[HN Gopher] Safety Performance of the Waymo Driver at One Millio...
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Safety Performance of the Waymo Driver at One Million Miles [pdf]
Author : alphabetting
Score : 67 points
Date : 2023-02-28 18:24 UTC (4 hours ago)
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| Animats wrote:
| _" Every vehicle-to-vehicle contact event in the first one
| million miles involved one or more road rule violations or
| dangerous behaviors on the part of the operator of the other
| vehicle."_
|
| That agrees with the California DMV reports. The usual problem is
| being rear-ended at slow speed when the autonomous vehicle
| detects a threat at an intersection and stops. That shows up over
| and over in California reports. The Arizona data has five
| occurrences of human drivers backing into a stationary Waymo
| vehicle, mostly in parking lots. That doesn't seem to be
| happening in California, probably because picking up people in
| parking lots isn't that common in San Francisco.
|
| As more human-driven vehicles get auto-braking, the rear-ending
| problem will probably decrease. Really bright brake lights that
| flash when the autonomous vehicle detects a rear-end threat might
| help.
| onos wrote:
| Curious if the car weighs the risk of getting rearended when it
| decides to be cautious in situations like this. I have a
| feeling human drivers do to some degree.
| ghaff wrote:
| >I have a feeling human drivers do to some degree.
|
| Sure. In general, people will try not to hit the brakes any
| harder than they have to especially if they have the
| situational awareness to know someone is close (maybe too
| close) behind them.
| dzdt wrote:
| More often in my experience they will randomly tap the
| brakes to try to get the person behind them to back off:
| "brake check".
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| If you tend to drive too close behind people, you will
| see this happen a lot - people really don't like getting
| involved in highway pile-ups, so it's better to give you
| a brake check than to wait until it actually matters.
| However, it is very rare for people to "brake check" you
| unless you do that.
| nfriedly wrote:
| > probably because picking up people in parking lots isn't that
| common in San Francisco.
|
| You could probably shorten that to "probably because parking
| lots aren't that common in San Francisco."
| jlmcguire wrote:
| This is a breath of fresh air compared to the tesla approach
| which seems to be don't release any data that isn't biased. Waymo
| is being a responsible party here by releasing all this data even
| if some of the stuff around the waymo driver hitting roadway
| objects (like the parking lot bar or the shopping cart) is a
| little concerning.
| notatoad wrote:
| tl;dr: 20 collisions. 8 where another vehicle reversed into a
| stationary waymo vehicle. 6 where a vehicle rear-ended the waymo
| vehicle. 1 where a garbage truck hit a stationary waymo vehicle.
| 5 instances of the waymo vehicle hitting an object:
|
| - a shopping cart
|
| - a parking barrier
|
| - a construction pylon
|
| - a minibike (slid into the waymo's lane)
|
| - a plastic sign (blew over onto the waymo)
| jdlshore wrote:
| Correction: five cases where a vehicle rear-ended the Waymo,
| one where the Waymo rear-ended another vehicle. In that case,
| the other vehicle merged into the Waymo's lane and immediately
| braked. Incident #7 on p11 of the report.
| dzdt wrote:
| Sometimes it seems that Waymo is moving awfully slowly but I
| think they are being really smart to remain cautious and keep
| their safety record. One major accident like Uber had could
| destroy the whole program. Better to move very deliberately, and
| incrementally, and don't expand beyond the system's abilities.
| [deleted]
| anakimluke wrote:
| This reminds me of a video I watched long ago that analyzes
| roughly how many miles would a self-driving car need to be driven
| so that we can have a certain confidence that they are driving
| better than humans. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaYER2M8dcs
| jeffbee wrote:
| That's a pretty superficial take. The whole thing relies on the
| gigantic denominator of human miles, but humans are
| artificially inflating their average because overwhelming
| majority of miles driven are extremely simple trips on limited-
| access highways. Waymo, by comparison, racked up its million
| miles driving around the SF Tenderloin, in the dark.
|
| Opposite to the claims seen elsewhere in this thread, which are
| omnipresent whenever the topic arises, it is in fact humans who
| are driving around on easy mode and self-driving car developers
| operate in the most difficult conditions they can find.
