
Locals reportedly frustrated with Waymo's self-driving cars - motiw
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/28/locals-reportedly-frustrated-with-alphabets-waymo-self-driving-cars.html
======
Meekro
I've been in situations where I'm waiting to make a tricky left turn safely
while people behind me literally yell at me to go faster. Now those same
people have to contend with cars that can't be intimidated into making risky
turns by the driver behind them yelling, honking, or tailgating. I hope it
plays out like this:

1\. Driver tailgates at an intersection or stop sign to try to intimidate the
driverless car in front of him into going faster.

2\. Driverless car ignores it, and gets rear-ended.

3\. Google helpfully provides the tailgater's insurance company with a copy of
the 360 degree video, conclusively proving his guilt under law.

4\. Tailgater's insurance rates skyrocket after his insurer is forced to pay
the maximum to repair the expensive driverless car.

5\. Tailgater is forced to stop being a jackass.

~~~
weaksauce
I think there may be a problem in step 5. Human nature is not that malleable
and anyone that would be so dumb to rear end a car because it’s not turning
soon enough will likely not change.

~~~
falcor84
I upvoted you. But now that I reread the post above, I think that the
implication there might have equally well been different - that the driver
would not be able to afford alinsurance anymore and thus forced out of the
privileged position of being able to (legally) drive. So the person might
still be a jackass, but no longer a jackass driver.

~~~
toomuchtodo
The car still starts without auto insurance. There are still states where auto
insurance isn’t even compulsory.

You can’t legislate civility. Attempting to force it with technology is even
less effective.

------
syntaxing
I'm really curious whether this frustration is truly because of the limitation
of the technology(which is totally possible) or because of some sort of
cognitive bias/confirmation. Would they feel the same frustration if the van
had no decals or visible sensors? Are they more frustrated at the cars more
than the other drivers? Community "anger" can be really perplexing like how a
community of people were complaining about the ailments from a phone tower
when the company already turned off the tower six weeks prior.

[1][https://mybroadband.co.za/news/wireless/11099-massive-
revela...](https://mybroadband.co.za/news/wireless/11099-massive-revelation-
in-iburst-tower-battle.html)

~~~
klodolph
I'm also wondering what part of this is due to them being programmed to follow
the letter of the law, instead of driving like other drivers.

~~~
zamalek
As someone who attempts to follow the letter of the law, I experience quite a
few incidents of aggressive driving. The complaints here are really just
demonstrating how bad humans are at driving - the frustration probably arises
due to the fact that they are unable to intimidate the driver in front of them
with aggressive behavior.

> One woman said that she almost hit one of the company's minivans because it
> suddenly stopped while trying to make a right turn

By following the correct speed limit and following distance, you will have
ample time to react to any silly behavior. Not that I for one second believe
that a self-driving car would make a sudden stop in order to make a
predetermined turn.

~~~
snowwrestler
Why do you attempt to follow the letter of the law? Not even traffic officers
follow the letter of the law; it's rare to get pulled over for going 60mph in
a 55mph zone, for example.

Do you ever find yourself on a road getting passed by all the other cars?
Isn't that annoying? Why not just speed up a few mph and join the herd?

I'm honestly asking; I just do not get the appeal.

~~~
zamalek
> Why do you attempt to follow the letter of the law?

Cars are objects that have an extreme amount of kinetic energy. The point
isn't to avoid getting pulled over, the point is to avoid dying or killing.

> 60mph in a 55mph

Air resistance increases at a squared rate. The amount of fuel you use (and
your emissions) is not linearly associated with your speed. So does your
kinetic energy. Going at 25, 5 over is not the same as going at 55, 5 over.

> Do you ever find yourself on a road getting passed by all the other cars?
> Isn't that annoying?

All the time, but it's not annoying because I don't care about being in front
of everyone - I have left for my destination with ample time to make my
appointment. I'm on the road to reach a destination, not to win the race. I
don't care if people cut in front of me, because I have chosen not to and give
them the safe room to do so.

Driving aggressively is stressful, you [not specifically you] are fighting
with everyone else on the road. You're going to risk your health in order to
be directly ahead of me at a red traffic light two minutes later? I'll just
pull to the right and give you room to pull in front of me. I try my best to
get out of the way of aggressive driving; the further those drivers are away
from me, the better.

In those two minutes where you've [again, generalized "you"] been racing
everyone else on the road, I've probably let someone in front of me - saving
them minutes and costing me seconds (before the next traffic light
equalization). I feel good about myself, you are in the throws of fight or
flight.

The only appeal of courteous driving is that there is less than an appeal to
aggressive driving. The only way to win is not to play.

