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Waymo autonomous vehicles

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Regardless of the news stories about failures of autonomous automobiles, I recently watched a Waymo vehicle navigating the very busy, narrow, congested streets of San Francisco's Tenderloin district, and the technology is amazing and quite impressive. The Tenderloin is a cacophony of visual, audio and physical inputs and distractions. Along with the standard traffic signals and indicators, there is trash, bad lane markings, potholes, sudden changes between two-way and one-way traffic, double-parked vehicles, homeless people camping virtually encroaching the street, people with mental issues moving aimlessly into streets and intersections, bike/e-scooter messengers/delivery people weaving through traffic. The Waymo seems to accommodate this environment as well as a human - keep in mind, some humans cannot handle driving in S.F. and many will outright avoid the Tenderloin at all costs.

I am totally impressed with the sensor tech, sensor integration and software.

The vehicles are bristling with sensors (radar, lidar, cameras and microphones) so it does illustrate how adept humans are with our bio-based gear!

 
Click to expand...
People who live in SF hate Waymo vehicles, because of their tendency to get hung up and cause traffic jams, in their endless journey to beta test at the expennse of ordinary citizens. The Wayslows (depending on jurisdiction) do not have to have safety drivers to take over or shut them down when (not if) they malfunction. Some brave citizens have taken to putting traffic cones atop them, which bricks them. I received some stickers from the Survival Research Laboratories, when visiting last week, but alas did not get the opportunity to put a sticker on the roof sensor.
 
Do you live in SF? I live in the adjacent region. I noticed that driver's bad habits contribute significantly to slow traffic. Autonomous cars are a solution on freeways. I think trying to develop surface street self-driving is a case of perfection is the enemy of progress.
 
"Do you live in SF?"

No. I know people who do, and visit often. Agree, freeways and other controlled-access highways would benefit from some level of autonomous control. We drove home from SF to Seattle over the last two days. Idiot humans in cars abound in both cities (Portland too). Getting idiots out of the direct control of dangerous vehicles would be a good thing. Clogging already crowded downtown streets with vehicles having even lower iq drivers (i.e. computers) than usual is NOT optimal.
 
I am a huge proponent of driver aides. My favorite example was a driver at night on highway 580 near SF where a legally exempt individual decided to make his own crosswalk. A primitive Toyota with auto braking did it's thing and everybody survived.

My wife was recently involved in an accident that auto braking may have prevented (not her fault). I thought it was a good idea to get her a car with auto braking. It doesn't trust her and activates a lot. She made me dial it down. I found it very effective provided it wasn't offering a correction to a woman.
 
"I found it very effective provided it wasn't offering a correction to a woman."

At least, if it wasn't correction directed by you. Though it'd still be your fault, and you know that.
 
One interesting thing is that SF city laws for traffic citations require identification (and issuance of citations) to the vehicle's driver. Problems arise when SFPD attempt to cite Waymo driver-less vehicles.
 
Interesting info on the Waymo vehicles causing issues because of over-cautious actions. The Waymo I observed for sometime moved as well as a human driver. I miss the reasoning that people would purposefully disable the autonomous vehicle if it is operating properly - but I do not live in S.F. and only visit.

The tech will only get better and it is not going away. The operations and algorithms obviously are applicable to other applications such as military or police ops so I am certain there will be continued development if not with a direct connection to some type of DARPA program but through some shell organization/company.
 
The citation situation seems easy to address: the laws just need to be changed to cite the automobile vehicle's operator. With enough financial burden of citations, the operators would either revert back to having a human 'safety' driver or cease operations. There is no reason not to change laws to reflect the new technology and its application.
 
As I was sitting in the Tenderloin traffic, an emergency vehicle approached from the rear of the line of cars I was in. It shifted into the single on-coming lane to get around the queue that was waiting at a red traffic light. As it passed, the driver in a vehicle a few cars ahead decided they were self-entitled, and they proceeded to pull out and follow directly behind the emergency vehicle. I believe this driver broke a few laws and caused additional slow down of cross traffic through the intersection. Obviously, the Waymo would not have done such an action so in this situation it was a human driver adding to the slow down. I will take a swag that the offending driver was smugly proud of their Em Vehicle tag-along.
 
