
Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders - rayuela
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-25/alphabet-s-self-driving-cars-to-get-their-first-real-riders
======
jonmc12
Am I the only one feeling the press + big tech narrative of "driverless
vehicles = safety" is way ahead of itself? OK, "driver error is blamed for 94%
of crashes", but what is the validation strategy to show where driverless cars
can quantifiably improve? In 2016, Philip Koopman of CMU discusses that there
are non-trivial engineering challenges of achieving safety in NHTSA Level 4
vehicle automation:
[https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/pubs/koopman16_sae_autono...](https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/pubs/koopman16_sae_autonomous_validation.pdf)

If we are building the safest transportation system, what role do driverless
vehicles play? Wouldn't that be the narrative that actually saves the most
lives?

~~~
stevenh
Imagine ransomware infecting your car that gives you 30 minutes to pay or
you'll be rammed into a tree at 90mph. I don't care about any contrived and
well-funded narratives about how unthinking, unfeeling, driverless cars will
somehow save lives. No thanks, I'd rather take my chances continuing to share
roads with human drivers who are careful because they fear their own death
just as much as I do.

~~~
loup-vaillant
The correct answer to that is very simple, and very expensive: just make
correct software.

Such malware are only possible because the targeted system has vulnerabilities
to begin with. One just has to ensure the absence of such vulnerabilities,
possibly using machine checked proofs.

One obvious approach is to properly isolate the driving software and sensors
from external input.

~~~
c22
Yeah, let's just ask the engineers who are solving one of the toughest
robotics problems ever to rewrite the entire house of cards that is their
technology stack _without any vulnerabilities_.

Of course even machine checked proofs will have trouble finding
vulnerabilities that creep in during the specifications stage or exist in the
realm of hardware.

How do you isolate your sensors from external input and expect to do anything?

~~~
ThrowawayR2
It's not as if embedded systems work the same way as the jumbled mess of
technology that web servers use. It's perfectly possible to firewall off core
system functions into a separate network and separate individual processors
for each function. Existing vehicles today have already a strict hardware
firewall between the CAN bus[1] and the IVI[2] system to prevent bugs in the
more vulnerable and less strictly designed IVI software from sending data that
disrupts safety-critical systems.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN_bus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN_bus)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-
car_entertainment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-car_entertainment)

------
tyingq
Is Waymo clear about what the end goal is? I can't tell if they plan to launch
an Uber like service, or a direct-to-consumer lease type service, or just to
be suppliers (whole vehicles, components like lidar, software) to companies
like Uber. Or maybe they are leaving all of that undecided for now?

I'm not sure this rider trial thing strongly signals any of them. You would
want real world end-customer experiences regardless, I would think.

~~~
djsumdog
I wonder this about autonomous cars in general from any company. They're cool
tech and in Europe, they can really help solve several last leg problems and
cut down on car ownership (I really don't think people should be able to own
self driving cars. They really need airplane style maintenance for sensors and
companies need to work together so all fleets have the latest safety and
security updates).

However I don't really like hearing about tax money going into these projects.
At least in America, self driving cars won't solve gridlock. It will be 15 ~
30 years before we can have autonomous car only highways, and even then, self
driving cars don't even touch the capacity of a real train based mass transit
network. Singapore has had self driving trains for years (it's a much easier
problem) and London is automating more of their lines.

Self driving cars are cool tech, but they're not going to solve grid lock or
many of the major transport problems we face today:

[http://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not-
sol...](http://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not-solve-the-
transportation-problem/)

~~~
TheGRS
Haven't really thought about the safety and maintenance part of this before.
If people own their self-driving cars I suppose there's also a chance they can
opt-out of software updates, which would potentially be very dangerous. I do
believe that the autonomous car future will have room for owned vehicles, but
at this stage I don't think any of us really know how it will shake out.

~~~
tyingq
I assume a lease program with baked in maintenance costs and a lockout if
maintenance is skipped would suffice.

Edit: And I assume the car could drive itself to preventive maintenance
appointments if it's something that can't be done OTA.