~~~
dastbe
> All the time, but it's not annoying because I don't care about being in
> front of everyone - I have left for my destination with ample time to make
> my appointment. I'm on the road to reach a destination, not to win the race.
> I don't care if people cut in front of me, because I have chosen not to and
> give them the safe room to do so.

> Driving aggressively is stressful, you [not specifically you] are fighting
> with everyone else on the road. You're going to risk your health in order to
> be directly ahead of me at a red traffic light two minutes later? I'll just
> pull to the right and give you room to pull in front of me. I try my best to
> get out of the way of aggressive driving; the further those drivers are away
> from me, the better.

the problem here is that you are (socially) forcing more cars to overtake in
what sounds like nonstandard manners (from "I'll just pull to the right and
give you room to pull in front of me" I can't tell if you're moving out of the
left lane or pulling into the shoulder). by driving slower than other cars,
you're impeding the ability for traffic to flow evenly which results in more
frustration and more lane changes. both of these increase the likelihood of
accidents occurring as they lead to more dangerous maneuvers occurring more
frequently and with more emotion.

or rather, do you not see how your slow driving could be the cause of their
aggressiveness? which doesn't really fit the adjective "courteous".

~~~
zamalek
> in what sounds like nonstandard manners

Not moving into the shoulder, that's illegal and dangerous.

Once I've overtaken traffic that is _actually_ slow, I move to the right lane.
There is nothing nonstandard about letting traffic pass me on the left when
multiple lanes are available. Because I am not tailgating, they have ample
room to safely move in front of me (5 seconds at highway speeds is a very
large distance).

> both of these increase the likelihood of accidents occurring

Speeding and tailgating is a process that occurs all the way to a destination
- it is a consistent threat. Lane switching doesn't need to occur frequently
and can be done well in advance when it is generously safe to do so - it is a
momentary threat.

> by driving slower than other cars, you're impeding the ability for traffic
> to flow evenly

By tailgating or anything between safe following distance, you are not giving
adequate room for people to merge into traffic. Traffic that is entering is
forced to come to a near-stop because they can't find an opening, slowing down
or stopping traffic behind them when they do eventually enter the highway.

Everyone traveling at an agreed speed, with ample room for traffic to enter
and leave is traffic flowing evenly.

> slow driving

Driving at the speed limit is not slow.

> which doesn't really fit the adjective "courteous"

You have _moved_ that word completely out of the context that it was used in.
"Courteous" is letting people in (which aids traffic flow, especially in
gridlock).

~~~
EpicEng
>Driving at the speed limit is not slow.

Yes it is, as evidenced by the fact that the vast majority goes ~5mph over and
are constantly overtaking you.

~~~
zamalek
It's amazing how in driving that selfish and dangerous behavior is the
zeitgeist. I agree to disagree.

If you may, try my style for no more than a week. See what it does for your
mood. Be friendly on the road, stick to the law - if going slightly over is
your line stick to that line. Just try to be safe and nice.

~~~
EpicEng
I don't understand why you conflate keeping speed with being aggressive. I can
drive perfectly safely at 50mph just as I can at 45, with the added benefit of
not creating a bottleneck.

------
crazygringo
> _More than a dozen locals told The Information they they hated the cars_

I'm sure you could also find more than a dozen locals who hate other human
drivers

~~~
briandear
Totally. On the 280 near the 85 interchange — human drivers apparently think
merging involves slowing down to let cars enter rather than the entering cars
accelerating to the speed of traffic. Creates this yo-yo effect because
Silicon Valley drivers have been badly programmed in how to drive.

~~~
vorpalhex
I wish I could force people who break at merges to try merging with a line of
parked cars. Leave a gap, keep a consistent speed.

------
daveFNbuck
> 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.