| debatem1 wrote:
| > self-driving car developers operate in the most difficult
| conditions they can find.
|
| Ehhhhhhh. While I agree that these aren't the easiest driving
| environments in the world, they are certainly mild climates.
| If I were in the business of proving that waymo vehicles
| weren't ready for prime time I'd be taking them up the alcan
| in winter or Florida during hurricane season, not Phoenix.
| ctchocula wrote:
| > Waymo, by comparison, racked up its million miles driving
| around the SF Tenderloin, in the dark.
|
| You might be confusing them with Cruise. Waymo is driving
| around SF driverless 24/7 so the million miles also come from
| during the day, while Cruise is limited to nighttime.
| parton wrote:
| Silly question: will the Waymo AV use the horn? I see a few
| parking lot incidents where another driver backed into the front
| of a stationary Waymo AV at ~2 mph. I think a human driver might
| have tried honking at the other driver, on seeing a slow-motion
| collision about to occur.
| saalweachter wrote:
| It would be a good feature to add, but...
|
| I've been backed into before. I didn't hit my horn. I just kept
| thinking, "There's no way they're going to back into me."
| 988747 wrote:
| How does Waymo compare to human drivers when it comes to driving
| style? I've seen some complaints that it is annoyingly slow and
| indecisive sometimes, e.g. taking forever to make a left turn. Is
| this something Waymo also analyzes? Any hard data on that?
| alphabetting wrote:
| I don't think there is hard data. From two rides experience in
| Arizona it feels eerily similar to a human driver minus it
| adhering the speed limit.
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| And minus the times when it gets stuck and needs to be
| rescued by human driver either remotely or an actual Waymo
| guy coming over and getting in the car. Doesn't happen every
| time of course but it does happen.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| The ones where I'd be most interested in the videos were the ones
| where the Waymo was stopped/slow/preparing for a turn and got hit
| in the back (4, 10, 12, 14). While likely the fault of the human
| driver, hesitant/unexpected behavior by the Waymo could have
| contributed to those.
|
| Three consisted of the Waymo hitting random objects - not
| catastrophic but clearly shows weaknesses in the self-driving: 3
| (Waymo ran over a traffic cone), 17 (Waymo hit a "free swinging
| parking lot barrier arm"), 18 (Waymo hit a shopping cart).
|
| Ten of the accidents seem unavoidable for the Waymo and clearly
| someone else's fault:
|
| 1 - distracted driver rear-ends Waymo coming to a stop, with a
| delta-v of 20 mph. A 0.2 g deceleration could be a bit faster
| than normal but definitely isn't slamming the brakes, and the
| report mentions at one point that the other driver was using a
| phone.
|
| 2, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 13, 19 - someone hits a stationary Waymo in a
| parking lot or while getting out of a parking spot. [Edit:
| Someone pointed out that these could be preventable for the
| Waymo, if it knew how to use the horn.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34974313]
|
| 16 - Garbage truck tried to squeeze by a stopped Waymo, didn't
| fit (although for this one, it is possible that a human driver
| would have pulled over further).
|
| Two were emergency braking situations - would be interesting to
| see what the reaction time was and how it compared with a human
| driver:
|
| 7 - someone cut off a Waymo and got rear ended
|
| 20 - Waymo hit a minibike that had crashed and tumbled into its
| lane, despite braking.
|
| And of course there has to be a weird one, 15 - Wind blew debris
| into Waymo.
|
| Overall, it seems like the report mostly avoids assigning fault,
| which is a good thing - in the end, how many crashes happen
| matters more than who was at fault. [Edit: and as the "use the
| horn" example shows, even when the other side is clearly at
| fault, improvements may be possible]
| ra7 wrote:
| If you don't want to read the full 30 page paper, Waymo has a
| blog post summarizing it: https://blog.waymo.com/2023/02/first-
| million-rider-only-mile...
|
| It's refreshing to see Waymo continue to be transparent about
| their safety data. I guess it's easier to do when you have a
| stellar safety record.