~~~
maxerickson
Or just decertify outdated systems.

I guess "DRM" for self driving cars is something people will complain about,
but for vehicles that have controls it doesn't seem real horrible to have an
autonomous system do a check to see if it is still licensed.

There could be an emergency override if the person that needed the vehicle
didn't know how to drive, an override that automatically issued a fixit
ticket.

~~~
ghaff
The thing is that today the average age of cars on the road is something like
ten years. Many people don't and many people can't afford to buy new vehicles.
They may not have the money to deal with that fixit ticket which probably has
to be handled by a licensed service station with a lot of fancy equipment.

So, if all this comes to pass, you'll end up with a system where the wealthy
lease or ride-share their self-driving cars while the plebes are stuck with
trying to keep their manually driven clunkers running.

~~~
maxerickson
Sure, I was talking about addressing a particular safety issue with autonomous
vehicles, not trying to solve economic inequality.

~~~
ghaff
However, if autonomous vehicles are just for the wealthy end of society
whether directly or by way of limo and taxi services, they're not going to be
particularly welcomed by everyone else (aka the majority of voters).

------
KKKKkkkk1
Is there really a race to build self-driving cars? It seems that Waymo is eons
ahead of everyone else.

~~~
pythonaut_16
I have a lot of respect for Waymo's approach to this.

While Tesla and Uber have both just recklessly (imo) jumped in and started
setting loose self driving cars and making bold claims, Google/Waymo has
really taken a slow and measured approach and given great care to making sure
their cars are actually safe.

~~~
aianus
Killing a few extra people today to bring self driving cars to market faster
could actually save more lives in total. I have much more respect for Tesla
for shipping something.

~~~
brilliantcode
> Killing a few extra people today to bring self driving cars to market faster
> could actually save more lives in total. I have much more respect for Tesla
> for shipping something.

There's no evidence to suggest that is the case. If anything, Tesla has made
it more dangerous to assume that it's safe and falsely autonomous.

When you create new drugs, the FDA definitely doesn't look to kindly on people
who think like Silicon Valley. "Killing people is product testing" won't fly
in pharmaceuticals.

I'm glad that we don't have people like you designing drugs for the masses!

~~~
aianus
What's the equivalent of animal trials for autonomous vehicles? Closed-circuit
tests?

Is there any evidence that these companies haven't gone through closed circuit
tests and passed before testing in public roads?

The next step in drug trials is, in fact, testing on humans and some do suffer
serious injury or death. I don't think there's any way around it and the
greater good of having a pharmaceutical industry at all outweighs those
unfortunate incidents.

------
kyrra
TLDR:

* People can apply to use/borrow a Waymo vehicle (RX450 or Pacifica) for some period of time.

* "as part of this early trial, there will be a test driver in each vehicle monitoring the rides at all times."

* Limited to Phoenix metro area for the time being.

* You apply here: [https://waymo.com/apply/](https://waymo.com/apply/)

* Waymo will be adding 500 more of the Pacifica minivans for this program.

~~~
Asooka
Interesting that they only let you borrow for now. Will car ownership be
killed with self-driving cars? Will Waymo let you actually buy and own a car
that isn't network connected and fully yours? Seeing how value extraction
works in today's enterprise, i.e. via rent-seeking, I'm guessing we're headed
to not owning cars any more.

~~~
Ajedi32
> Will car ownership be killed with self-driving cars?

Probably. It seems way more convenient and efficient to be able to summon a
car to any location on demand than to have just one car that you use for
everything.

No more parking, no more refueling, no more vehicle maintenance; just push a
button and a car shows up within minutes (or in some cases, seconds) to pick
you up, and step out of the vehicle when you reach your destination. Want a
specific model or paint color? It's just a couple taps on your phone away. Car
breaks down and needs a tow? Replacement gets summoned automatically, and the
car company credits a couple bucks to your account for the inconvenience.

If that kind of service becomes available at a reasonable price point, I
suspect it won't be long before car ownership becomes much less common.