Human drivers are terrible at both of these. I'm regularly getting stuck
behind people who won't make a right turn even as a line of people are making
the left turn that shields the turn they're trying to make. I see a lot more
promise of computer-driven cars at least being able to improve over time as a
group.

~~~
WorldMaker
I'm assuming here that you mean an uncontrolled right turn, where the right
turn is at a red light or stop sign.

Is that Left Turn lane also uncontrolled in that moment that you are
complaining about? That is, are you talking about the situation where people
in the next lane are making a left turn at a green left turn only light or is
it the uncontrolled stop sign (though rare to have a multi-lane stop sign) or
more common flashing yellow left turn light (or jurisdictional equivalent; as
some states allow uncontrolled left turns on red lights, and some drivers
think all states do though they do not)?

In the case of people making an uncontrolled left turn when you are attempting
an uncontrolled right turn you have an interesting relative to the prisoner's
dilemma. As you point out, there should be some "shield" from mistakes in
opposing traffic by nature of the person to your left making a left turn. But
that same "shield" also blocks your vision of intersection, so you have to
trust that the person making the uncontrolled left turn is situationally aware
of their surroundings to not make a mistake. Even as a physical "shield" in
that moment, basic physics will remind you that momentum is a jerk (terrible
pun intended) and there is no guarantee that the left turning car will absorb
any or all of an impact. In making that right turn you may not be risking a
direct impact, but you can still be risking a three or more car pile-up.

To cover both bases, if the left turn is controlled at that moment, with a
green left turn light, at least where I live that often means the opposite
left turn light is also on, which is not a good opportunity for an
uncontrolled right turn either. (Also too because depending on intersection
size and layout here too the people making the controlled left turn to your
immediate left may decrease the visibility of oncoming traffic making the left
turn on the other side of the intersection.)

I get honked at somewhat routinely for precisely these scenarios, and I doubt
most of the people think of that sort of risk calculus in their impatience in
those moments (and they certainly don't have my assessment of intersection
visibility from behind me).

I wouldn't program a car to make an uncontrolled right turn in those
situations either, and it certainly sounds like that sort of behavior is what
is causing some of the complaints in the linked article.

~~~
daveFNbuck
Yes, I'm talking about an uncontrolled right turn. The left turn I'm talking
about isn't from the next landed, but the one you'd make if you made a U-turn
immediately after your right and then a left to go back the way you came. If
the road is clear enough for several people to make that left, it's clear
enough to make your right turn.

------
jrockway
I don't think I've ever heard anyone say they like conservative driving. "I
would have risked that left turn, so you should have too. The person with the
green light would have slowed down to avoid an accident, probably, and I would
have gotten to the next red light 10 seconds sooner!"

You will also hear this when talking about less-capable drivers ("get off the
road, grandma!") or less-capable vehicles ("I hate having to slow down for
bikes and drive carefully around them.").

And of course, nobody ever says "you're going 80, the speed limit is 55! slow
down!"

As a result, traffic accidents are the leading cause of death for people from
8-24.

~~~
dwighttk
>And of course, nobody ever says "you're going 80, the speed limit is 55! slow
down!"

incorrect

~~~
dfsegoat
Yeah. Totally incorrect: I say it all the time when I am driving my kids
around -- or when idiot teenagers rip through my neighborhood where my kids
are playing at 35-45 mph (1).. before kids? - Maybe not.

(1) - It's official: I am now a crotchety old man.

~~~
cgriswald
I'm not sure if you're crotchety. I had a grandma frantically signal me to
slow down when she was out walking with her grandchildren. I was doing 12 mph
in a 25mph zone. The road is sketchy in spots, but this stretch is perfectly
straight and fairly wide and I gave them about 15 feet of clearance by
essentially driving as far as I could on the opposite side of the road. She's
definitely crotchety.

That said, I think people are terrible at judging speeds. I keep my car in a
low gear on the hills around here for control. As a result the revs are
sometimes on the higher end and my car is generally pretty loud and _looks_
fast. So people assume I'm going some great speed when I'm actually going
relatively slow.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Pedestrians generally judge speed by noise.

------
GreaterFool
US desperately needs self-driving cars. Desperately. I don't think most people
realize how much. Because they've never seen a city with good public transport
where most people don't own or care about cars. But achieving good public
transport in US is impossible for cultural reasons.

So there's no public transport so most expensive areas will fight to the death
to keep population density low. Because more people means more cars means more
traffic means whole place becomes terrible. End result: cost of living is too
high, commutes too long. Not exactly the way I'd like to live.

