I gotta say, I was driven on residential streets/stroads from home to restaurant by a Tesla 3 (using vision alone I think? it was fairly recent) in absolutely POURING rain and I was blown away by how good it was. I think it's hard to get a handle on how good this stuff is because it's such a politically charged field now but I have a hard time believing the folks that say it's never gonna happen, or at least not soon, because of technical reasons.
Don't get me wrong, I'm on team ban cars and replace every stroad with a light rail corridor and bike paths, but I think self driving cars will be fine in some number of years once the haters calm down. Hard for me to believe we can't achieve better than the average shitty driver level of safety.
It works most of the time but the issue is that "most of the time" is not good enough for these systems. Even if the failure rate is <1% that may end up being lots of accidents and deaths at scale.
People often make arguments that "oh it will still be less accidents than human drivers", which is true, but, the problem is that human accuracy is a very poor benchmark for autonomous systems. Autonomous systems need to be held to a higher bar, and it's better if that accountability and expectation is held from the beginning.
The thing about machine learning is that it can fail very suddenly, in a very unhuman way.
So even if self driving works most of the time, it takes a lot of work to address weird edge cases even the most inebriated human would not mess up, that other drivers/pedestrians would not anticipate.
And I was in a Tesla 3 in sunny weather about 2 months ago, and it nearly crashed into a tow truck and a cyclist that it didn't see. It's embarrassingly bad at handling basic use cases and it pretty much the poster boy for why vision alone won't work for actual self-driving.
I am on the side of cars (long term), even though I hate cars, the inefficiency, the space issues, the anti-pedestrian externalities, etc.
Ultimately, to design a transport system that benefits all of society, it needs to go from point A to point B.
Light rail / public transport will always need a +somethingelse, in order to do that. Or we end up expanding the rail infra so much that we have just reinvented roads, but a little more constrained. Or we end up with car shares. Either way is fine.
I just don't see how to cater for lots of different disabilities and needs without 'cars' being a (maybe small) part of it. Regardless of what path we take, I just see the evolution converging back on a car-like vehicle for a substantial portion of the freight/transport industry (albeit 'trains' of them, but not physically connected), even if it's mostly final mile. But people and things don't want to hop between transport modes. They want to step outside their door into a vehicle, then out again at the destination.
Anyway... Self driving vehicles could be worse than some drivers currently, but it sure is better than SOME drivers I have seen. For an industry that has only had 15yrs direct investment, it's already better than bad drivers from my view - So it's almost time to start making driving licenses slightly harder to get and keep, IMO (it's so easy to get a license. It's hard to take them away, unless it's after an incident. There are so many very unsafe drivers).
That's a long way of saying that I concur with your comment.
Just took a Waymo ride across San Francisco 3 nights ago in hard rain, at night. A hilly complex city with bike lanes, kinda oddball medians and bollards, many pedestrians, and homeless people wandering down the middle of streets. It did great.
I've taken 5 trips so far, and all have been great and better than the average uber driver.
I've had 3 sketchy Uber rides out of about 10 total in the last 3 months. One older woman was was peering over her steering wheel commenting that she really can't see that well at night, she'd kinda guess and head over to next lane, and had to abort once when she almost merged into another car. One plunged across 3 lanes of traffic without signaling while looking at the phone in her hand, twice! Another did a no look left turn while looking at the map and almost hit a pedestrian in the crosswalk. I said "stop!" and he did and looked up shocked. Slow enough that it would have only been a broken leg, but still...
One angle is to look at when we expect there to be data showing a new autopilot vehicle is at least equivalently safe to a new non-autopilot vehicle with modern ADAS. I don't think the performance is there yet, hard to tell when it will be.
Self driving is going the way of fusion power. Always just a couple years away.
I still believe divided highway trucking between major cities with last mile handoff to humans has legs, but I wonder how much the Tesla claims have poisoned the proverbial well of a more constrained system for the foreseeable future.
1. Waymo works great. It's safer than humans within its operating regime, and that regime is more than enough to make a profitable taxi service. As they collect more data, the regime expands.
2. Cruise is in the corporate penalty box for being dishonest in withholding video data from the state of CA, but that was a stupid PR move. It doesn't tell us anything about the tech, which in fact is strong.
Is that "same direction travel divided between autonomous trucks and all other traffic"? Or "only on highways where traffic directions are separated by a median"?
The former sounds like a massive (understating it probably) infrastructure investment. Trains sound better (as other comment while I was typing notes).
Waymo appears to be the real deal. Last night I saw one navigate a situation with a hesitant pedestrian better than most human drivers. And before people chime in with "ideal conditions," it was at night in the rain.
I never trusted the Cruise cars, they would drive like a teenager that was afraid of the road. But Waymo seems a step up even from the Uber drivers.
There’s an entirely different way of looking at this that is perfectly in line with why self driving. Cars have failed several times before…
Who is liable?
That’s what largely killed prior attempts, especially those using custom built roads. If the car crashes who is liable - the manufacturer, the road builder, or the driver? I think it is telling that the pull back we’re seeing is correlated with early cases in this becoming more salient.
Why does this have to be a technical limitation/success (im not saying it is or isn’t) only?
