result in death.
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Yeah...
When Tesla call it a self-driving vehicle, there will be more than a few people who will be interested in that.
Because, for a start, they don't have a licence for that. And a lot of courts will sit up and take notice at, say, all those claims they made that a Tesla ABSOLUTELY 100% ISN'T a self-driving vehicle, and didn't kill that nice Apple engineer that time.
You can't denounce a claim on one hand, and then try to win on that same claim somewhere else.
AI (Score:3)
Every time when I hear about these crazy miles I've got just one question to ask: has Google finally solved image recognition and I'm not talking about simple cases - I'm talking about deliberate fakes, bad weather conditions, etc. 1 [bleepingcomputer.com], 2 [theregister.co.uk], 3 [evolvingai.org].
These issues can easily make your car software make life threatening decisions.
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The deliberate fakes are carefully tuned to a particular network. If you don't know the network, you can't just make a fake.
Besides, is this really a problem ? You could replace a 35 mph speed limit sign with a deliberate fake that says 65, if you wanted, but that's not really a major issue, it seems.
Cross referencing (Score:2)
But no one is going to see a 65 MPH speed limit sign on a residential road and believe it
Neither will a properly programmed computer. It will know it isn't on a road where that sort of speed is appropriate. In fact the computer probably will be cross referencing in real time what the sign says with one or more GPS maps that tells it what the expected speed limit on a road should be. Human's can't do that sort of real time cross referencing - we just have to use our experience and heuristic problem solving.
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But no one is going to see a 65 MPH speed limit sign on a residential road
It was just an example. If you can think of a better example of people tampering with traffic signs, use that instead.
A self driving car wouldn't get fooled by the sign either. It has a map with all the speed limits.
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A self driving car wouldn't get fooled by the sign either. It has a map with all the speed limits.
And everyone with a car navigation system all know that the maps are always going to be completely accurate and should be trusted...
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And everyone with a car navigation system all know that the maps are always going to be completely accurate and should be trusted...
When driving, I usually consult the map for the actual speed limit than try to rely on the (often missing) signs. So many times, I've merged on a freeway, and not seen an actual sign near the on-ramp.
Either way, the self-driving car can still read the signs, use map when sign is missing or unreadable, pick the safest option in case of a conflict, and report inconsistencies.
Human drivers are dangerous too (Score:2)
I've got just one question to ask: has Google finally solved image recognition and I'm not talking about simple cases - I'm talking about deliberate fakes, bad weather conditions, etc.
If they had completely solved such problems one would assume they would be bringing the technology to market for sale. So the answer is obviously that they have solved some problems but not all the problems. Human drivers have problems with bad weather and deliberate fakes too. Although be honest, when was the last time you saw an actual deliberate fake sign? Computers actually could be less susceptible to these since they can reference map databases about what speed limits etc should be for a given loc
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Uber's self driving car has already killed a person quite deliberately because the software contained a major bug.
Now, the question is: are we ready to trust the driving software knowing that it's nigh impossible to program in all the possible choices and situations? Say, a self driving car is driving a free way at 55MPH and suddenly encounters a group of people, a stalled car and a cliff, and there's no time to apply the brake properly. Where will it go? What the decision will be? You can think of hundre
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Pretty easy answer. Apply the brake. If there's a safe and legal way to swerve around the obstacle, do that, otherwise just stay in the lane and keep braking.
Of course, realistically speaking, the chance of suddenly encountering a stalled car, a group of people, and a cliff on the freeway is pretty slim. The lidar/radar systems would have seen the obstacles much earlier.
around the Phoenix, Arizona area. (Score:2)
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If I were an engineer designing the sensor suite for an autonomous anything (which I don't even remotely have the skills to do) I would
Perspective? (Score:4, Informative)
But it's worth keeping things in perspective: U.S. drivers rack up some 3 trillion miles each year, so Waymo still has some ground to cover.