~~~
eeZah7Ux
> achieving good public transport in US is impossible for cultural reasons

Self-driving cars are not going to solve congestion - quite the opposite.
Personal transport will remain extremely inefficient in space and fuel
compared to public transport.

~~~
GreaterFool
(Good) Public transport is better than (shared) personal transport which is
better than individual car ownership.

But from what I've observed about US culture, public transport _is never going
to happen_ :) So if you take that off the list, what's the alternative?

------
Animats
Waymo has a long-standing problem with being rear-ended at entry to an
intersection. Read their California DMV accident reports. This is because
their system, quite properly, insists on seeing the absence of cross traffic
before entering an intersection. So, when the view to the side is obstructed,
the vehicle will advance slowly into the intersection to get a better view,
detect cross traffic, and stop.

There's one intersection in Mountain View where Google self-driving vehicles
have logged two accidents of that type. There's a tree in the median. At human
driver height for cars (but not for trucks) the cross street can be seen. At
roof height, where the scanner is, the tree blocks a side view. So the vehicle
has to advance past it to see cross traffic.

This just needs a convention. Perhaps blinking the brake lights rapidly in
such situations.

------
snowwrestler
I think the degree to which driving is a social behavior is underappreciated.

By social behavior, I mean we learn to read the "body language" of the drivers
(cars) around us, pedestrians, bikers, etc. Have you ever thought to yourself,
"that dumbass is just about to pull into my lane" or something like that?
That's you being a social animal, making a social judgment about a fellow
animal.

This is ancient stuff. Nature is full of animals who have no spoken language,
and even no verbalization at all, who nonetheless operate together physically
to great effect.

Think of a herd of buffalo, or a school of fish, or a murmuration of swallows.
Now, you want to put a robot in there, and have it keep up with the animals?
That's a hard problem.

I would argue that we work the same way when driving. So a robot trying to
operate in human traffic is going to face the same hard problem.

Instead of tackling that problem, self-driving cars fall back on the written
rules of the road. But it's crucial to understand that the _rules were written
by humans for interpretation by humans_. They are not a fool-proof algorithm
for safe robot driving, and they were never intended to be that.

Sure, you can argue that conservative driving is safer. I'd argue that that is
a cop-out that simply delegates the argument to how we define "conservative."
It's conservative to drive 5mph in a 25mph zone; it's also totally legal. But
is it good driving?

We can design a conservative robot to put into a school of fish. The real fish
will avoid it and leave it behind. The robot fish is safe, in that there are
no collisions. But is it fulfilling the mission of being a good fish?

~~~
leesec
Luckily not all self driving approaches are trying to hard-code rules into
their algorithms. See comma.ai , they use ML to have the driving agent learn
from millions of miles of human driving data.

------
seibelj
Once self driving cars come to Boston, locals will just figure out how to go
around them. If you honk and ride an AV’s tail close and it pulls over,
everyone will do that. It’s a guarantee

~~~
MiddleEndian
As a Bostonian, I'm very curious to see how self-driving cars will play out
here. Our roads are much more narrow and "unpredictable" than the west coast,
and jaywalking is a given on most streets.

------
kazinator
> _One woman 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._

I.e. obnoxiously bad human drivers hate impeccably good drivers that happen to
be robots.

Suddenly stopped trying to make a right turn? I'm not convinced by that
without evidence that it was not a required stop, like turning into a road
that has right-of-way.

Passing cars at intersections is not only illegal but a dangerous dickhead
move. I don't care what a dangerous dickhead thinks about self-driving cars or
any other cars; please don't repeat it and convey it as news.

~~~
jandrese
Eh, I can sympathize with the lady. It's really annoying when someone needs to
come to a near complete stop to make a right turn in otherwise flowing
traffic.