~~~
plopz
How do you solve the issue of extreme demand M-F at 8am and 5pm and low demand
any other time?

~~~
Ajedi32
Same way any other business that has brief periods of high demand (electric
companies, ISPs, restaurants, etc) does; you anticipate the demand and make
sure you have enough capacity available at those times to meet it.

With a self-driving car fleet there are probably lots of other little tricks
you can do too, like offer discounts for sharing a vehicle with another
passenger, or use machine learning to predict what locations will have the
highest demand during particular parts of the day and move portions of the
fleet to cover those areas.

~~~
vkou
My non-ML prediction of which locations will have the biggest demand in
Seattle:

People on the West Side who want to get to the East Side, and people on the
East Side who want to get to the West Side. (You'd figure that maybe
optimizing this would bring more value to society then making a car drive
itself...) 8am-9am, 4pm-6pm. You don't need ML to figure this out - just look
at a Google Maps traffic heatmap in rush hour.

Carpools, vanpools, already exist. For some reason, though, the vast majority
of the cars parked on the freeway are single-occupant vehicles. I can't
imagine why people aren't keen on sharing their vehicle with a stranger, or
pay triple surge pricing to get home when it starts raining.

This community is highly opposed to relying on web services that they don't
control... Yet it is perfectly OK with ditching their car, and instead relying
on a car-on-demand service to get to and from work?

------
jamesroseman
Self-driving cars have been in the development phase for so long, I'm really
excited to see them start rolling out in these beta tests.

I'm curious what sort of unconsidered edge cases they'll find out in the real
world. I'm sure test passengers are much more "disciplined" than real world
ones.

------
Fifer82
I would like to see little leased pod cars which trundle around at the local
speed within a certain range, and have the ability to go to a Bus Lane (I
presume the bus is dead), and join a Magnetic Track of sort where they go 200
miles an hour.

That would be pretty amazing. Why they are sticking shit all over 2 ton
vehicles? If they are solving Fuel and Emissions and Driver, can't they just
take the final step of a revolution? I am pretty sure governments would be
throwing notes at it.

~~~
nickparker
Hyperloop One is working on this. Small self driving cubicles drive around the
city and pop into larger pods that go 700 mph in the Hyperloop between cities.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fze5spdN3nU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fze5spdN3nU)

~~~
nmeofthestate
Seems a bit gimmicky (it's the hyperloop after all). If the self-driving car
is the vehicular equivalent of a hot desk, why not just exit it and walk into
the hyperloop pod, instead of transporting tonnes of weight of interchangeable
self-driving car? Then just hop into a different one that's waiting at the
other end.

~~~
nickparker
Disclaimer: I'm starting a job at Hyperloop soon, but haven't actually been
told anything about the hardware yet (I'm joining as a software dev), so this
is all not-NDA-violating speculation:

I believe the cars are also pressure vessels and life support systems. My
student team looked into this side of the problem last year, and making the
entire ~40 ft long Hyperloop pod a pressure vessel is really tricky. The two
competing forces are the obvious premium on extra mass, and the need for a
large opening to load cargo into the pods.

Dealing with all the "human compatibility" problems at the scale of the cars
lets you use much smaller pressure vessels (lighter), and makes loading
unpressurized cargo drop dead easy.

The other big benefit is that loading the Hyperloop pods is really difficult.
You'd ideally like to be launching a pod into the tube every 30 seconds or
less, to get the best return on your infrastructure investment. Achieving that
by walking people right up to the 40 ft vehicles and having them all file in
like a commercial flight is just about impossible. With mobile sub-pods you
can have a far smaller station, and just load sub-pods as they arrive into the
next departing pod.

