
Waymo’s driverless cars have logged 10M miles on public roads - NicoJuicy
https://qz.com/1419747/waymos-self-driving-cars-have-logged-10-million-miles/
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snrji
> Waymo cars reportedly have problems turning left, a flaw the Information
> calls “the Zoolander problem”: local residents reported waiting behind Waymo
> cars for minutes at a time as the algorithm hesitates to turn into traffic.

UPS drivers are told not to turn left for a reason. Couldn't Waymo do the
same?

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jedberg
I think that only works for UPS because everyone else is turning left. But
imagine a world where no car will turn left. I wonder if traffic would flow
better or not.

I suspect not, because if that were the case, cities would outlaw left turns,
and as far as I know, no city has done that.

~~~
jobigoud
> But imagine a world where no car will turn left. I wonder if traffic would
> flow better or not.

We have a ton of roundabouts in Europe and if you ignore the merge into the
roundabout, it transforms any turn into a right turn.

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jedberg
I'm a huge fan of roundabouts, and wish we had more (or any) of them here in
the states. But barring redoing the pavement at every intersection, that's not
a very viable plan here. :)

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jobigoud
They come in various sizes. In some extreme cases the circle is completely
inside the crossing of the roads and doesn't even require any change to the
existing roads. Like here:
[https://www.google.com/maps/@44.8481471,-0.6336833,3a,75y,18...](https://www.google.com/maps/@44.8481471,-0.6336833,3a,75y,183.9h,70.08t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1szQkTAPZoBtTyulOKuCcMHA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656)

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jedberg
I've seen a huge uptick of Waymo cars on the road lately. I live in Cupertino
(the next town over from Mt. View) and yesterday I saw three within the span
of one light cycle, each going in a different direction. At this point I see
at least one if not a lot more every weekday.

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aqzman
In your experience do they drive differently than any other car on the road?
If a vehicle around you was powered by Waymo with no markings stating as much
would you know (ignoring the fact of an empty driver's seat)?

~~~
jedberg
> In your experience do they drive differently than any other car on the road?

For sure. They drive like the most conservative driver you'll meet, to the
point of being a bit dangerous. They come to a full stop at every stop sign,
which here in California is unexpected, and unexpected means dangerous. They
also slam on their brakes a lot, without regard to how far away the person
behind them is (as opposed to when I have to slam on the brakes, I check the
rear view and if possible cut it a little closer to the car in front if the
car behind is really close).

They putter out of stop lights, which is mostly just annoying, and they
generally follow the speed limits, even on roads where all the rest of the
traffic is typically 10mph over.

To be fair, they are doing what in theory is much safer, but since they don't
act like a human, it makes them unpredictable.

> If a vehicle around you was powered by Waymo with no markings stating as
> much would you know (ignoring the fact of an empty driver's seat)?

Well the massive LIDAR unit on top is a big giveaway. :) Actually that's the
biggest giveaway. The cars are unmarked otherwise, and there is always a
driver in the seat. They just may not have their hands on the wheel, but
that's hard to tell from outside. And of course all of the aforementioned
strange driving habits.

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erikig
> "Competing with other companies with autonomous-vehicle programs like Uber,
> Tesla, Apple, and GM’s Cruise, Waymo is leading the pack in terms of road
> miles driven."

I'd think Tesla would be leading in terms of autonomous mikes driven given
that they have sold 100k+ vehicles with Autopilot.

~~~
slivym
No, if you want to compare autonomous miles driven by that definition the
Chevrolet Cruze is leading in terms of autonomous miles driven given that they
sold the most vehicles in the US with cruise control.

If you want to talk about real autonomous driving then it's Waymo.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Do Cruze vehicles supply data back to GM constantly that is used to improve
self driving models? Updated models which are pushed back down to vehicles?

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thecopy
Can these systems reason? If a driverless car went on a road that started
spiraling so that the road would be upside down, would the car just keep
following the road, not realizing it will fall down or would it realize it
cannot continue?

