As a bus driver, I’m all about Waymo. They’re the only ones that let me over when changing lanes. I say thanks Waymo! And wave my hand at them every time. They’re safer and smarter than most of the human drivers we have
This is such an interesting design choice can you talk more about it? I have seen the Waymo cars and would never expect that a hand signal would be picked up by the empty driver seat. How will you train other drivers that they can communicate with the Waymo car in this and other ways? A big part of signaling to other human drivers is the feedback returned like a nodding head or something like that.
I’m a bike rider, and have a similar experience, but I’ve had them completely miss the mark at times: once made a left turn in front of me when I had daytime blinking lights…scared the sh*t outta me.
This suggests that the software modeling side of things has not yet been worked out…
I swear. That's the reason I welcome them. A road filled with ai seems a lot safer than humans. I'm probably more likely to get taken out by a human driver before a computer one, unless it's Tesla.
Teslas are some of the safest cars on the road despite two or three overblown media stories to the contrary (that you seem to be susceptible to).
Remember when the guy intentionally drove his entire family off a cliff in a Tesla and the media jumped to blame Tesla?
(And everyone survived!)
Who would have thought free speech would make leftists angry at a car.
22 incidents total on 50k weekly trips ([and 0 with injuries or fatalities](https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/inv/2024/INOA-PE24016-12382.pdf)). And 5th generation has been around since 2020. Seems shockingly safe.
Might be hard to compare, because not all miles are equal. Waymo until recently used to just do trips at night in certain parts of town, and there probably isn't any data on nighttime presidio driving miles vs. accidents for regular cars. There's also differences in rural vs city so taking a very broad driving statistic isn't useful.
Pretty hard to argue against 0 though.
> Waymo until recently used to just do trips at night in certain parts of town
You’re confusing Cruise with Waymo. Cruise used to give rides only at night, Waymo has always been 24x7.
As for comparison with humans, Waymo has tried to do it with zip code calibrated miles and found that their vehicles [significantly outperform human drivers](https://waymo.com/blog/2023/12/waymo-significantly-outperforms-comparable-human-benchmarks-over-7-million/), reducing injury causing crashes by 85%.
The definition is implicit in the linked report, a reported incident here is one alleging “ADS behavior causing single-party crashes and potential traffic safety law violations.”
YES this is the biggest thing for me. I feel safer as a pedestrian around waymos than I do with most human drivers.
Funny story: one time in a Waymo, a human driver with "anti AI" stickers all over his car decided to get in front of us and give us the finger. He was so focused on us he almost ran a light. I guess he fails to see the irony that his crusade against AI just makes its case that much stronger.
I generally would have agreed with this but during my first and only trip in a Waymo it failed to yield to an old man crossing the street slowly in the sunset. He hesitated when he saw us pulling up, then showed intention to cross and was nearly in the intersection when Waymo made an aggressive move to go for it. I'd like to see Waymo handle this better.
Fair enough. This is and is going to be a decades long process. Waymo is much to be preferred over the failed Uber and GM Cruise efforts, which were rushed due to the pressure to catch up to Waymo. Anyway this is all part of the process.
Talking as a software dev... It won't be a process, it will never happen. At least not in our lifetimes. Unless they're propped up by government subsidies Waymo will be bankrupt once they either kill someone* or investors figure out there are good reasons the cars are limited to 35 MPH.
The issue isn't just that humans aren't predictable, it's that automated cars are. The top post in this thread is a bus driver who loves Waymos because they always yield, but from a business standpoint that's a bad thing - human drivers are already figuring out you can take the right-of-way from a Waymo or Tesla and the car will do everything it can to avoid an accident. Imagine what riding in one of those cars will be like once a majority of human drivers know they aren't risking an accident by cutting one off.
*They might kill someone directly, that's what did in Uber's effort even though the outcome would've been the same with a human driver, but given the cars' behavior I think it's more likely they screw up an emergency response and people die because first responders were stuck in traffic caused by a confused Waymo.
> Imagine what riding in one of those cars will be like once a majority of human drivers know they aren't risking an accident by cutting one off
Yeah most people aren’t dicks. Or the police will make easy money, good on them:
I wish the feds would investigate the total lack of traffic law enforcement in SF. Waymos know the rules of the road better than most human drivers. I'm saying that as a frequent Waymo passenger.
