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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
I was in Tempe about 2 weeks ago and these things were all over the place. Twice i observed them driving erratically. One time it was trying to change lanes, but seemingly couldn't decide what to do. It moved halfway over, before reaching an intersection, then moved back over, applying the brakes unnecessarily, and then trying again. The first attempt it was wide open to make the move, the second one was a little dicey and i had to back off because i thought there was going to be an accident in front of me.
Scott
"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.
Congrats on linking to 4 reports about people who don't know how to drive properly (most likely too busy paying attention to their phone, or following too close). You should ALWAYS be able to stop safely when the person in front of you stops fast.
The worst part is, Waymo cars are a fucking eyesore with all of their sensors all over. So either you have no clue what the vehicle is, in which case you should be like "what the fuck is that thing" and the vehicle should have your full attention, and you should be able to react quickly. Or else you DO know what it is, in which case you should be thinking "ok, I've heard all about these....proceed with caution". Either way there's absolutely no excuse for being surprised and rear ending it...the vehicle should have your full attention.
As expected the bulk of Waymo reports are rear end collisions when the car panic stops, probably for lens flare or some stupid figment of the car's imagination.
If you hit the car ahead of you then YOU are at fault for not maintaining assured clear distance ahead. The car ahead of you panic stopping for any reason should not matter at all and the driver that will be and should be cited is the one with the crumpled front bumper. Maintain enough distance between you and the car ahead of you and it's not a problem no matter what they do.
They panic stop for stupid reasons that other drivers have no reason to anticipate because no human would behave similarly.
Except that humans panic stop routinely for all sorts of reasons not obvious the car behind. And again, the fault is with the idiot behind the car stopping for making unjustified assumptions about the future actions of the driver (or bot) ahead of them.