~~~
nmeofthestate
Thanks for the inside info - interesting.

~~~
nickparker
Speculation - not inside info. Again, I haven't been told anything about this
aspect of the system yet.

------
ChuckMcM
So now what do we tell our kids? "Don't get into a van even when nobody is
driving it." ? :-)

I think it is great that they are getting additional exposure to nominally
real world users here. However, I'm not exactly sure what they are learning in
user behaviors. Is it "Can we make a less expensive livery service?" or is it
"How freaked out do people get in self driving cars?" or is it something else?

I went to a conference last week where there were several talks that were
pretty critical of self driving 'hype' given the HLS[1] issues and the ability
to inexpensively 'spoof' the AI[2] to see something that isn't actually there
(road signs being particularly vulnerable). It left me thinking I might be
more optimistic about the technology than I should be.

[1] "Health, Life, Safety" the general basket of things that are super
critical to minimizing injury and death.

[2] [https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/3/13507542/facial-
recogniti...](https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/3/13507542/facial-recognition-
glasses-trick-impersonate-fool) \-- on Facial Recognition but sign recognition
has the same problem.

------
Pigo
After seeing the movie Logan, I was curious if the movie was taking a jab at
the autonomous vehicle trend by portraying them as a danger to ma & pa drivers
on the highway. It showed a crowded highway full of shipping containers
pushing a truck hauling horses off the road. It seems the message was not that
the technology can't be courteous, but that once it's accepted, corporations
will abuse the roads to help their bottom line. It makes me wonder if that is
a valid concern.

~~~
hart_russell
By all accounts, autonomous vehicles will be much safer than human drivers.
Companies will be sued up the ass if they program their vehicles to take risks
and end up killing people.

~~~
swiley
Only if it can be proven. That's why vehicle firmware should be open source,
so the public can know exactly what kind of risks they take.

~~~
joshuamorton
I'm curious, under this train of thought, vehicle hardware should also be open
source, right?

~~~
swiley
It's a lot harder to hide weirdness in mechanical things. Because of that I
don't think hardware needs to be open source.

------
Kiro
How will self-driving cars affect society? Trying to wrap my head around the
bigger picture.

~~~
brianwawok
My fear is MORE urban sprawl, which is even MORE miles of highways to pave and
care for, and MORE pollution in the short term until we get very eco friendly
powered electric cars.

Commutes are one of the only things that seem to limit urban sprawl.

~~~
space_fountain
There is an advantage to electric cars here though. If you don't need to wait
while the vehicle charges electric vehicles are a lot more attractive even
with relatively small batteries.

~~~
Neliquat
Electric cars just pollute upstream, and even with solar, that does not seem
like a solved problem just yet.

~~~
grzm
Yes, there are still issues with electricity generation. Expressing this as
_just pollute upstream_ ignores or dismisses the efficiency improvements of
large scale power generation over per-vehicle internal combustion engines.

------
trapperkeeper79
Wish they deployed this in Mountain View. I see like 20 of these a day going
around aimlessly. I'd sign up as a customer!

~~~
scarmig
Too easy for a competitor to hop on and get casual intel, maybe?

~~~
samhoggnz
GM, Apple, and Uber are all testing in the Phoenix metro area, so I don't
think that's valid - more likely good wide roads, weather, and regulatory
environment.

------
saosebastiao
This is an important step for testing, and I'm surprised that this is being
spun as a move towards commercialization.

As of right now, waymo has only been doing what could metaphorically be called
unit testing. That is, they test the cars behavior in very controlled but
unrealistic environments, looking for very specific responses. The accident
rate that they've incurred is likely ridiculously skewed: they've been driving
in good weather, on meaningless routes (not chosen by destination, but by
route features), at relatively safe times of day, at slow speeds, and they've
been doing it extremely cautiously with engineers ready to take over in a
moments notice.

This is exactly what they should have been doing, but politically it is
misleading. Most human drivers, given those same constraints, would also do
extremely well and way better than average. They've done well, but we have
little basis for comparison with the average driver.

This is the first step towards integration testing. They get to see how the
cars behavior integrates together across various scenarios that are much
closer to real life. They are driving on actual routes that real people travel
on...routes that aren't chosen in order to test a specific behavior.

Accident rates _are going to go up_. That's a good thing...its a move towards
the things humans find more difficult too. We should, however, expect slowing
progress to level 4 autonomy. This is typical of system capability growth;
exponential in the beginning, asymptotic near the end. People that are rushing
this are out of line; akin to immediate commercializations of lab rat
successes. Give them time.

