
Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel - lemiant
https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/07/waymo-now-testing-its-self-driving-cars-on-public-roads-with-no-one-at-the-wheel/
======
a9a
It will be interesting to see how Lyft's partnership with Waymo evolves given
this tech announcement and Waymo's acknowledgment that they plan to offer
their own ridesharing service.

Lyft's approach to self-driving partnerships in general seems to rest on the
assumption that self-driving providers will catch up to each other before any
of them can fully handle everything a human driver can do. If this assumption
is correct, Lyft ends up in the great position of being compatible with all
major self-driving providers before any of them can feasibly launch a
standalone service without Lyft's driver network (who wants to take a car
service that doesn't take you downtown? Or doesn't work in the rain?).
Ideally, this means Lyft can negotiate favorable terms with all the providers
and maintain their position as marketplace brokering between riders and ride
providers (either human or robot).

But, if this announcement means Waymo is truly way ahead of the competition,
is Lyft aiding and abetting its own demise by covering Waymo's short-term
holes (weather, urban areas, etc) up until the day that Waymo can cut Lyft out
and run their own service? If Waymo is the only self-driving game in town, and
they solve the urban case, why do they need Lyft? I wonder if we'll see any
tension develop between the two if leadership at Lyft starts to get concerned
about this scenario being a likely outcome.

~~~
LrnByTeach
Here is the most probable scenarios I foresee.

If you are a pessimist about autonomous being bigger part of transpiration
then add 2 years to DATES shown below.

2021 : Electric Self-driving on-demand FLEET Car 1000 miles/month SUBSCRIPTION
from Google, DiDi, Uber, Renault/Nissan,Tesla, VW,Toyota,GM for $400/month

2024 :same 1000 miles/month SUBSCRIPTION $200/month

At $200/month Subscription price for 1000 miles/month (which is average US
driver car mileage/month), savings are so big as average car ownership is
around $400/month ( AAA Estimate ) , all inclusive of

\- Car depreciation

\- Insurance cost

\- gasoline cost

\- Repairs & maintenance costs

\- extra 1 hours/day you get in NOT-Driving

(EDIT: This Model I mentioned is Summon only, there is NO OWNERSHIP of the
Car, is it monthly pay instead of per RIDE Pay . In this Model, All the Major
CAR Manufactures of today offer these FLEETS with monthly pay of 1000/miles
month SUBSCRIPTIONS.

Being a) no-driver Cost b) ELECTRIC c) RIDE Sharing d) mass adoption -- is the
key for Lower price tag of $200/month )

The above is Phase 1, in Phase 2 starting 2025 Google will be supplying only
"end-to-end Autonomous vehicle Software system" for a fee of $5000/year per
car for ALL the CAR FLEET companies .

Google will run small FLEET of Autonomous CARs for the purpose of "Reference
implementation of Software" much like "Pixel Android Phones" to showcase the
Reference implementation of Android ( for all other Android Vendors )

~~~
aidenn0
I still think that proper self-driving cars are such a paradigm shift that
predictions of how it will work are still up in the air.

For example, right now I live on the west coast and my parents live on the
east coast. 4 kids, Minimum of 40 hour drive or $3500 flight.

Here's one tiny example:

I can work remotely for a few weeks and my boss doesn't mind. The kids sleep
for 8+ hours at night. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday nights driving for 12
hours (mostly sleeping) means I am at my parent's house on Tuesday and I
either take Monday as vacation or work remotely from a friend's house in Ohio.
We see friends in flyover country that we rarely visit or see national parks
on Saturday and Sunday.

I can now take the whole family to my parents taking just 2 days of
vacation/remote for the trip, for only the depreciation cost on my car. Car
trip isn't too bad because the kids are awake for a total of the running time
of 6 movies.

Car usage will go up by an order of magnitude because a major cost of driving
isn't the dollars, but the time.

~~~
landryraccoon
> Car usage will go up by an order of magnitude because a major cost of
> driving isn't the dollars, but the time.

This is why I think self driving cars will make traffic worse, not better. The
more comfortable it is to be inside a car and the less people mind long car
rides, the more people will drive (self driving or otherwise). If road
infrastructure is the same, that necessarily means a much higher density of
cars on the road. It's possible that self driving cars will be more space
efficient on the road, but ten times more efficient? I think it's more likely
that there will just be way more cars on the road and traffic will worsen
considerably.

~~~
chiefofgxbxl
To detail one particular addition of traffic to the roads: students - with
self-driving cars, students from K-12 may much rather want to have the
independence to hop in a car rather than ride a "stinky school bus". Parents
may end up loving it, especially those who already drive their kids to school.
And I'm sure the school districts would love self-driving cars, because it
means they can pass the travel expenses onto the parents to pay for those
cars, instead of having to buy tens of millions of dollars worth of buses, pay
bus drivers, liability and insurance, gas, etc. (where I grew up a single
school bus cost the district over $1m; we had a fleet of maybe 40-50 buses)

In my home-town of 30k people, nearly 2,000 of those are high school students
alone, plus probably another 1,000 elementary school kids, and maybe 800
middle school. No doubt they'd all want to use the cool tech to ride to school
instead of taking the school bus. Add 4,000 more cars to the road please. (And
as for ride-sharing, that may be fun once in a while, but why do that when I
can get an entire entertainment pod all to myself?)

~~~
kjksf
The self-driving platform will financially nudge you in the right direction.

Currently Uber charges more during rush hour.

It's rather obvious that self-driving operator will implement similar price
discrimination e.g. $10 if you drive alone, $5 if you share with one or more
people.

And the more they want you to share, the bigger the surcharge e.g. if $10 vs.
$5 doesn't have desired effect then maybe $20 vs $5 will.

It's a win-win during rush hour (operator makes much more money from the few
people who don't care about money and minimizes over-all traffic by packing
more people into a single car).

~~~
semi-extrinsic
Still, traffic will be worse when you compare one bus with 50 people vs. 12
self-driving cars with 4 people each. A bus is 14-15m long, whereas even a
small car like the Chevy Bolt is over 4m. So parked bumper-to-bumper the cars
produce >3x as much traffic, and then you add some gaps for actually driving
you're up to 4x.