Vision-only is very very very far behind other techniques. Cruise (the self driving company, not OP) was killed by an overzealous CEO, not by their chosen technique. Waymo drives great in SF.
Cue the Mercedes apologists pointing out their „L3” system that can be used on a handful of stretches of nevada freeways, below 30mph, only when there’s a car leading directly ahead, and only when there’s little road curvature. But hey bragging rights.
Good luck finding non-press videos of it in action
thot_experiment|2 years ago
Don't get me wrong, I'm on team ban cars and replace every stroad with a light rail corridor and bike paths, but I think self driving cars will be fine in some number of years once the haters calm down. Hard for me to believe we can't achieve better than the average shitty driver level of safety.
thumbsup-_-|2 years ago
People often make arguments that "oh it will still be less accidents than human drivers", which is true, but, the problem is that human accuracy is a very poor benchmark for autonomous systems. Autonomous systems need to be held to a higher bar, and it's better if that accountability and expectation is held from the beginning.
brucethemoose2|2 years ago
So even if self driving works most of the time, it takes a lot of work to address weird edge cases even the most inebriated human would not mess up, that other drivers/pedestrians would not anticipate.
gamblor956|2 years ago
chris-orgmenta|2 years ago
Ultimately, to design a transport system that benefits all of society, it needs to go from point A to point B. Light rail / public transport will always need a +somethingelse, in order to do that. Or we end up expanding the rail infra so much that we have just reinvented roads, but a little more constrained. Or we end up with car shares. Either way is fine.
I just don't see how to cater for lots of different disabilities and needs without 'cars' being a (maybe small) part of it. Regardless of what path we take, I just see the evolution converging back on a car-like vehicle for a substantial portion of the freight/transport industry (albeit 'trains' of them, but not physically connected), even if it's mostly final mile. But people and things don't want to hop between transport modes. They want to step outside their door into a vehicle, then out again at the destination.
Anyway... Self driving vehicles could be worse than some drivers currently, but it sure is better than SOME drivers I have seen. For an industry that has only had 15yrs direct investment, it's already better than bad drivers from my view - So it's almost time to start making driving licenses slightly harder to get and keep, IMO (it's so easy to get a license. It's hard to take them away, unless it's after an incident. There are so many very unsafe drivers).
That's a long way of saying that I concur with your comment.
joshe|2 years ago
Just took a Waymo ride across San Francisco 3 nights ago in hard rain, at night. A hilly complex city with bike lanes, kinda oddball medians and bollards, many pedestrians, and homeless people wandering down the middle of streets. It did great.
I've taken 5 trips so far, and all have been great and better than the average uber driver.
I've had 3 sketchy Uber rides out of about 10 total in the last 3 months. One older woman was was peering over her steering wheel commenting that she really can't see that well at night, she'd kinda guess and head over to next lane, and had to abort once when she almost merged into another car. One plunged across 3 lanes of traffic without signaling while looking at the phone in her hand, twice! Another did a no look left turn while looking at the map and almost hit a pedestrian in the crosswalk. I said "stop!" and he did and looked up shocked. Slow enough that it would have only been a broken leg, but still...
hedgehog|2 years ago
bigtex|2 years ago
eruleman|2 years ago
Super cruise is a feature in GM cars.
dheera|2 years ago
If so I think it is unethical and false advertising to have a feature removed from something someone already owns.
yellow_postit|2 years ago
I still believe divided highway trucking between major cities with last mile handoff to humans has legs, but I wonder how much the Tesla claims have poisoned the proverbial well of a more constrained system for the foreseeable future.
jessriedel|2 years ago
2. Cruise is in the corporate penalty box for being dishonest in withholding video data from the state of CA, but that was a stupid PR move. It doesn't tell us anything about the tech, which in fact is strong.
gertlex|2 years ago
The former sounds like a massive (understating it probably) infrastructure investment. Trains sound better (as other comment while I was typing notes).
The latter doesn't solve the issues noted in the recent article here: https://kevinchen.co/blog/autonomous-trucking-harder-than-ri...
Am curious to hear more thoughts/insights.
dexwiz|2 years ago
I never trusted the Cruise cars, they would drive like a teenager that was afraid of the road. But Waymo seems a step up even from the Uber drivers.
atleastoptimal|2 years ago
neaden|2 years ago
avs733|2 years ago
Who is liable?
That’s what largely killed prior attempts, especially those using custom built roads. If the car crashes who is liable - the manufacturer, the road builder, or the driver? I think it is telling that the pull back we’re seeing is correlated with early cases in this becoming more salient.
Why does this have to be a technical limitation/success (im not saying it is or isn’t) only?
LightBug1|2 years ago
Do what you do excellently. Learn. Don't follow.
ramesh31|2 years ago
lorstic|2 years ago
Waterluvian|2 years ago
One can possibly compensate for an inferior “brain” by having more kinds of data to discern meaning from.
iknowstuff|2 years ago
Good luck finding non-press videos of it in action
ra7|2 years ago
gscho|2 years ago
adrr|2 years ago
ado__dev|2 years ago
mustacheemperor|2 years ago