Former Top Waymo Engineer Altered Code To Go on 'Forbidden Routes', Report Says (arstechnica.com)

In the early days of what ultimately became Waymo, Google's self-driving car division (known at the time as "Project Chauffeur"), there were "more than a dozen accidents, at least three of which were serious," according to a new article in The New Yorker . From a report: The magazine profiled Anthony Levandowski, the former Google engineer who was at the center of the Waymo v. Uber trade secrets lawsuit. According to the article, back in 2011, Levandowski also modified the autonomous software to take the prototype Priuses on "otherwise forbidden routes."

Citing an anonymous source, The New Yorker reports that Levandowski sat behind the wheel as the safety driver, along with Isaac Taylor, a Google executive. But while they were in the car, the Prius "accidentally boxed in another vehicle," a Camry.

As The New Yorker wrote: "A human driver could easily have handled the situation by slowing down and letting the Camry merge into traffic, but Google's software wasn't prepared for this scenario. The cars continued speeding down the freeway side by side. The Camry's driver jerked his car onto the right shoulder. Then, apparently trying to avoid a guard rail, he veered to the left; the Camry pinwheeled across the freeway and into the median. Levandowski, who was acting as the safety driver, swerved hard to avoid colliding with the Camry, causing Taylor to injure his spine so severely that he eventually required multiple surgeries." This was apparently just one of several accidents in Project Chauffeur's early days.

Comments

How Not To Write A Headline

[American AC in Paris]

These two yutzes cause a crash on the freeway and they don't even bother to stop and check if the other people are injured?

They don't even bother reporting the crash to the authorities, they just driiive on back to HQ and hush it up?

"Former Top Waymo Engineer Altered Code To Go On Forbidden Routes" is not the headline I would have chosen for this story, folks.

Re:How Not To Write A Headline

[chispito]

If you don' t know something, just make it up? Who said they didn't stop?...Do you have some cite for information that says they did not report this accident, one that you're keeping secret from the law enforcement authorities who would like to know about it?

I am not blaming you. The summary quotes the horrible Ars writeup, which itself butchers the New Yorker piece. In the New Yorker piece, it explicitly states about the incident

The Prius regained control and turned a corner on the freeway, leaving the Camry behind. Levandowski and Taylor didn’t know how badly damaged the Camry was. They didn’t go back to check on the other driver or to see if anyone else had been hurt. Neither they nor other Google executives made inquiries with the authorities. The police were not informed that a self-driving algorithm had contributed to the accident.

The quote from Ars doesn't even make it explicitly clear that the "forbidden route" was involved with the near miss which led to the Camry crashing. It should be noted, however, that the Camry driver was by all accounts at fault in that scenario. It sounds like the Camry thought he could be more aggressive and overtake the Prius, but the Prius (human or robot) has the right of way.

Re: How Not To Write A Headline

[mrchew1982]

You're so fucking wrong that it's not funny. Before you kill somebody here is the relevant line from the CA DMV handbook: "Freeway traffic has the right-of-way." From: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/... Every state that I have lived in has been the same, some going so far as to post "YIELD" signs on the on-ramp.