Personally I'm very skeptical of both the claim that a) self-driving cars will
see huge adoptation at the cost of car ownsership and that b) self-driving
cars will give less traffic, less pollution and be significantly cheaper than
owning a car.

On the latter point, we have basic economic theory: say the average American
today spends $600/month total on owning a car. Why would anyone price a self-
driving service at $200/month? No, they'd go for an initial price of
$400/month for a couple of years to get customers, then sneak back up to
$600/month once they've caught most of the market.

~~~
LrnByTeach
> say the average American today spends $600/month total on owning a car. Why
> would anyone price a self-driving service at $200/month? No, they'd go for
> an initial price of $400/month for a couple of years to get customers, then
> sneak back up to $600/month once they've caught most of the market.

In year 2000, in order to run a medium web site as a company you need 2
Servers one for each Database, WebServer. People bought each server box for
$5000 and server capacity used is only at 15%

Come to 2012, Amazon AWS charged for the same Servers only $40/month . Amazon
know It costs lots for website owners, why they offer all the server capacity
for $40 ???

~~~
beojan
> People bought each server box for $5000 and server capacity used is only at
> 15%

So why do they need _2_ servers?

Also, I'm pretty sure VPSes and shared hosting were available in 2000.

~~~
shiftpgdn
VPSes did not exist as a commercial product in 2000. Back then you likely
purchased and colo'd your hardware or leased from a provider. You could get
shared hosting with CGI access but that was about it.

~~~
fps
Shared hosting (with PHP, mod_perl and SSI) was available from thousands of
providers for between $5 and $25/month. SSL required a dedicated IP, because
SNI wasn't a thing yet, and so if you wanted an SSL enabled site, you were
looking at closer to $100/month. But that was for managed, shared hosting,
typically with access to a database and automated backup. Good enough for most
businesses small-ish web presences.

Rackspace offered dedicated servers for $150/month and up. Smaller providers
would rent you a server in their datacenter for around $60/month. I used a
company called sagonet in the early 2000s that is still in business and still
offering a similar service for about $30/month:
[http://www.synergyisp.com/dedicated-
servers/](http://www.synergyisp.com/dedicated-servers/)

Most larger companies at the time contracted with a colocation provider and
purchased servers for between $1000 and $4000 each, and paid in the
neighborhood of $1000/month for a rack, or $500/month for a half rack,
including power and network.

This was monumentally cheaper than the AWS based stack we have these days,
though - no company with any complexity to their website has a $40/month AWS
bill. A company with a similar SAAS offering to what I ran in 2001 for $40K up
front and $500/month is probably looking at a $5000/month AWS bill at today's
rates.

------
nwatson
>>> "Waymo will be operating a fully autonomous ride hailing service without
any humans at the wheel ... Waymo wants to broaden the geographic scope of its
trial, starting with expansion in the near-term to cover the entire Phoenix
metro area, which represents more acreage than the whole of the Greater London
area, he noted"

My family is mostly in Tempe / Mesa area (near Chandler, AZ) and during my
last few visits I've seen an increasing number of these autonomous (driver-at-
the-wheel) cars on the streets. Note that Uber / Lyft also are very popular in
the area.

Waymo's transition to a general-public/driverless service in the whole Phoenix
area will be the first time that automated ride-hailing services go up against
human-driven ride-hailing services. This will be a very interesting and
perhaps disturbing experiment. I predict Waymo will price their service
competitively, will ramp up to a large fleet, and that after a few months Uber
/ Lyft will be in trouble. The public will accept the perceived risks in
driverless rides.

Over a longer term it will be interesting to see what impact there is on car-
buying, congestion ... I wonder whether Waymo will provide ride-sharing as
well.

EDIT: clarification; ride-sharing; car market; traffic congestion. ( Hmmm,
also adding that "... after a few months Uber / Lyft will be in trouble" is
probably too compressed, it realistically will take a longer time. )

~~~
samstave
>> __ _The public will accept the perceived risks in driverless rides._ __

This is what I am trying to highlight - what, specifically, are these risks
that people need to be made aware of?

So now, in addition to everything, there will come a day when a person is
stranded some-place as the driverless car couldnt exactly find them, and the
person had to call the call center to get help and guess what... calling the
call center for uber and lyft has been an "email us and we wil get back to you
in 24 hours" type of thing, so imagine the following scenario which will
happen in the next few years:

Person takes a driverless car to an event.

Person winds up being in an unsafe environment and needs immediate assistance.

Person gets into the driverless car way too intoxicated and passes
out/overdoses/dies in the car -- need physical help?

So now we have driverless cars effectively classified as emergency ambulances
- so assuming the CARNOC is paying attention, they then drive the car to the
hospital - and have to have a mechanism to contact said hospital

I think that driverless cars have WAY too many factors that have literally
been either not well thought out, or not openly discussed.

I am positive some of these questions have been asked - but I dont see any
answers forthcoming.

Imagine the healthcare implications where if someone hasa seizure, ODs,
cardiac, etc... what is the response time from the CARNOC, and getting them to
a hospital ==> then what types of lawsuits will these companies see? what type
of insurance will they require?

~~~
Johnny555
_So now, in addition to everything, there will come a day when a person is
stranded some-place as the driverless car couldnt exactly find them_

Ahh, if you think this is a new problem, you're too young to remember the fun
of calling a cab by pay phone to some obscure address, then alternating
between going inside and calling the dispatcher and then running out to the
street to try to flag down the cab.

At least with a driverless car I can pinpoint my location on a map when I call
it.

 _Person winds up being in an unsafe environment and needs immediate
assistance._

Existing car-share (and cab) drivers are also willing to drop you off in an
unsafe environment if that's where you told him you want to go. While
sometimes they'll stick around to make sure you make it to your door (if
you're female), that's by no means guaranteed.

~~~
samstave
im 42, so no not too young - and I appreciate your point.

I feel that people are latching onto their opinions about driverless car tech
and not talking about the wider implications. That is the point, I am poorly,
making, apparently....

I just think that not all the questions have been asked about what it means to
be a "driverless car" and that we need to run through all the risks -- and
thats the one thing I find really lacking in any of these conversations at
all.