~~~
Judgmentality
I'd bet humans would handle a corkscrew road that makes the car do a barrel
roll (I think that's what you're trying to describe) worse than a robot would.
Luckily that type of road doesn't exist, for numerous reasons that have
nothing to do with robots.

~~~
scoggs
I know it's a serious conversation but...

> Luckily that type of road doesn't exist

Speak for yourself.

In more related news I have a friend who helps out on Waymo and he's ALWAYS
posting great articles about Waymo tech, always showing off amazing pictures
of what he's working on, and he's always positing about how great things in
the future could be. He's not the type of dude to over hype something, he's
not the type of person who over exaggerates things either. He's not insanely
fanboy-ish about it but he's definitely borderline. But, I guess when your
vehicles are blowing the competition out of the water you'd be excited too?

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oldgradstudent
When did the meaning of the adjective "driverless" change from "without a
driver" to "with a safety driver, engineer and a remote operator"?

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lawrenceyan
Where did they say that anywhere here?

~~~
oldgradstudent
It is quite clear from recent press reports that the vast majority of Waymo's
10M miles were logged with a safety driver, and some with an additional safety
engineer, but the title talks about "Waymo's _driverless_ cars".

So obviously, the adjective _driverless_ no longer means _without a driver_.

The part about an additional remote operator is tongue in cheek.

[https://www.theinformation.com/articles/waymos-big-
ambitions...](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/waymos-big-ambitions-
slowed-by-tech-trouble)

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ksec
It doesn't say 10M miles by how many cars though? Could they start trialing
discounted Taxi Ride on a massive scale? How many more miles of testing do we
need before this can be rolled out commercially?

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londons_explore
The USA has 7.1 fatalities per billion km driven.

Thats 1 fatality per ~100M miles on average.

So presumably Waymo would have to drive a few hundred million miles without a
fatality to conclusively be able to say 'we are safer'.

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imtringued
You're assuming that the only thing an accident can result in is loss of human
life. Injury statistics are far more interesting because they occur more
frequently. [1] At a rate of 24 injuries per 100 million km waymo cars should
have resulted in quite a few injuries already.

[1]
[https://www.transport.govt.nz/resources/tmif/safetyandsecuri...](https://www.transport.govt.nz/resources/tmif/safetyandsecurity/ss014/)

~~~
londons_explore
Waymo has already had some injuries.

> There was an occupant in the driver's seat of the Waymo vehicle who suffered
> minor injuries, Tyler added.

[https://phys.org/news/2018-05-waymo-self-driving-car-
collisi...](https://phys.org/news/2018-05-waymo-self-driving-car-collision-
arizona.html#jCp)

~~~
twiceaday
A human drove into a Waymo car. I would not classify that as Waymo having some
injuries. The driving safety statistics should only cover decisions made by
the auto-pilot. If not simply because the same auto-pilot will be used in the
future but not the same vehicles / vehicle seating arrangements and related
safety measures.

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glenrivard
Here is the pace.

2012 miles per day 240

2014 miles per day 636

2017 miles per day 4,630

Feb 2018 miles per day 10,753

June 2018 miles per day 16,494

July 2018 miles per day 25,000

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deepnotderp
Interestingly enough, the new version is supposed to have a completely
revamped sensor suite including a new LIDAR, new cameras and radar.

This suggests two interesting things to me:

1) Google/Waymo, the "software and ML can solve this problem" company is
admitting that hardware is important to solving the problem.

2) They are likely much further away from L5 or even public release than some
believe given that they are now completely revamping their sensor suite.

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303space
Not sure where you got the idea that Waymo doesn’t value hardware development
- their whole lawsuit saga against Uber was over lidar trade secrets (google
“laser is the sauce”). Maybe you were thinking of Tesla who has insisted their
existing video/radar stack will be competitive with enough ML? For all the
other major SDV companies I’m familiar with, affordable and peformative lidar
is a huge focus.

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deepnotderp
Waymo handed out pcbs as earrings and their patents were bs.

Most companies want lidar to get _cheaper_ not better. Very rarely has the
solution to a perception problem been "better sensors" as opposed to "more
ml".

