15 years ago I worked on robot tanks for the US Army, I currently am in machine learning and I live in Phoenix, so I was very interested in this and have taken several rides on Waymo (never been in a Cruise). The Waymo felt very safe- and is definitely trying to convince you of that fact. Most seats have a screen that shows the cars current situational awareness of all obstacles around it- you can even see pedestrians, parked cars, etc., and when you come up to a stop light it will display a little icon with the correct light so you know that it is reading the red/yellow/green correctly. It plans routes such that it rarely takes an unprotected left turn (though the current generation of vehicles seem to be more willing to do that- on the old Pacifica minivans I don't think I ever had one do that, the iJag's have done it occasionally though not often). They are clearly thinking about trying to make it feel safer, and convince riders of that safety.
Now, I will note that the Phoenix area is by far the easiest driving I have ever encountered in 25 years of having a license. Wide roads, little traffic, few pedestrians (I moved here from NYC!), little weather, and I don't see them out as much at night. They crucially also completely avoid the most unpredictable driving in the area, for example Sky Harbor Airport, and near construction sites (there is construction in our kids school parking lot, and the Waymo won't go in- they will only drop us off next door and make us walk). But this too builds my confidence in the system- the people who are operating it seem to understand that it has limitations, which suggests to me that they are wearing their engineers hats and not management or, God forbid, salesmen hats. Is it perfect, I'm certain not. But I definitely prefer it to Uber or anything like that- no tip, no worry about the driver doing something concerning, just gets me where I want to go.
Waymo is amazing, knowing some of the stuff they do behind the scenes to ensure safety - I would feel safer riding in a Waymo than driving myself.
My biggest fear has always been that Cruise or Tesla would shit the bed so bad we don't get any self-driving, either because of regulatory constraints or ruining the public perception of them.
My personal experience with Waymo autonomous driving has been pretty good. Never seen them do anything poorly and I see them a lot. They're known in Mesa/Chandler Arizona as decent enough drivers, but they can take a little long for a left turn and they also follow the speed limit rather than the flow of traffic which is the normal Arizona case.
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.
Waymo have self driving cars without safety drivers going around Phoenix so they at least kind of work. I don't know if that will roll our globally in the near term but it might.
They've been operating without safety drivers in Phoenix, but not in SF. AFAIK, every Waymo car in SF has had a safety driver in it. Cruise has been testing driverless rides the past few months in that timeframe/speed limit.
Waymo has an operational SDC taxi service in Phoenix with no safety drivers. Obviously that's a fairly easy metro as far as driving goes, but it's enough progress to be long term optimistic imo, especially considering they're doing a closed beta in SF currently.
Living in Phoenix for several years and working in Chandler (the headquarters for the self driving car division where my office was actually on the initial training route before they allowed passengers) I can say the cars suffer from being overly conservative. I don't think this is a bad thing for self driving cars, in contrast Ubers cars (before they were banned from the state for disabling collision detection and killing someone) drove aggressively. Ubers cars needed to be taken over to stop from hitting pedestrians crossing at intersections and continually drove at least 5mph above the speed limit.
In Phoenix everyone drives fast on the highway, but Waymo cars drive 5-10mph under the speed limit. There are some unprotected left turns across 4 lanes they may try but being conservative they crawl across and eventually get stuck in the middle. This is probably a good thing for now and as confidence with the engineering team on the hardware and software goes up it can likely be tuned.
I took a couple of rides in Chandler recently. It was incredible to see a completely driverless car pull up and take me to my destination (and back). Never felt weird or unsafe in the vehicle and the driving felt very natural.
When you experience it, it's clear they have a mature system that's learned from driving millions of real world miles (and billions in simulation). And if you follow their research/tech stack closely, there's no doubt they are years ahead of everyone else. I'm not sure how successful of a business they will be, but their tech is solid.
As far as driving in inclement weather, Waymo is pretty transparent that it's very much a work in progress. They claim the 5th gen Jaguar I-Pace vehicles (the 4th gen Pacificas in AZ don't do as well) will be able to handle rain/snow/fog better due to upgraded sensors, but it's one of the big challenges remaining for them.
Isn't the author already wrong? There are Waymo autonomous cars operating right now on public roads in Chandler, Arizona without safety drivers. Sure, those are very carefully mapped and selected routes, but they are not closed routes, they have to deal with anything that can happen on a public road. As any engineer knows, the last 10% is always harder than expected, but scaling from 0.1% to 90% coverage seems fairly straightforward IMO.
I don't feel assured in the slightest. Cherry-picking one of the poorest performing "self driving" systems is a bit disingenuous.
Have you bothered to review what Waymo has accomplished? It's certainly not level 5 autonomy, but within its constrained service areas, it absolutely works.