~~~
sharemywin
did you not read the terms of service when you opened the car door? they are
not responsible.

~~~
Rotten194
I'm just imagining opening the door and getting a 10 second long 2000wpm
recording of someone reading the TaC.

~~~
seanp2k2
The silkscreened-onto-the-headliner bright yellow non-removable warnings
weren't enough.

------
edshiro
If Waymo's tech is years ahead of the competition (say 18-24 months ahead
minimum) then I think a lot of the self-driving companies and car
manufacturers in the US will be having cold sweats. This may not be a winner-
take-all market (I don't know honestly...) but I see this lead up enabling
Waymo to capture significant market share in the US in regions where laws
towards autonomous vehicles are friendly.

One way the competition could attempt to mitigate Waymo's lead is to test and
launch in areas where Waymo are not currently active (other states in the US,
or other countries altogether). They could of course accelerate development of
their self driving tech but that's easier said than done I presume.

I also worry Uber & Lyft's valuations and usage will drop with the
introduction of driverless vehicles, unless they somehow manage to strike
long-lasting partnerships with Waymo.

Regarding OEMs (i.e. car manufacturers), I can't tell what will happen with
them: do they continue shunning Waymo and pursuing their own self-driving car
efforts or come back begging for some sort of deal? I presume we will see both
attitudes play out depending on how confident each company feels about its own
self-driving tech ability and acquisition potential.

It's hard to foresee the consequences of this announcement, but I feel Waymo
has upped the stakes tremendously today, and the pressure on everyone
(including Waymo) to deliver is on, more than ever.

~~~
Animats
Waymo does seem to be ahead technically. They've been working on the hard
cases for years, while the other guys are still struggling. They are trying
hard to get good situational awareness. One of the few neutral measures we
have are CA DMV's disconnect and accident reports, and in those, Waymo has
been consistently ahead. Waymo is hooked up with FCA (Fiat-Chrysler
Automobiles), of all things.

Uber is "fake it 'til you make it". Otto's truck demo only worked on a
deserted highway surrounded by chase cars. Cruise also started out that way,
but they seem to have improved once acquired by GM. Those guys seem to drive
mostly on visual cues, without as much of a near-area model as Waymo.

Tesla has the self-crashing car. Four collisions with something partly
blocking a lane, all on video. I've posted the links before. Musk made a big
mistake trying to do it without LIDAR. Nobody else can do that reliably, and
neither can Tesla. Tesla had to turn off most of the autonomy. Now they're
shipping the Model 3 in small quantities with hardware that's only enough for
lane keeping and auto-braking.

Volvo has a good, but limited 100 car demo with real drivers running. Freeway
only. Their goal is "no crashes". They'll probably get there.

Ford is quietly doing something and not talking about it much.

Meanwhile, Continental and now, Delphi are quietly gearing up to make low-cost
LIDARs by the millions. Despite all the talk about self-driving as a service,
it may turn out to just be an auto part.

~~~
3pt14159
One question I can't seem to find a good answer for is this:

Why doesn't the self-driving tech hand off control to a remote driver if the
internet connection is good enough and there is enough warning?

Even with a couple seconds notice a primed human could take the wheel and do
the right thing when the sensors aren't making sense.

~~~
Jyaif
There's no good reason; it's likely what they'll do.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
Never will happen. Latency is a law of nature. 60mph === 8.8 ft / 100ms. Near
misses and close calls with unexpected objects can't afford the additional
delay of a radio round trip that may or may not be working to make safety
critical decisions. All situational awareness has to be handled on board for
immediate response when needed.

~~~
Nition
I've worked on a videogame where vehicles are controlled from the client but
have their physics done on the server. Server sends car position, and client
sends inputs. So I can give some insight into how driveable it might actually
be:

\- <40ms (round trip) is not really noticeable

\- 40-~80ms is driveable

\- 80-150ms is getting difficult

\- 150-250ms you're overcorrecting all the time

\- 250ms+ is completely undriveable

That's not trying to avoid sudden obstacles, that's just making turns etc that
you already intended to make. Avoiding anything sudden would be impossible
much earlier. I agree remote control over Internet will never happen.

~~~
falcor84
If you set up a control center in each metro area, you could potentially have
a sub 10ms RTT.

And I imagine that in a large percentage of cases the car's sensors might
indicate potential danger with enough advance warning for the remote driver to
take over.

------
chrischen
It'd be interesting to see how this compares in overall efficiency to properly
implemented and comprehensive mass transit systems in a dense urban
environment. The Tokyo metro alone (not including the JR trains, Tokyo
Subway—a separate but compatible subway system, and other train transit
systems which totals over 40 million daily users) handles 6.8 million
passengers daily just in _one city_.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Greater_Tokyo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Greater_Tokyo)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway)

It seems like if it scaled to the point where even there are no drivers,
there's no way such a system can support a large number of users in a dense
area at the same efficiency of a train. For Taxi's the issue isn't the cost of
the driver, but actually the space and traffic constraints. Medallion supplies
weren't constrained due to corruption and cronyism but to prevent the
overpopulation of Taxis. Removing the driver may lower costs of Taxi's but
there will still be a minimum floor to Taxi prices as you can't just
infinitely supply a city with driverless cars.

The area where I do see driverless taxis flourishing is suburban point-to-
point transport. The current use case in SF where basically Uber and Lyfts
have supplanted public transit is unique to the city, flush with money and
short on public transit options.

~~~
ashleyn
The immediate benefit I can envision is being on the highway more than the
city. I regularly do a three hour drive between two states and automating the
highway portion alone would be a godsend. I've actually considered getting a
Volvo S90 for this purpose, but apparently the tech still isn't really where I
want it to be, which is: get on the highway, press a button, don't touch
anything until the final exit.

~~~
dx034
The Audi A8 appears to be the one with the most advanced system sold this
year. From the reports I read, auto pilot functions are a step ahead of Tesla.
The big difference is that they don't require you to pay direct attention as
they define the system as a level 3 car.

~~~
gambiting
The problem is that most of the system is disabled in almost all markets while
Audi waits for "regulatory approval".

------
aecs99
This, indeed, is a major step for Waymo. While some people may be skeptical
about the safety of these rides, we all saw this coming. This has been a part
of the ambitious goal most self-driving companies set out when they start. The
reason I say "part of the goal", is because the end goal is L5 - to handle
more complex scenarios which I assume Waymo is still working on.

