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Locals Reportedly Are Frustrated With Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars (cnbc.com)
More than a dozen people who work near Waymo's office in Chandler, Arizona, have complained about the self-driving cars to The Information. "One women said that she almost hit one of the company's minivans because it suddenly stopped while trying to make a right turn, while another man said that he gets so frustrated waiting for the cars to cross the intersection that he has illegally driven around them," reports CNBC. From the report: The anecdotes highlight how challenging it can be for self-driving cars, which are programmed to drive conservatively, to master situations that human drivers can handle with relative ease -- like merging or finding a gap in traffic to make a turn. Waymo has been testing its vehicles in the Phoenix suburbs for little more than a year and is widely seen as the furthest along in the self-driving car space, but its safety drivers have to take control of the vehicles regularly, people with direct knowledge of the issues tell The Information.
A Waymo spokesperson said its cars are "continually learning" and that "safety remains its highest priority" during testing. The spokesperson also said that Waymo is using feedback from its early rider program to improve its technology, though it declined to comment specifically on the intersection complaints mentioned in The Information story. The company has previously said that it plans to launch a commercial self-driving taxi service before the end of the year, but that its service will still include a Waymo employee in each car as a "chaperone."
A Waymo spokesperson said its cars are "continually learning" and that "safety remains its highest priority" during testing. The spokesperson also said that Waymo is using feedback from its early rider program to improve its technology, though it declined to comment specifically on the intersection complaints mentioned in The Information story. The company has previously said that it plans to launch a commercial self-driving taxi service before the end of the year, but that its service will still include a Waymo employee in each car as a "chaperone."
I don't think there's any doubt that self driving vehicles are the future. The issue is that it's become abundantly clear that they are not the present.
People seem to think that self driving cars are almost here, only a couple of years out. The truth is that they are way further away than people want to believe. Driving is not an easy problem to solve, there are just too many edge cases. I am very much looking forward to self driving cars, and I really hope we manage to get there within the next 30 years or so when I expect I won't be able to drive myself any more. But realistically I think that 20-30 years is far more likely than 2-3.
As a generally law-abiding driver who drives the speed limit, comes to full stops, waits until both lanes are clear before pulling into traffic because you never know when someone will switch lanes into the one you'd like to enter, etc, I identify with the Waymo. The vast majority of drivers seem to drive with contempt for the law and safety.
I constantly see people crossing solid lines near stop lights, changing lanes during turns, turning right on red when not in the outer lane, weaving through traffic, never leaving the 1 second per ten miles per hour gap to the cars in front of them, not using blinkers, driving while looking at their laps, passing cyclists as close as a couple of feet to them without slowing instead of giving them the rights of an equal vehicle, etc.
Just today I had somebody honk their horn at me when I pulled in front of them to get out of the way of a fire truck and ambulance in my lane. They were driving along as if nothing was happening, apparently in full ignorance that they were supposed to be slowing or pulling over and yielding to any other vehicles that need to move to allow the emergency vehicles by. They should have cameras on the emergency vehicles recording all blatant failures to yield and hold hearings to revoke their driving privileges. Lives are often at stake.
I've said for a while that we should require full instrumentation of every new vehicle with the same sensors as self-driving cars for a few years before we go full bore on the self-driving cars. During those years, we should both use that to collect all of the data and true, reliable statistics on how bad people really drive while evolving a system of full automatic enforcement of the traffic laws. After that, deployment of self-driving technology should be a cinch. Nobody will want to drive themselves if they have to do it legally. It is too boring.
Since self-driving delivery trucking is clearly, on the order of crystal, more profitable for your online-goods-provider-overlord, perhaps it comes down to insurability. Once your automotive insurance companies collectively determine it is in their actuarial interest to back nonhuman automobile pilots, the lobbying effort will be insurmountable.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Except, as we keep seeing, no insurance company will take that bet in any near future imaginable. Not until we know these cars can handle the most basic of driving tasks like rain and snow, construction zones, cops directing traffic, etc. Not a single one of which can be even remotely handled by any existing system. I do think we'll get there, but it is still a long way off.
Insurance companies are extremely risk adverse. Until self driving cars are proven safer in all conditions and over millions and millions of miles, the insurance for them is likely to be far higher than the insurance for me. And so far, this is simply not the case. Humans may be horrible drivers, but we're still way better than any autonomous system out there, and it's by orders of magnitude.
"I demand self driving cars violate the laws" How about you follow them?
Jack up insurance in NJ and NYC for "human driven cars" and drop it for autonomous vehicles, the problem will fix itself.
How about you follow them?
Spoken like someone who has never driven a car in a major American city. Good luck with changing the behavior of millions after millions of drivers. Your fantasy world has 0% chance of ever happening, so self-driving cars are going to have to adapt to the ambient traffic patterns, just as humans do.
Drunk drivers tend to crash into things, not have things crash into the back of them?
Did you count the number of humans that did not end up in a ditch ? Those that reached their destination , albeit taking more time than usual ?
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Safe distance is a nice academic idea which ignores the reality of driving on busy roads.
Physics doesn't care about your social problems. If you cannot stop without hitting the car ahead of you then you were following too close. There is no debate to be had here. If you don't maintain an adequate gap then you are purposely taking a risk.
Leave enough of a gap between yourself and the car in front and someone will cut in and fill it.
Then you adjust your speed to allow the car to get ahead of you to a safe distance. If the cars behind you have a problem with you driving safely then they can change lanes and pass or simply slow down themselves and suck it up. It's not rocket surgery to figure this one out. And it is not relevant on single lane roads which account for the vast majority of roads anywhere. Believe it or not, not all driving occurs on multi-lane highways.
And in fact while not as safe, close driving is far more efficient in terms of utilising road space in city enviroments.
You don't get both. Safety and efficiency are not always complementary concepts. The choice to drive more dangerously is one you can make but then you don't get to bitch about the consequences when things go badly. If you want driverless cars to be safe then they are going to maintain assured clear distance just like you should. Your failure to maintain an adequate gap is not the fault of the car ahead of you.
Cars need to be able to handle how traffic actually works, not how it's supposed to work on paper.