Yes, you don't need to whip into the parking lot at 45mph, but at the same
time you don't need to take 15 seconds to creep around the corner and build up
a big line of cars. There is a goldilocks zone and some people just plain miss
it.

~~~
kazinator
I'd sympathize with the lady if there were more information about that
intersection. Is there a stop sign? Is it an uncontrolled intersection with
poor visibility?

Since this is a evidently a news story on CNBC, and not just someone's blog
rant, it is reasonable to assume they are presenting the best evidence that
they are able to come up with in support of its topic.

------
sandworm101
When i honk at another car it is always to correct bad behavior of some sort,
normally when someone doesnt notice when a light turns green. But can these
cars learn from being honked at? If they are doing 50 in a 90[1] clearly
because they missed a sign, is there anything we can do to communicate to them
that they are making a mistake?

Still wondering if they are capable of handling a police stop. Can they know
that the cop wants them to pull over? can they know that the firetruck wants
them to drive through a red light to let them by?

[1] Just had to honk at someone for this. Highway drops from 90 to 50 for road
work but he missed the "resume speed" sign.

~~~
throwaway19231
You might be aware already (I see that you're an attorney), but at least in
California, honking is illegal except for safety purposes.

> (a) The driver of a motor vehicle when reasonably necessary to insure safe
> operation shall give audible warning with his horn.

> (b) The horn shall not otherwise be used, except as a theft alarm system
> which operates as specified in Article 13 (commencing with Section 28085) of
> this chapter.

Honking when someone doesn't notice a green light seems perfectly reasonable,
if technically illegal. But I'm glad we have that law (albeit not much
enforcement), since most honking just conveys impatience and increases stress
for everyone without communicating anything useful.

~~~
sandworm101
Cali is different. And safety trumps all. You can use it to draw attention to
dangerous situations.

The cali law basically states that the cop can ticket you for being a jerk
about honking.

------
dghughes
The worst type of drivers are the ones who go 20 under the posted speed and
are overly cautious.

It sounds odd but one driver who is too cautious may be OK for them but it
makes everyone around them go out of their minds.

Go with the flow.

~~~
ConceptJunkie
Not going with the flow isn't just frustrating, it's dangerous.

------
ipunchghosts
'I hate them': Locals reportedly frustrated with Ford's cars. ~ possibly said
100 years ago.

~~~
oldgradstudent
The difference is that Ford card actually existed.

All "self-driving cars" have drivers in them to take over each time it fails.

It's as if Ford cars had backup horses with them to take over every few miles.

------
rayiner
> 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."

Is this new information?

------
tonyquart
I think there are still so many aspects that need to be perfected and fixed by
the automakers before these cars could be operated on public roads freely. I
have just read an article at [https://www.lemberglaw.com/self-driving-
autonomous-car-accid...](https://www.lemberglaw.com/self-driving-autonomous-
car-accident-injury-lawyers-attorneys/) that talks about this. Hopefully car
companies will think seriously about this.

------
Digit-Al
A thought that has just occurred to me. I wonder if self driving cars should
have L plates? They are, after all, learning how to drive. It might change the
way other drivers behave around them as well since people in general give
learners more leeway for their errors.

~~~
scotu
on the other hand, they would be learning in a less realistic environment...

------
dawhizkid
Do these cars ever go at the speed of traffic even if it's above the speed
limit? Practically if everyone is driving 5-10mph above the speed limit then
it actually seems more dangerous if the Waymo car is driving at the exact
speed limit here?

~~~
bryanlarsen
No, they are programmed to speed when appropriate. They probably have a fairly
conservative idea of appropriate, though.

[https://venturebeat.com/2014/08/19/google-cars-are-
designed-...](https://venturebeat.com/2014/08/19/google-cars-are-designed-to-
speed-because-well-everybodys-doing-it/)

------
johnhenry
Glad to know that road rage is reserved exclusively for humans.

------
alexozer
Better to annoy with conservative behavior than murder with liberal behavior.

------
wnevets
I wonder how many horse & buggy riders hated the automobile.

~~~
lqet
Well, that actually was a transition _away_ from self-driving cars.

~~~
falcor84
Not quite so, you'd have to be Dr. Doolittle to give a horse a direction and
then have it navigate there on its own. I imagine it might perhaps be possible
in limited circumstances in the countryside, but definitely not in the city.

------
agumonkey
they need a 'better safe than sorry' rear tag