Taking the ninety-ninety rule or the rule of credibility into consideration,
the remaining 10% of development will probably take 90% of the time. By this,
I mean that reaching a stage where L5 cars are owned by consumers can take a
long time (if at all people want to buy instead of sharing, but that's a
separate topic). For example, running this project in Pittsburgh, Boston, or
SF is much more difficult than in suburbs of Arizona. Conditions with rain,
snow, uneven terrain, high population density are still difficult to handle.

Several challenges still remain, from both technical and legal perspectives.
However, any of that may not undermine the tremendous opportunities for Waymo
(or its partners). There are several areas/markets that are ready for this
technology (e.g., ride sharing in suburbs, transportation of non-dangerous
goods over passengers, etc.)

~~~
peoplewindow
Why would self-ownership ever be the goal though? I can see people just moving
en-masse to Lyft/Uber type services that use a mix of people and machines,
with people eventually being phased out, and simply giving up their own cars
(except for those who genuinely enjoy driving).

~~~
aecs99
Interesting question. Like you, I too believe that a large population may
prefer Lyft/Uber type services instead of dealing with the concerns of owning
one (e.g., parking, requiring space for parking, insurance, time spent in
fueling, maintenance, etc.).

However, I tend to think that there still may be a decent size of population
who'd prefer owning. Others mentioned the convenience of using cars for
storage, being readily available, lower cost of owning, reduced insurances,
customizations, etc. Along with these, I believe some other factors exist.

In context of self-driving cars, we typically tend to picture urban
transportation first. However, there will still be needs for long distance
commuting, or taking long trips for pleasure. There will always be places
where people frequent less compared to major spots/suburbs in a city.

People may not always want to hop into a random car every time they take a
trip. The cost/time involved in flagging a car of your choice may not be worth
the effort for some. Also, keep in mind that many think of cars as a
statement, another way of expressing their beliefs. Take for example,
preferring German vs. American vs. Japanese, some prefer minimal space, others
may like to exhibit opulence.

All in all, there will be a large shift towards not-owning cars, but there may
always be a market for owning (at least for a long while).

~~~
bamboozled
Don’t forget off-road or very remote driving and camper vans.

~~~
greedo
And towing boats, or ATVs, or anything that won't fit in a small vehicle. Or
going to Costco/Sam's Club and loading up on groceries. Sometimes I think many
on HN live in an urban bubble without children, where everything is either
ordered online or picked up at a bodega on the corner. For much of the US,
life is nothing like that. There's a reason the Ford F-150 has been the most
popular selling vehicle in the US for many, many years.

~~~
Ajedi32
What makes you think you wouldn't be able to summon a self-driving Ford F-150
via the Waymo app? It's not like minivans are the only cars capable of being
self-driving.

~~~
jdminhbg
I think in a lot of places the low population density would mean the F-150
would be 20+ minutes away every time. You might get sick of that and be
willing to pay to always have it.

~~~
Ajedi32
I don't know about that. Imagine for a minute that every car on the road right
now were self-driving. How far away do you suppose the nearest pickup truck is
from you right now?

There may indeed be locations where 20+ minutes is a realistic answer, but I
suspect those places are more rare than you think.

~~~
jdminhbg
From me? Only about 50 yards or so.

But I don't think you can get to "every car is self-driving" without a pretty
high proportion of self-ownership in rural or exurban areas. Lots of people
live ~20 minutes from the nearest downtown-ish area, and you can't really
serve all those people without a pretty serious wait.

------
hardtke
What happens if these cars get in a situation where there is no legal way to
move? For instance, the other day I was driving down the street and it was
closed because of a Farmers market. Will they just sit there for hours? In
gridlock, there is often no way to move without "blocking the box."

~~~
Fricken
Waymo and Cruise automation are building out call centres, where remote human
monitors will be available to help out the vehicles when they get hung-up. The
monitors won't be able to make safety-critical interventions, but they'll be
able to give the cars and passengers instructions, kind of like a backseat
driver, I guess.

So if there's an accident scene, for example, the human monitor will judge
whether to stop and wait, navigate a path through, or turn around and find a
detour.

~~~
stephengillie
Ah, the cat is out of the proverbial bag! These cars are not really "self-
driving" at all! They are merely remote-control cars with adaptive cruise and
lane assist.

So it's somewhere between a Lyft and remote surgery. What happens if the car
loses internet?

~~~
Fricken
No, they're not remote control. The human operators can't make safety-critical
interventions, they won't be able to drive a robotaxi 50 mph into a tree, for
example. There's an inherent liability associated with that.

------
davidkuhta
Excited about the technology and expected this news eventually, but in less of
a "Bam, we did it" and more of a "Coming Dec 2017... look for new autonomous
vehicles, they'll be bright orange with flashing lights".

Following-up on the "How is this legal" question below, can anyone comment on:

1\. For the 'autonomous engineers/technologists':

a) Is the technology mature enough that it can be utilized without an on-board
driver such that public isn't at risk?

b) Does the sensor system provide the remote "monitor" have enough situational
awareness?

c) What happens if whatever up-link that the vehicle is connected to
disconnects? (for example: They're using Comcast)

2\. For the 'lawyers':

a) Who's responsible if someone gets hurt or the vehicle breaks a law?

b) Is an Executive Order from the Governor the ideal channel for introducing
the technology to the public (versus legislative action)? [I know subjective
but curious]

3\. For the 'marketers':

a) Any examples of technologies prematurely introduced that had negative
impact on their growth or contributed to their demise?

Note: I realize some of these are subjective but thought would make for some
great discussion.

~~~
ghaff
>a) Any examples of technologies prematurely introduced that had negative
impact on their growth or contributed to their demise?

Not really a class of product, but there certainly have been interesting
processor architectures whose implementations weren't very good (and/or their
timing was bad) out of the gate. Itanium comes to mind although there are
others as well. One can reasonably argue whether it made a difference in the
long run but late and slow meant Itanium ultimately never had a chance.

>a) Who's responsible if someone gets hurt or the vehicle breaks a law?

