Comment by jordanb
6 hours ago
There's also the risk of a phantom breaking event causing a big pileup. The PR of a Waymo causing a large cascading accident would be horrible.
6 hours ago
There's also the risk of a phantom breaking event causing a big pileup. The PR of a Waymo causing a large cascading accident would be horrible.
Only because most drivers are tailgating and so if someone touches the brakes everyone needs to do a panic stop just in case. If people maintained a safe following distance at all times there would be space to see the lights and determine that no action is needed (or more likely you just take your foot off the gas but don't flash your brakes thus not cascading).
Of course the above needs about 6 times as many lanes as any city has. When you realize those massive freeways in Houston are what Des Moines needs you start to see how badly cars scale in cities.
Do Waymos phantom brake? Given the number of trips hey do I would imagine there would be a ton of videos if that was happening.
they brake to “suss out” certain things, that ive noticed:
construction workers, delivery vehicles, traffic cones.. nothing unreasonable for it to approach with caution, brake for, and move around.
the waymo usually gets about 2 feet away from a utility truck and then sits there confused for awhile before it goes away.
it usually gets very close to these hazards before making that maneuver.
it seems like having a flashing utility strobe really messes with it and it gets extra cautious and weird around those. now, it should be respectful of emergency lights but-
i would see a problem here if it decided to do this on a freeway , five feet away from a pulled over cop or someone changing a tire.
it sure does spazz out and sit there for a long time over the emergency lights before it decides what to do
i really wish there was a third party box we could wire into strobes (or the hazard light circuit) that would universally tell an autonomous car “hey im over here somewhere you may not be expecting me , signaling for attention.”
> sits there confused for awhile before it goes away.
Probably what you're witnessing is the car sitting in exception state until a human remote driver gets assigned
This. Stop in a dumb way and a garbage truck bumps you on a city street and it's no big deal. Applying a bunch of brake at the wrong time and you could easily cause a newsworthy sized (and therefore public scrutiny sized) accident.
The real public isn't an internet comment section. Having your PR people spew statements about "well, other people have an obligation to use safe following distances" is unlikely to get you off the hook.