" I miss the reasoning that people would purposefully disable the autonomous vehicle if it is operating properly"

The problem is that they DON'T always operate properly, and impede ordinary citizens and emergency services when that happens. Bigger deal, the citizens of the city had no say in being guinea pigs and training devices for the corporate entities involved. And hey, it's SF, there's a certain cache to being a bunch of rowdy punks and rebels, even the geezers participate.
 
How are these blindly stupid “auto” vehicles going to do when:
- the police have to manually direct traffic around an accident, road closure, etc, at night, in the rain ???
- in the middle of a whiteout blizzard???
- in dense fog???
- in black ice conditions???
- when the road requires chains to be installed???
and on and on with difficult edge cases.

The manufacturers must be made 100% liable for anything, and must be fined for hindering police, fire, emergency vehicles or personnel in any way, and fined for blocking traffic due to any malfunction.

 
- in the middle of a whiteout blizzard???
- in dense fog???
- in black ice conditions???
- when the road requires chains to be installed???
Click to expand...

Ostensibly, these conditions all benefit from technology
blizzard -- a combination of GPS and lidar allows for sticking to the roadway, at least, as well as being able to detect obstacles beyond normal visual range and not be affected by backscatter from the snow. It was demonstrated 30 years ago that lidar can provide detections beyond visual range. Not clear whether all commercial car lidars are configured for that, but it's certainly doable.

fog -- ditto above

black ice -- ostensibly, wheel slip can be detected by sensors well before the driver might notice the effects. Additionally, lidar might be able to detect black ice, based on reflectivity differences.

chains -- many states have online announcements of chain requirements, so it's certainly possible that automated cars could at least "know" that chains are required and pull over for the user to install chains, or, it's possible that only cars with 4W drive/snow tires would be allowed to operated autonomously in chain-required conditions

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
I doubt there are genuine technical objections on display here. Same people poured out in force when horseless carriages arrived and startled horses.

Sure, cops are a problem. I have never seen cops directing traffic in a way that made a tie-up any better. Perhaps with every autonomous car recording their poor performance they will finally be shamed ... never mind.

Comms from fire trucks and ambulances can be sent to allow autonomous cars to break typical rules, but right now there aren't enough autonomous cars yet to equip all of those services, like the way they have traffic light overrides that they didn't use to have.

 
Many human drivers do not reduce their speed even when it is obvious they should. . .
Click to expand...

I remember my first time driving in Tule fog; couldn't see past about 3 ft ahead of my hood, so I pulled over, just in time for a semi to barrel through the fog going about 75 mph.

But, the opposite is also true, leading to silly slowdowns on the freeway; it's been my experience that upgrades and turns slow down traffic, there's a spot on the southbound 57 freeway in Fullerton that slows down regardless of time of day and unrelated to the slow onramp to the westbound 91 freeway, since it actually clears up about half a mile from the offramp, only to clog up right at the offramp. Of course, then there are those that MUST cut in front of everyone else. My mind just never sees that as a plausible action, but there are those that seemingly "know" that they will ALWAYS be able to squeeze into a nicely queued line, even in less than 50 ft from the gore point, since there will ALWAYS be someone that lets them in.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
IRstuff - so true about the opposite occurring for no reason. How often have you worked through a traffic slowdown only to come upon the point of contention and realize it is not for an obstruction in the lanes of your travel but for someone merely pulled to the side on the opposite direction side. The road wide open past the momentary delay area, but some rubber-necker(s) paused/slowed just enough for a look and the wave action propagates miles backwards. Humans!
 
Sometimes it's not from rubbernecking, but someone has sped by the slow movers and, when they pull in, they cut so fast that a trailing driver has to tap the brakes. Since so many tailgate so viciously to stop line cutting, that causes the next back to brake harder. Go back 10-15 cars and the line cutter has caused drivers to hammer to brakes and bring them to a stop.

One might momentarily consider leaving room to avoid braking but every time I've left more than half a car length it soon becomes a human centipede of <long stream of invectives> pulling in ahead of me until I am completely halted. Same bunch of <more invectives> will human centipede themselves on a turn arrow that has gone red, blocking everyone waiting after their light has gone green.

Is there a version of Javelin for home use?
 
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