It's an interesting question. Outside of, perhaps, drugs, it's hard to think
of consumer products that, correctly maintained, and used according to
directions (or even not), randomly hurt or kill people and everyone just
accepts that because "stuff happens." No, they get a lawyer. It also raises
questions like "I'm sorry. You're not updated to sensor suite 3.72 with
firmware patch level 7865 so we're not liable" or "Your vehicle is out of
support and we can no longer provide security or safety updates so you can no
longer be covered for liability."

~~~
carapace
Off topic, but years ago a friend of mine participated in a jury research
program around tobacco. He learned a lot of weird and fascinating stuff there.
One thing he said was that cigarettes et. al. were "the only product which,
_when used as directed_ , will kill you." He also said that they had
apparently come up with a strain of tobacco that _wasn 't addictive_ but
didn't bring it to market.

~~~
ghaff
Tobacco is actually a good example of an inherently dangerous consumer
product. It just doesn't make a strong case for "and everyone's just fine with
it."

------
strin
Levels of driving automation is an ill-defined concept.

For example, L4 is defined as "mind-off". According to Wikipedia, "the driver
may safely go to sleep or leave the driver's seat. Self driving is supported
only in limited areas (geofenced) or under special circumstances, like traffic
jams. Outside of these areas or circumstances, the vehicle must be able to
safely abort the trip, i.e. park the car, if the driver does not retake
control."

However, the difficulty of driving varies so much from case to case. City is
significantly more complex than urban areas. If some company geofence the cars
in urban areas and achieve level 4, it might be less impressive say a Level-3
system that works in complex city scenarios and extreme weather conditions.

~~~
jacquesm
> the driver may safely go to sleep or leave the driver's seat

That's going to be hard to do while you are wearing a seatbelt and I don't see
seatbelt laws rescinded just because a vehicle is self driving until car
accidents are exceedingly rare.

~~~
sangnoir
That's because the current seats and belts are not designed for comfortable
sleeping. This can change if the vehicle has L4 autonomy - the interior can be
redesigned to from the ground-up to accommodate sleeping. Airplanes seats have
set the precedence of having seat-belts whilst allowing for sleep.

~~~
jacquesm
Airplane seatbelts are only mandatory during take-off and landing as well as
turbulence. It will be a very long time before any kind of driving is as safe
as commercial air travel.

~~~
sangnoir
I wasn't talking about the laws, I was referring to the comfort baked into the
design: I have slept while flying with my seat-belt on; it's not
uncomfortable.

While not legally mandated, most airlines encourage people to keep their seat-
belts on during cruise - this is good advice that I take to heart because
turbulence is unpredictable; sudden loss of elevation are known to happen.

~~~
ghaff
It's also the case that a loosely-buckled aircraft lap belt will probably keep
you from making an acquaintance with the ceiling if the plane decides to
suddenly make you very aware of the concept of inertia. On the other hand,
should a car ram into something or something into it, the same thing is going
to be pretty near useless.

------
Ajedi32
Wow! Waymo is now confident enough in their vehicles that they're willing to
risk letting the public use them completely unsupervised? This seems like a
huge milestone for self-driving car tech.

I wonder what their current disengagement rates are for Chandler; at this
point it has to be really close to zero, right?

~~~
harpastum
No public rides quite yet: "The current passengers for this test are Waymo
employees, however, so it’s not as if the Alphabet-owned company is throwing
caution to the wind; instead, it’s showing that it’s ready to move to the next
major phase of operations after around a decade of working on this incredibly
complex problem."

~~~
Ajedi32
I'm referring to this part:

> while the trial is starting with employees first, it’s soon going to expand
> to the existing members of the Chandler driverless ride hailing service
> trial that Waymo kicked off at the beginning of 2017. When that happens
> (sometime in the next “few months,” per Krafcik, Waymo will be operating a
> fully autonomous ride hailing service without any humans at the wheel, a
> major first for the industry in terms of realizing the dream of making
> commercial self-driving available to the public at large

------
dabeeeenster
There's a positive feedback loop that will happen: As they get more cars on to
the road, the log more real world miles, which makes the cars better, which
gets more cars onto the road which log more miles...

I wonder how valuable this is?

~~~
giacaglia
Tesla logs more miles per day than Waymo recorded in its history, but Waymo
has better software just because of their simulations of the real world. See
[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/08/insid...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/08/inside-
waymos-secret-testing-and-simulation-facilities/537648/)

~~~
jacksmith21006
Waymo also has far better hardware than Tesla and that is the bigger
difference. Google is getting 1500x Tesla also in performance.

[https://www.wired.com/2017/02/california-dmv-autonomous-
car-...](https://www.wired.com/2017/02/california-dmv-autonomous-car-
disengagement/) The Numbers Don't Lie: Self-Driving Cars Are Getting Good -
Wired

------
organsnyder
I own the same model of vehicle as Waymo is using (2017 Pacifica PHEV). It's
cool to see how little they've had to visibly modify the car (apart from the
sensors)—the interior looks 100% stock, other than the row of buttons on the
ceiling. Given the level-1 autonomous features in the vehicle (self-parking,
etc.), all of the integrations are probably done over CAN-bus, with no
additional hardware required (again, apart from the sensors and the computing
power).

~~~
jvolkman
I think there's more than that. The safety report they released recently
indicates the vehicles also have redundant power systems, redundant braking
systems, redundant steering systems, etc. I doubt that the stock
configurations require as much redundancy.

~~~
organsnyder
Ah, that could be. Though could that be talking about redundant processing
(i.e. two dependent algorithms making the same decision) rather than duplicate
hardware?