~~~
teach
> they test the cars in very controlled but unrealistic environments

Are you sure about this? Google has had self-driving cars in Austin for years
and I'm pretty sure there's never a good time to be driving here.

~~~
saosebastiao
Pretty damn sure. Even if an engineer drives his normal car to work, hops in a
waymo car, and drives 9-5, and then drives a normal car back home, they've
already constructed a scenario that is heavily time-weighted towards lighter
than human-representative traffic experiences. Even small biases that you
don't even think are meaningful can have a big impact on outcomes.

But it doesn't stop there. Google hasn't tested snow at all. I'd be surprised
if their testing locations represented rainy weather that is representative
for more than 10% of the US. They don't test freeways, and by extension, do
not test onramps and offramps. In California, they don't even go over 25 mph.
Under those conditions they have been ostensibly pretty good at not _causing_
accidents, but how good are they at avoiding accidents that are not their
fault? This means accidents caused by other drivers _and_ acts of god. Safety
is far more than just causality.

But more importantly, their miles traveled very easily exclude small snippets
of time where an engineer takes over, but still counts the rest of the journey
where the computer did fine. How representative is that? How good are humans
when we let jesus take the wheel the moment driving gets slightly complicated?
If a human overrides the computer only 1% of the time, that could still be
anywhere from _1% to 100% of trips_ with at least one human override.

It's very easy to catastrophically mislead yourself when working with averages
[0]. Statisticians and Economists go through absolutely absurd lengths to make
comparisons robust. Even if we had access to 100% of the data on Waymo's self
driving cars, I don't know a single statistician that would be comfortable
making a comparison to extremely coarsely aggregated data on human driving.
Only through extensive testing in situations that are representative of how
humans (and not just test engineers) drive will we be able to conclude that
one is safer than the other. And that's why Phoenix is important to Waymo.

[0]
[https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=the...](https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=the+problem+with+averages&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8)

------
bigato
I dream with the day that humans riding vehicles will be forbidden by law
unless the driver would prove the need for human driving. So many deaths would
be avoided.

~~~
ohstopitu
have you thought the consequences of that?

No I'm very serious: we are unable to protect smart TVs. Networked smart cars
(because let's be real - Google and co. would want to monetize this with Uber-
like services, Ads in cars etc.) are a magnitude more likely to be hacked by
both the state actors and rogue individuals (altho I don't see why we make
this distinction...both are criminal acts).

The worst that can happen if your smart tv is hacked, is that they can listen
and maybe watch you in your living room. If your car is hacked, they can
probably kill you and hurt others while they are at it. If this happens on a
large scale, it's extremely dangerous.

So while I have no problems with self driving in itself (or with Google for
that matter of fact), I have a problem with banning human driving cars on the
road without a viable (non-intrusive) alternative.

~~~
lodi
We are not "unable" to protect smart TVs. If anyone gave a shit those things
would be locked down tighter than a bank vault, but we don't, so they aren't.

But, as evidenced by terrorism paranoia, people _do_ care about their personal
safety--perhaps excessively and irrationally so. Security in a networked self-
driving car won't be treated as an afterthought, if nothing else because of
the massive legal liability.