In large parts of Phoenix, you can download an app and summon a driverless Waymo vehicle.
Well they just announced that they are doing tens of thousands of rides per week. That either works or it doesn't. And they seem pretty comfortable doing that. Also there's a distinct lack of horror stories involving Waymo cars. And I assume that they don't have thousands of mechanical turks wielding a joystick somewhere, which means these things are mostly working as advertised (i.e. autonomously) with the very occasional manual intervention.
So, what you are asserting and that cannot be true at the same time. So, my conclusion is that whatever you think you know here is probably wrong.
I must've be n dreaming about the rides I've taken in a Waymo recently in Phoenix then. Driverless cars aren't for every situation, but they're very capable and safe in many situations already. I'm personally very excited about a technology that makes transportation more available and safer for all road users.
Waymo is already using autonomous vehicles in AZ without a safety driver behind the wheel. There are fully autonomous Waymo vehicles driving around in parts of AZ.
They’re rolling out a revolutionary new technology that people aren’t used to or don’t trust yet. Phoenix provides that easy testing ground in terms of good roads and great weather year round. Last thing Waymo wants is to tackle too many things at once and cause a disaster. Remember how a single death effectively ended Uber’s self driving efforts?
They’re also offering a commercial service. Which means figuring out operations, customer service, emergency protocols, working with local administration and so on. They’ve said a larger goal in Phoenix is to figure out how to perform and scale operations. The local regulations there are much more favorable. Until recently, Phoenix was one of the only (probably only) places where you could operate a robotaxi program and charge for it. California just recently approved it, so SF is where they’ll likely go next as they are already setting up everything there.
Ultimately, mapping is the not the constraint for them to go to new places. It’s the operations and regulations that they need to figure out every time.
The technology is there. Waymo and Cruise have been testing self-driving cars in various US cities for years, and putting thousands of engineering hours into safety. You can take a driverless ride in a Waymo in Pheonix right now.
The problem with Tesla is that it was a rushed system built on the whim of a 50 year old nepo baby, and that real safety requires holistic sensor suites that include LIDAR and RADAR, as well as a fuck load of redundancy, in addition to cameras, which is the only thing Teslas have.
Same here (downtown Phoenix area) -- the driverless Waymos have been awesome. Occasionally they get confused but it seems pretty rare. They're better than a lot of the other drivers on the road out here.
I'm mostly excited that they upped the allowed passenger count from 3 to 4. Usually we take a car if we're going out to dinner with friends but the 3 passenger limit made taking one of these a pain in the ass or impossible.
It seems that Waymo has a command center where a human is monitoring the cars and can immediately issue commands.
Having taken Waymo a number of times in SF now, I have experienced this once. The car stopped and an unsolicited call from customer support came into the car to check on things.
While subjective my experience in Waymo has been positive and feels surprisingly safe.
The car drives conservatively but naturally. It shows a great understanding of other cars and people and cones from LIDAR on its HUD. It takes safe routes and picks safe side streets and alleys for pick up and drop off. There is a real-time support team watching things.
I doubt it’s ready for every city — SF is well equipped for public transportation with lots of well mapped local taxi routes and loading zones in the city.
And there will be surprises and accidents.
But it’s absolutely wild that we’ve reached this level of self driving, and it will be transformative for human kind as it continues to improve.
“Rush” is subjective. Waymo have been driving around with human drivers for years before let loose and they are still highly restricted to city limits and local routes. And I was taking design courses in self driving control systems taught by General Motors back in uni in 2005.
Cruise and Waymo have been as cautious as they can reasonably expect to be. They both have months long training courses for their safety drivers, and camera in the vehicle that monitor driver attention. While the vehicles are still challenged by complex scenarios, basic object detection and emergency braking are pretty good. Neither has had an at-fault accident, excluding an ambiguous but non-injurious incident between a Cruise car and a lane splitting motorcyclist.
Now, I will note that the Phoenix area is by far the easiest driving I have ever encountered in 25 years of having a license. Wide roads, little traffic, few pedestrians (I moved here from NYC!), little weather, and I don't see them out as much at night. They crucially also completely avoid the most unpredictable driving in the area, for example Sky Harbor Airport, and near construction sites (there is construction in our kids school parking lot, and the Waymo won't go in- they will only drop us off next door and make us walk). But this too builds my confidence in the system- the people who are operating it seem to understand that it has limitations, which suggests to me that they are wearing their engineers hats and not management or, God forbid, salesmen hats. Is it perfect, I'm certain not. But I definitely prefer it to Uber or anything like that- no tip, no worry about the driver doing something concerning, just gets me where I want to go.
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