~~~
jvolkman
Don't think so. You can read the descriptions on page 17 of the report:
[https://storage.googleapis.com/sdc-prod/v1/safety-
report/way...](https://storage.googleapis.com/sdc-prod/v1/safety-report/waymo-
safety-report-2017-10.pdf)

For example: The steering system features a redundant drive motor system with
independent controllers and separate power supplies. Either one can manage
steering in the case that a failure occurs in the other

------
udfalkso
Waymo’s tech requires the area to be meticulously mapped correct? Is this why
the test is limited to a small geography?

~~~
rayiner
That's pretty terrifying that it can't read street signs and is dependent on
mapping. Here in D.C., there are all sorts of fine-grained road rules, such as
streets that are one-way only certain times of day, streets that reverse
direction at certain times of day, turns that are legal or illegal depending
on time of day, etc. That's not including random road closures.

These databases apparently don't get updated that often. Recently, D.C. moved
a major highway on-ramp. It used to be that you could get on 395-S heading
west on H street, by taking a left onto the on-ramp. They replaced it with an
underground entrance ramp on eastbound Mass. Ave., such that westbound traffic
on H or Mass. Ave. could no longer use the on-ramp, and had to go several
blocks south to use a different one. This was a widely-publicized move planned
long in advance. And at least Apple Maps tried to steer me down the old route
for awhile.

Similar thing in our neighborhood just outside the Annapolis city limits. They
closed our street to car traffic with barriers, so that you can get in an out
but can't drive along it for more than one cross street. Whatever database
Uber uses still hasn't figured this out--I'll get Uber drivers waiting for me
on the other side of one of the barriers.

~~~
jpm_sd
It can read street signs, even hand-held STOP signs in the hands of
construction workers. And the cars are continuously mapping their
surroundings. But they ALSO use a shared, extremely high quality map database
for first-level path planning.

edit:
[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/08/insid...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/08/inside-
waymos-secret-testing-and-simulation-facilities/537648/)

~~~
aroman
And it can even see and understand the hand gestures (e.g. turn signs) of
cyclists.

~~~
jacquesm
It's the cyclists that don't do hand gestures that are the problem. Which is -
where I live - the vast majority of them.

~~~
Filligree
I bet it's still safer for the cyclists than the average human-driven car,
though.

~~~
jacquesm
Time will tell.

------
emerongi
Why are the videos always done in perfect conditions? I like drive.ai's
approach a lot more where they demonstrated the capabilities at night and in
heavy rain. It's much more impressive.

~~~
kajecounterhack
What looks impressive in a video is often smoke and mirrors. Just because your
car is working in inclement weather for the duration of a video doesn't mean
it's safe or that the behavior scales to all situations. Proving that it
doesn't cause catastrophic problems is even harder (you need sim).

FWIW most autonomous cars work great at night. As for weather, nobody has
heavy rain completely solved (yet) (afaik). It messes with both camera and
lasers.

------
PatientTrades
A lot of what if scenarios being asked. The key takeaway here is that anyone
that drives a truck, taxi, uber, lyft, or any other vehicle for a living will
highly likely be out of a job in the next 10-15 years. So roughly about 10-12%
of the global workforce will be unemployed.

------
rwmj
_Throws money at screen_

Having said that I do love seeing these wide, straight American roads and
wonder how well this will do on the tiny (often single track) winding country
roads around here.

~~~
asteli
staying on the road isn't the hard part. all that can be mapped, even in areas
with poor road markings.

dealing with other road users and abusers is far harder

~~~
rwmj
Indeed. A day doesn't go by when I don't see drivers looking at their mobile
phones, vans parked in the road on a blind bend, tractors which are wider than
a single lane (or people who just think that because it's a country road they
"should" straddle the middle of the road) etc.

------
mattpk
The cars could be subject to vandalism, or at the very least really aggressive
driving. The predictability of the driving and the lack of a driver is going
to result in weird interactions with people.

------
julbaxter
Is there a website/document that compare the status of all existing self-
driving cars initiatives?

~~~
thaunatos
California requires all companies with self-driving cars operating in the
state to provide reports about miles driven, cars operated, number of
disengagements, etc.

Here's a link:
[https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disen...](https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disengagement_report_2016)

------
ersiees
I was really excited, until I read that the change they made is not to have no
employee in the car at all. They moved the safety employee from the front to
the back.

~~~
Bartweiss
Less dramatic, but it makes a lot of sense. If nothing else, a human presence
is probably still useful for common cases like a human rear-ending the car. I
haven't really seen anyone with a plan for handling all the non-driving issues
cars regularly face.

~~~
TillE
Yeah good point. Until they have the full infrastructure set up for handling
exceptional situations remotely, it's probably a lot easier to have someone
there at all times just in case.

------
debt
I think they're massively underestimating the general public's reaction to
something like this. I as a nerdy tech dude think this is very tight and if I
was much younger this would blow my mind, but I think this also might frighten
many people.

I don't know if that's being considered at all here or maybe the transition
will be slow enough to allow people to cope with the change.

~~~
ilaksh
They have been doing a series of incremental steps and press releases over the
last several months. They started the early rider program in April. Recently
they have been ramping up the press and public information program. They
released a large 'safety report'. They have been working on self-driving
education programs with organizations like MADD and NSC. They even put up
billboards in Phoenix related to self-driving safety/education. They also did
a big press event just recently inviting like 40 major media outlets including
NY Times, WSJ etc. to their test track to give journalists rides and announce
they would be launching soon.

Surprised you haven't heard about this stuff. They have been working pretty
hard to publicize and market it.

------
frankus
Neither here nor there, but I found that the construction "hard to understate"
is either wrong or super confusing.

Apparently I'm not alone
[http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=11177](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=11177)

------
esfandia
What simulators, if any, do these self-driving car companies use for testing
and development? Is any of these simulators available to the general public
(I'm guessing probably not)? I read about something called Carcraft in Waymo's
case, but it doesn't seem available.

~~~
shitals
We at Microsoft Research have been developing this:
[https://github.com/microsoft/airsim](https://github.com/microsoft/airsim). It
has car model to test self-driving algorithms.

------
foota
Imagine a world where every car crash is investigated as thoroughly as plane
accidents today.

------
Kiro
How is this legal?

~~~
mdorazio
Arizona's government has deliberately taken a very pro-autonomous vehicles
approach. The governor's executive order [1] specifically allows driverless
vehicles on the roads within the state, provided they follow traffic laws and
there is a licensed driver somewhere who will take responsibility if something
goes wrong.

[1]
[https://azgovernor.gov/file/2660/download?token=nLkPLRi1](https://azgovernor.gov/file/2660/download?token=nLkPLRi1)

~~~
Ajedi32
> a licensed driver somewhere

So, who would that be in this case? Does Waymo have a licensed driver
monitoring the vehicle remotely, ready to take over at a moment's notice?

~~~
mdorazio
I'm not sure about "at a moment's notice", but yes they're supposed to have
live operators standing by who can remotely direct the vehicles when needed.
Since these are Level 4 vehicles, they should be able to safely pull over or
stop when they are unsure what to do, so it isn't necessary to have a human
continuously monitoring at all times.

