Comment by bsder
3 days ago
The problem seems to be that the Waymo cars did exactly as you requested and treated the intersections like 4 way stops but kept getting displaced by more aggressive drivers who simply slowed and rolled.
How many non-Waymo accidents happened at intersections during this time? I suspect more than zero given my experiences with other drivers when traffic lights go off. Apparently, Waymo's numbers are zero so humans are gonna lose this one.
The problem here is that safety and throughput are at odds. Waymo chose safety while most drivers chose throughput. Had Waymo been more aggressive and gotten into an accident because it wouldn't give way, we'd have headlines about that, too.
The biggest obstacle to self-driving is the fact that a lot of driving consists of knowing when to break the law.
> The problem here is that safety and throughput are at odds. Waymo chose safety while most drivers chose throughput.
Did they? They chose their safety. I suspect the net effect of their behavior made the safety of everyone worse.
They did such a bad job of handling it people had to go around them, making things less safe.
We know what people are like. Not everyone is OK doing 2-3 mph for extended time waiting for a Waymo to feel “safe”.
Operating in a way that causes large numbers of other drivers to feel the need to bypass you is fundamentally worse.
> Did they? They chose their safety. I suspect the net effect of their behavior made the safety of everyone worse.
There is no viable choice other than prioritizing the safety of your rider. Anything less would be grounds for both lawsuits and reputational death.
The fact that everybody else chose throughput over safety is not the fault of Waymo.
Will you also complain when enough Waymo cars start running on the freeways that a couple of them in a row can effectively enforce following distances and speed limits, for example?
Obstructing traffic is also against the law.
Something I had pounded into me when I drove too slowly and cautiously during my first driving test, and failed.
Those Waymos weren't moving which is a pretty egregious example of obstructing traffic.
An old rule of thumb is every time a service expands by an order of magnitude there are new problems to solve. I suspect and hope this is just Waymo getting to one of those points with new problems to solve, and they will find a way to more graciously handle this in the future.
> Will you also complain when enough Waymo cars start running on the freeways that a couple of them in a row can effectively enforce following distances and speed limits, for example?
In my state, that would itself be a traffic violation, so yes I would. The leftmost lane on an interstate highway is reserved for passing. An autonomous vehicle cruising in that lane (regardless of speed) would therefore be programmed in a way that deliberately violates this law.
Enforcement is its own challenge, whether robots or humans.
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>The problem seems to be that the Waymo cars did exactly as you requested and treated the intersections like 4 way stops but kept getting displaced by more aggressive drivers who simply slowed and rolled.
So, you're saying Waymo can't handle a regular 4 way stop sign given how everyone else on the road drives? That's not a problem?
Waymo cars handle 4 way stops just fine.
When traffic lights go out, that is supposed to be a 4 way stop with appropriate yielding of right-of-way. The problem is that most human drivers can't deal with even a simple, low-traffic stop sign 4-way-stop reliably, and these are complex 4-way-stops with lots of right-of-way changes when power is off.
For example, navigating intersections in San Diego during the blackout was a disaster with lots of accidents and that long predated Waymo.