| WkndTriathlete wrote:
| > I guess it's easier to do when you have a stellar safety
| record.
|
| ... for the conditions that the Waymo vehicles operated in.
|
| Deployment of Waymo FSD across the board would seem to be a
| sure win in SF and Phoenix, so I hope that it gets widely
| adopted in those areas at minimum since I think it will save a
| lot of lives. There's a lot of work to be done by Waymo yet to
| get it to work in other areas of the country and conditions,
| though.
| pb7 wrote:
| SF is not an easy locale to test in. Sure, there is no snow,
| but the city is narrow, dense, with a lot of challenging
| situations including fog, rain, and crackheads. This success
| seems promising.
| tanseydavid wrote:
| Don't forget the "pedestrian right-of-way" law.
| gerad wrote:
| SF is a terrible city to drive in. Narrow streets, terrible
| hills, a huge diversity of traffic: pedestrians, cyclists,
| electric scooters, buses, light rail, trains. Highly
| congested. Plenty of tourists driving (it's not like NY or
| London where people who are visiting know not to drive).
| hardtke wrote:
| I've probably driven half a million miles and I don't remember
| having 10 incidents (I probably have, just don't remember). So
| I'd conclude I'm at least as safe a driver as Waymo. Even if
| not true, most people are going to feel that way when they see
| the data. Human nature.
| [deleted]
| tropsis wrote:
| One of the reports says that the accident was caused by the other
| driver looking at their phone. Could potentially the sensors of
| the waymo detect that and warn the other driver?
| nawgz wrote:
| "Hey guys, self-driving is a decent sprint but I think you
| should expand the scope to include detecting and modeling
| driver behavior in nearby vehicles. Add a quick study for HCI
| to warn drivers of their dangerous aberrant behavior and I
| think we might have something real here!" - tropsis, 2023
| jeffbee wrote:
| Predicting the behavior of other actors on the road is a core
| feature of Waymo.
|
| https://waymo.com/research/identifying-driver-
| interactions-v...
| mlyle wrote:
| Lol. I think the other comment is making a suggestion that
| isn't quite reasonable, but maybe it's adjacent to a
| reasonable ask.
|
| Humans have a horn to warn other humans of unsafe behavior or
| conditions. We really only need to worry about warning in
| front of us. And we provide some warning to cars behind us in
| specific cases with hazard lights and brake lights.
|
| The autonomous vehicles have a better understanding of the
| whole state. We've already talked about warning other
| autonomous cars with V2V, but maybe there's something
| easy/sane they can do to warn human cars behind them and
| further increase safety.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| "You can start the next sprint now and we'll get the final
| designs to you by Thursday." -PMs everywhere
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| I think dedicating a small team on this would be a reasonable
| thing to do. It should be quite separate from the main self-
| driving task, and would reduce the number of accidents.
|
| In the end, if I'm in a self-driving car, I care whether the
| crash happened, not who caused it. The injuries and hassle
| are mine either way, the financial damage isn't mine either
| way.
| wmf wrote:
| This feature is also required to solve the trolley problem so
| they might as well start on it now.
| brookst wrote:
| I mean if the other driver is using Android it should be
| possible to use some combination of license plate, phone GPS,
| Bluetooth proximity, and other means to identify who the other
| driver probably is and pop a "you are about to run into one of
| our cars, please loop up" message on their phone.
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| Yes, Black Mirror is in the process of producing that
| episode.
| jeffbee wrote:
| They should program it to just slam on the brakes whenever it
| identifies a driver behind looking at a phone. Proactively
| bankrupt such people.
| brookst wrote:
| Fun fact: while daily generally lies on the rear-ending
| driver, intentionally causing an accident will always get the
| lion's share of blame. This would bankrupt Waymo, not anyone
| else.
|
| If you do that kind of thing, don't expect it to work out
| well if the other driver has a dashcam. If they don't, of
| course you can lie and deny having caused the accident.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| It seems like a map showing the number of miles driven in each
| state and then in each metropolitan area within that state would
| be something an intern could do.
|
| Followed by a table with # miles driven in various weather
| conditions.
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(page generated 2023-02-28 23:01 UTC)