~~~
sidcool
What are level 4 vehicles?

~~~
TheCoreh
> Level 0: Automated system issues warnings but has no vehicle control.

> Level 1 (”hands on”): Driver and automated system shares control over the
> vehicle. An example would be Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) where the driver
> controls steering and the automated system controls speed. Using Parking
> Assistance, steering is automated while speed is manual. The driver must be
> ready to retake full control at any time. Lane Keeping Assistance (LKA) Type
> II is a further example of level 1 self driving.

> Level 2 (”hands off”): The automated system takes full control of the
> vehicle (accelerating, braking, and steering). The driver must monitor the
> driving and be prepared to immediately intervene at any time if the
> automated system fails to respond properly. The shorthand ”hands off” is not
> meant to be taken literally. In fact, contact between hand and wheel is
> often mandatory during SAE 2 driving, to confirm that the driver is ready to
> intervene.

> Level 3 (”eyes off”): The driver can safely turn their attention away from
> the driving tasks, e.g. the driver can text or watch a movie. The vehicle
> will handle situations that call for an immediate response, like emergency
> braking. The driver must still be prepared to intervene within some limited
> time, specified by the manufacturer, when called upon by the vehicle to do
> so. In 2017 the Audi A8 Luxury Sedan was the first commercial car to claim
> to be able to do level 3 self driving. The car has a so called Traffic Jam
> Pilot. When activated by the human driver the car takes full control of all
> aspects of driving in slow-moving traffic at up to 60 kilometers per hour.
> The function only works on highways with a physical barrier separating
> oncoming traffic.

> Level 4 (”mind off”): As level 3, but no driver attention is ever required
> for safety, i.e. the driver may safely go to sleep or leave the driver's
> seat. Self driving is supported only in limited areas (geofenced) or under
> special circumstances, like traffic jams. Outside of these areas or
> circumstances, the vehicle must be able to safely abort the trip, i.e. park
> the car, if the driver does not retake control.

> Level 5 (”steering wheel optional”): No human intervention is required. An
> example would be a robotic taxi.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car#Levels_of_drivi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car#Levels_of_driving_automation)

~~~
sidcool
Thanks.

------
SomeRandomDev
I saw they were/are offering free rides to anyone who wants to be one of the
testers in my metro area. I'm all for free but I'm not too sure about being a
human beta test lol.

------
jpster
> Waymo chose the Phoenix area for its favorable weather, its wide, well-
> maintained streets, and the relative lack of pedestrians. [1]

These are not very common conditions. So what is Waymo's plan for the rest of
the world? And what wizardry is needed to make it happen?

1\. [https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/10/report-waymo-aiming-
to-...](https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/10/report-waymo-aiming-to-launch-
commercial-driverless-service-this-year/)

------
pasta
I think it's also interesting that they are developing a car for this purpose
alone. No steering wheel, no pedals.

As far as I know there is no other brand that does this.

------
nmstoker
Just a small point, but I'm curious if the road rights of way are
significantly different there to the UK. I ask because in the video there's a
bit near the end where the car pulls out of a smaller road in front of a red
car that I'd normally have considered to have the right of way. Obviously they
left it in intentionally, so is that kind of manouver simply not against the
right of way there?

~~~
gabelevi
The red car had a stop sign too. You can see the back of the hexagonal stop
sign.

------
uneven
Great discussion, but what about the more human-based issues?

Like what happens if I forget my phone in one of these ride-sharing vehicles
and someone else had jumped in right after me?

What happens when someone trashes a vehicle? Are there going to be cameras in
these vehicles to track bad behavior? If so, what about the privacy
implications?

I don't have answers to any of these questions, but I'd be interested to see
what you all think

~~~
solipsism
What happens when you leave your phone on the bus or train? You hope some Good
Samaritan finds a way to return it to you, or hope the people who manage the
vehicle find it whenever they do cleaning or maintenance. Why would this be
any different?

Regarding a trashed vehicle, one imagines the next rider will have a way to
note that in the app or in-vehicle UI. Cameras... Maybe, depends on how people
tolerate it.

------
ashayh
Are these companies working on a Waze for self driving cars.

Shouldn't these companies, the DMV and other parties involved agree on a
standard for inter-car communications?

Why should we wait for Lidar to tell my car about a crash 3 turns away, if a
shared broadcast/receive system can do it faster?

------
erikbye
Does it pull over for police? And what about for police impersonators?

~~~
Ajedi32
Yes and yes. [https://medium.com/waymo/recognizing-the-sights-and-
sounds-o...](https://medium.com/waymo/recognizing-the-sights-and-sounds-of-
emergency-vehicles-8161e90d137e) Though one can easily imagine a system
designed to prevent the latter.

Preventing hijackings is more complicated than that though, since an
autonomous vehicle will stop for anyone who gets in its way, not just police
officers. The array of cameras, lidar sensors, etc each car comes with is
probably a fairly decent deterrent against that threat already though.

~~~
erikbye
I guess eventually police vehicles can just stop autonomous ones with the
press of a button, so it doesn't have to rely on its "senses". Some two-way
identification between the vehicles; avoid the issue of impersonators
completely.

------
MarkMc
Wow.

Yesterday it seemed that most people on HN felt level 4 self driving on public
roads was at least 5 years away.

Today that estimate needs to be revised. Seems the future is coming faster
than we thought.

------
KaoruAoiShiho
Lyft and Uber either beats the big tech or big auto to self driving tech... or
they are dead. I'm putting my money on the latter.

------
BurningFrog
They're driving on public roads, without a human backup driver, among random
regular unaffiliated drivers.

So in what sense is this a test?

