Comment by SirMaster
20 hours ago
>despite having already launched service in several other cities.
Why does having launched in other cities matter if the new city brings up things that none of the other launched cities do?
For example the first thing I can think of new for New York is snow and ice.
It's my understanding that self-driving cars don't really account their acceleration and braking for roads that could sometimes be very slippery due to snow and ice.
> "Why does having launched in other cities matter if the new city brings up things that none of the other launched cities do?"
New requirements come up all the time in technology. The existence of a new requirement isn't in and of itself justification for skepticism - is there a particular reason to believe that Waymo is not capable of solving for the new requirement?
The answer may be yes, but simply "ahah! It would need to do [new thing]!" is insufficient. "[new thing] is likely intractable because [reason]" would be more justification for skepticism.
> "It's my understanding that self-driving cars don't really account their acceleration and braking for roads that could sometimes be very slippery due to snow and ice."
Sure, but like above - is there a reason this is an intractable problem?
I'll throw this out there: your human-driven car already accounts for acceleration and braking on slippery roads, without the need for the human. Traction control systems and electronic stability control systems exist! They're in fact incredibly common on modern cars.
The interesting snow & ice problem for me is that humans will drive in winter conditions that are unsafe -- for example white-out blizzards. Robocars won't be able to drive in a white-out blizzard, so they'll likely refuse to do so. Humans should also refuse to drive, but people drive anyways.
NYC doesn't generally get white-out blizzards, so refusing to drive in them is quite feasible.
> Robocars won't be able to drive in a white-out
My Subaru can lane keep in Wyoming blizzards better than I can because it follows the car in front with radar.
Also snow and ice in NYC is a rare event now, not a given like it used to be.
I come from way up top on that globe of ours. I have driven in frankly apocalyptic snowstorms. They're an insidious problem to solve, but I remain optimistic. Back home, they will close specific roads due to snowstorms, but what do you do about the cars already on the road? You can't stay put for 16 hours can you? So you move as slow as possible, sometimes as low as 5 kilometres an hour. Cause that's the thing about a snowstorm; it's about visibility. You're not risking your life if a dude in skis can go faster than you.
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If white-out visibility is the only problem to be addressed then machines seem pretty well placed because they can use very accurate positioning and non-visible light sensors. Unfortunately they probably wouldn't know that there's a 50 yard section of the road that always drifts in when the wind comes from the south and the snow is dry.
>I'll throw this out there: your human-driven car already accounts for acceleration and braking on slippery roads, without the need for the human. Traction control systems and electronic stability control systems exist! They're in fact incredibly common on modern cars.
These systems don't help with the problems I am talking about.
You have to drive completely differently in heavy snow, significantly slower, brake sooner, turn less sharp, accelerate much slower, leave significantly larger gaps, leave space to move out of the way and be ready to move if someone behind you is coming at you too fast and can't stop in time, etc. I've spend my entire life in the midwest.
The traction control system in my 2023 camry didn't help one bit when I applied the brakes on black ice and the car didn't react at all, it just kept sliding at the same speed across the ice.
That all sounds like something that should be easier for a robot to do than the typical human. If programmed for how to drive in heavy snow, a robot should be able to switch driving modes much easier than the typical human brain.
Waymo has been trained in Buffalo NY for winter conditions, unlike most NYC drivers.
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Launching in other cities with new problems gives experience dealing with new problems, and the meta-learnings transfer to better processes for adapting to new issues. But yeah, ice and snow are definitely major new environmental factors for New York (and DC, and many other places we are starting to see more serious testing).
Autonomous vehicles can and do take into account surface conditions, there’s not really any reason not to. There are pretty good generative models of the physics of vehicles with different surface conditions, and I imagine part of the data collection they are doing is to help build statistical of vehicle performance based on sensed conditions.
A fair point about weather, but a lot of the assertions are like "how will they handle the double parking and suicidal pedestrians jaywalking across the street??" I'd say most of the concerns just don't sound very unique at all.
For weather, Waymo has clearly started out in warmer climates while slowly building out towards places with colder and colder weather, I'm guessing they're just incrementally getting better at it.