~~~
eslaught
> We are not "unable" to protect smart TVs. If anyone gave a shit those things
> would be locked down tighter than a bank vault, but we don't, so they
> aren't.

Every year, every major browser and major OS gets cracked in Pwn2Own. The cost
of these zero-days is going up thanks to good security practices like
sandboxing in Chrome et al., but they still happen. Every. Single. Year. Think
about that for a second.

The fact is, we can't write secure software, especially secure _networked_
software. I can't imagine writing secure software for cars using current best
practices---let alone imagine car manufacturers doing that. To solve this,
we'll need (in addition to everything we're doing now) something along the
lines of Rust to prevent these sorts of bugs. And even then, it's likely that
the net effect will be similar to sandboxing: the cost of an attack will go
up, but not enough to prevent random individuals (let alone larger
organizations) from finding zero-day security vulnerabilities on a regular
basis.

It's extremely important not to be cavalier about this security risk. The
combination of zero-days and self-driving cars is a scary one.

------
smpetrey
When your opponents do not play by the rules, you win. Glad to see Google is
making some strides.

------
z3t4
I had nightmares about self driving cars as a child. Am I the only one who
thinks self driving cars are scary!?

------
andrewmcwatters
Glad to see Phoenix getting some love.

------
monkmartinez
I find it smart that Waymo waited until the snowbirds left to start this. It
will be comical when the blue hairs come back next winter and smoke a few of
these self-driving cars.... or vice versa. Obviously I don't want anyone to
get hurt, but... it is going to happen.

~~~
jonknee
Considering Waymo's vehicles drive much like stereotypical blue hairs
(slooooow and cautious) I think everything will work out fine.

------
drcross
That the author even uses Uber as a rival to Weymo demonstrates their lack of
awareness in the industry.

~~~
Kiro
How so?

~~~
ozpri
Because Uber is ride sharing that is getting into self-driving vehicles, their
money comes from the rides we take. Alphabet (Google) Is literally just
testing and developing their own self-driving car technology. As far as we
know they have no business model, yet.

~~~
bhhaskin
Uber is also getting their pants sued off by Google for selling self driving
car trade secrets. A suit that Uber is more than likely going to lose.

~~~
QuercusMax
s/selling/stealing/ (or maybe buying?); Levandowski allegedly stole data when
he left Google, and brought it to Otto, which is now owned by Uber.

~~~
diebir
I guess except that it's not about some stolen files, but rather about people.
Uber has the guy who built the Google's self driver tech, which is what really
matters.

~~~
QuercusMax
bhhaskin's post said Uber was selling secrets, which is definitely NOT the
case; I don't think I've heard anyone accusing them of that.

~~~
bhhaskin
You haven't heard the allegations that Uber approached Levandowski while still
at Google to start Otto so Uber could buy them later?

~~~
QuercusMax
I'm still not sure how that would involve uber in _selling_ secrets; still
sounds like buying to me.

~~~
refulgentis
One implies the other, so in this unholy pedantic discussion, a winning move
is to point out that being involved in selling is the same as being involved
in buying.

Another tact: Otto is accused of being involved in selling secrets. Uber
bought Otto. Otto is now Uber. Therefore, Uber is accused of being involved in
selling secrets.

------
chrismealy
Google's car clearly isn't going to work in the real world (can it follow
detour signs? Get out of the way of emergency vehicles? Understand a cop
directing traffic?). Why is Google pretending otherwise? Why are they doing
this?

~~~
teach
Google's car can already read the hand signals from bicyclists[0]. They have
logged literally millions of miles of safe driving. They really aren't
"pretending".

However, there are different classifications[1] of autonomous vehicles.
Google's car is currently somewhere around level 3. It's true nobody has a
level 4 car yet.

[0] [https://www.engadget.com/2016/07/05/google-autonomous-
cars-c...](https://www.engadget.com/2016/07/05/google-autonomous-cars-cyclist-
friendly/) [1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car#Classification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car#Classification)