------
punnerud
The self driving (small)cars will almost be gone from every motorway within 20
years is my prediction. They will be replaced by self driving busses, trains
and boats combined with a smart docking system where you automatically change
“vehicle” at speed. This way we can travel at a fraction of the
cost/emissions. We will se the first docking system on highway within 10
years, and the first prototypes within 5.

~~~
djsumdog
We already have self driving trains in much of the world. It's a solve problem
and cars can't even remotely touch the capacity of a train line. Self driving
cars are not a solution and yes, America needs to see a huge car reduction
within the next 20 years to deal with gridlock. I've written about it before:

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

------
mentos
Are any self driving solutions considering letting the passenger pilot after
the car has arrived autonomously?

------
greedo
Considering how often Google/Alphabet orphans products, I'm not holding my
breath for this to occur in my lifetime, not counting all the technical issues
that get handwaved away in any discussion of autonomous vehicles.

------
fastball
I just want a self-driving RV with 1Gbps internet.

------
lafar6502
But who cares? They convinced us somehow that self driving cars are important,
but it’s just self-important, gets the investors attention and money. Now time
to move on to the next big thing.

~~~
davidcbc
You don't think self driving cars are important? Can you elaborate on why not?

~~~
lafar6502
No need to rush it. Companies developing the tech might say it’s important to
have it now but mostly because they need money now to survive. And they dont
have any product to make the business real. So, they sell the hype, I would
not pay attention to that. Maybe do a reality check every 5 years instead of
jumping up at every ‘breakthrough’ news from the ceos.

~~~
davidcbc
Of all the companies doing driverless cars Waymo has the resources of
Alphabet. They don't need the money to survive and aren't looking for their
next round of VC money.

If a driverless ride hailing service isn't worth paying attention to what is?

------
thepompano
So did they solve the Trolley Problem?

~~~
tim333
That's always been more of a philosophical idea than a real problem. I've been
driving a few decades and don't often run into Trolley situations.

------
arthurofbabylon
Yo I have the best hands-free, no-attention transit system. Already. It’s
called the fucking train.

------
asafira
Has anyone driven in one?

------
dwg
road rage will never be the same

------
FiveSquared
Let them free, let them fly. The power is in your eyes. - Trashy Neighborhood
Band

------
RingwormOne
I'd like to see successful rain/night/snow/road construction/fog condition
tests before I get in one

~~~
dna_polymerase
No worries, they won't put you in a self driving car that isn't perfectly
safe. Considering Alphabet sold Boston Dynamics because of PR issues (remember
kicking the robots) they won't allow any human losses.

~~~
jacquesm
> No worries, they won't put you in a self driving car that isn't perfectly
> safe.

That they _think_ isn't perfectly safe.

It's not about what they will allow or not. It is about what will happen.
Whether or not it will happen remains to be seen, even if Waymo does not allow
it.

------
dcsommer
I hope these cars eventually drive more aggressively than the video shows.
With zero traffic they seem to inch along.

~~~
juliesulti
The video shows the vehicle operating at 25 MPH in residential blocks,
approaching speed bumps at 10 MPH, respecting a temporary 15 MPH school zone,
and coming to a full and complete stop at stop signs and red lights.

That is how you are supposed to drive a car.

~~~
songshu
Yes. The current situation is funny since it's a game of "what's the most
effective limit to tell people to stick to" rather than "what's the most
effective limit to stick to". Maybe once all cars drive under the limit we
will decide that the limits are too low and increase them. And maybe a lot of
stop signs will turn into yield signs at some point too.

~~~
dcsommer
Yeah this is precisely the point I was trying to make.

------
bluetwo
The interstate highway system is an enormous and expensive asset paid for by
the taxpayers of the US. Shouldn't we have a conversation about the rights of
citizens before allowing corporations to set a precedent that we will not be
able to roll back later?

~~~
foolfoolz
what rights are you worried about? commcerial vehicles operate on our highways
all the time. corporations are also tax payers in the US

~~~
notahacker
If the driver of a commercial road vehicle makes a mistake which causes a
serious accident or behaves in a way deemed reckless or inattentive, they can
go to jail. Similarly, I was under the impression that the humans who took
over Waymo vehicles according to very conservative engagement protocols (and
according to Waymo's calculations prevented several accidents) had
responsibility for the road vehicle

Who goes to jail if Waymo vehicles behave in a similar manner?

Assuming the answer is "nobody", how did this get greenlighted with so little
discussion?

~~~
soared
Whats your deal with putting people in jail, and why would you assume no on
will be punished if something goes wrong?

Obviously there will be repercussions for accidents, but we don't know what
they are or how it will play out.

~~~
tomjakubowski
> Obviously there will be repercussions for accidents, but we don't know what
> they are or how it will play out.

The top-level comment was just asking if we could work out how this might look
beforehand.

------
samstave
I do a hit and run on a driverless car, assume its on its way to pickup a
passenger, so no humans involved.

I hack a driverless car, again with no passengers, and make it do my bidding
(hit that other [thing])

I follow driverless car back to its charging base and slash its tires?

I rearend a driverless car then leave the scene? (same as option 1 I guess -
but could be applied differently)

A driverless car gets into its first fatal accident of a passenger, will that
lawsuit result in the shutdown of the company? Who specifically will be held
to account? Will the developer of the software? Will the engineer who didnt
provide sufficient sensors? What if the driverless car looses traction due to
black ice, and that results in the death of the passenger or another driver?

Im ubering from place A to place B and my phone dies early in the trip and the
uber ride cant bill me?

What happens? There are a lot more questions that should be posed - and we
should answer them all.

~~~
dpiers
Your vehicle and face are recorded by half a dozen cameras on the self-driving
car and uploaded to the local police department for the accident report.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I think it's safe to say if someone was going to intentionally attack a Google
self-driving car, say to hack it and direct it at a target, they'd bother to
make a basic attempt to counteract the cameras. Something like those glasses
with infrared lights that blind surveillance cams? Put some near your license
plates as well perhaps, I don't know.

Not that I agree with the parent this is likely, but most of the replies here
seem to ignore that technology is pretty easy to mitigate if you know what
you're up against.

~~~
samstave
Yeah, basically exactly hat I am saying, aside from the medical questions...

Waymo had better have setup a course at DEFCON and see what those amazing
minds can figure out on how to secure self driving vehicles.

This isnt a joke, this needs to be thoroughly sussed out