Umm, WTF does this have to do with "keeping perspective"? It isn't a competition between Waymo and the rest of us human drivers to see who can rack up the most miles driven.
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It means that non-human-driven cars have collectively accounted for 0.000333% of all the miles travelled this year.
This means that... pretty much... they haven't way over 99.99% of the human race has never been in, with or near a driverless Waymo car.
This means that, pretty much, Waymo hasn't even covered a thousandth of a percent of the things it needs to cope with when driving.
And also... that if there is a single accident, that it would scale up 300,000-fold in terms of their overall average accident rat
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they haven't way over 99.99% of the human race has never been in, with or near a driverless Waymo car.
They let me drive legally on the road after a single 1 hour test, where I also didn't see 99.99% of the human race, maybe even more.
Waymo's had quite a few.
In how many cases was their driverless vehicle to blame ?
Bad data analysis (Score:2)
This means that, pretty much, Waymo hasn't even covered a thousandth of a percent of the things it needs to cope with when driving.
Not even remotely true. Clearly they haven't come close to every corner case they could run into (they are still testing after all) but if their tech could handle as little as you claim then they couldn't be operated at all on roads of any description. Furthermore most humans are given a license to drive unsupervised well before they have seen all the problems they can run into. We don't even require that they be full grown adults and the "test" is frankly something of a joke.
And also... that if there is a single accident, that it would scale up 300,000-fold in terms of their overall average accident rate if we all jumped on board them. And Waymo's had quite a few.
That's not how statistical a
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Sounds like a big number, but... (Score:2)
I think I read somewhere that the number of miles driven in one single morning commute is something like 130 million miles. So, while 10 million miles is certainly impressive we aren't yet equivalent to 0.4% of a year's commuter driving (2 commutes per day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks per year). And, as previously pointed out, the Waymo miles are not driven in every set of road conditions in the US and are very controlled.
The real question we and they need to discuss is what is the amount of testing and user
Driverless Cars Solve No Problem. (Score:2)
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First minutes of a real war and we will all be dead
Speak for yourself. I never leave my bunker.
Waymo golf clap (Score:1)
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It's not really fair to add up the miles of all humans, when they are all independent.
By the way, did you know that me and Usain Bolt together have won 8 olympic gold medals ?
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MORE MEDIA HYPE (Score:2)
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The technology is improving every day, and while they'll have problem with some difficult corner cases, they'll make up for that with much better performance in other situations, like not getting distracted by a phone call or a dropped cigarette lighter.
It's only a matter of time before the overall accident rate is lower than human drivers.
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They don't need to think. They just need to drive. In fact, we don't want them to think like humans,because we don't want them to make our mistakes.
we won't have that until we figure out how our brains do that
Nope. We just need to see what mistakes they make, and then come up with a fix. Just fix one mistake at a time, and keep doing that until it's good enough.
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How many miles (Score:2)
driven during inclement weather?
on snow-covered roads?
in construction zones?
in parking lots?
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Even if they can't do that, I'd be happy to have my car chauffeur me around when the weather is nice and the road conditions are perfect. That would likely cover 95% of the time and take an hour load off my daily driving routine.
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The rest of the time, what are you going to do with a car that has no steering wheel?
shared experience (Score:2)
How many cars are being tested? (Score:2)
Do the math and you'd need a whole lot of cars running around all the time at highway speeds. So how many cars are really operating? Something doesn't sound quite right here.
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First: In many areas, in addition to regulations describing the exact size, shape, colour and placement of road signage, there are also regulations defining who has the authority and responsibility to place such signs. (e.g. stops signs on public roads are the responsibility of a governing body such as the municipality or state, but stop signs in the grocery st
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the US auto fatality rate is 1.5 per 100 million miles. Come back and let us know how things are when you get to a billion miles.
It's even worse than that. You need to compare with the US auto fatality rate for cars not going faster than 35 mph.
And subtract the fatalities that wasn't due to driving, like someone having a heart attack or stroke while being in a car, or a bridge collapsing.