As a motorcyclist of 10 years on SF streets, I welcome our robot brethren to share these means roads with us.
I also much prefer SF drivers to East Bay drivers and SoCal driver s
People running reds, killing pedestrians, bikers
NHTSA: I sleep.
Waymo hits cyclist.
NHTSA: Real shit?!
I'm not saying they're wrong to investigate.
I'm saying the juxtaposition is funny.
The NHTSA has zero jurisdiction when it comes to individual drivers or state/local traffic laws, but they do have jurisdiction over car manufacturers (which is effectively what Waymo is).
It's like you're complaining the DEA doesn't investigate domestic violence cases. That's not what they do.
Your argument is incredibly disingenuous and inaccurate. The NHTSA has many many studies on poor driving. It seriously takes just one google search of *"NHTSA poor driving"* to find this out. Hell they even have an [open letter to drivers](https://www.nhtsa.gov/open-letter-driving-public#:~:text=Most%20fatal%20crashes%20are%20linked,one%20at%20that%2C%20goes%20up.) that would probably warm your heart.
>I'm saying the juxtaposition is funny.
Only in your head
Edit: LOL!! Downvoting facts. Classic /r/sanfrancisco
> In February, a Waymo car hit a cyclist at 3 p.m. in the afternoon in the Potrero Hill neighborhood, SFGATE reported.
Uh yeah human drivers aren’t allowed to hit cyclists either, actually.
> six of the company’s vehicles blocked a freeway onramp in San Francisco, per TechCrunch
Humans aren’t allowed to block the freeway on ramp either.
It’s good that we are investigating and fixing problems. It doesn’t help anyone to pretend these things are flawless and just ignore the issues. We shouldn’t just blindly turn over control over car infrastructure to a private company because we assume it’s fine.
Who’s saying Waymo shouldn’t fix problems?
If anything I think people are fine with Waymo being held accountable when it messes up. What people are upset about is how many regular drivers break rules and block lanes all the time and no one is held accountable.
> If anything I think people are fine with Waymo being held accountable when it messes up.
I get the impression that a lot of people here are mad that we’re investigating them at all, that’s why I’m frustrated.
> What people are upset about is how many regular drivers break rules and block lanes all the time and no one is held accountable.
Oh yeah I feel the same way, I 100% think we need to be much stricter with human drivers. The lack of traffic enforcement is a major problem. I’d always prefer infrastructure changes to fix and prevent problems, but enforcement after the fact is importent too. We absolutely should be adding red light and speed cameras as a bare minimum.
Let’s retest human drivers every year and hold them accountable when they kill innocent people. Or at the very least hold them to the same standards as driverless car companies. Seems fair, doesn’t it?
question, how many hours of driving on the roads did waymo vehicles have before they hit a cyclist? and then compare that number of how many driving hours on average it takes for a flesh and blood human to hit a cyclist
I dont actually know what point this proves cause idk how to find this info, but I am curious to see if it leans one way or another. Sure a self driving car might hit someone every 10k hours on the road or something, but if people are hitting someone ever 7k hours on the road then I dont see an issue
Oh, I’d definitely guess that waymo has far less crashes per mile drive than human drivers. But the point here is that they aren’t perfect, and it’s *good* that we are investigating and fixing problems. We should have oversight here. It’s not a good idea to just say “eh idk it seems safer, let the company hit however many cyclists they want because it’s likely better than humans”.
This is a private corporation that will do the bare minimum they think they can get away with to maximizes their profits. They only have safety in mind as a goal in so far as they need it to make money. It’s good for us to set actual standards for safety and transparency.
yeah def agree with that part. I just think all the people yelling to shut it down cause of the accident don't look at the bigger picture of how self driving cars are still safer and we just need to make sure they stay safer instead of the company cutting corners
Eh, the safety arguments are often disingenuous in my view. Cities in every other country are far far safer then Us cities on car crashes, and it’s not because of any fancy technology. They just fixed their roads and funded public transit. We could have easily done that for 200+ years and have just chosen not to. Now people suddenly are acting like safety is their number one priority, when they still oppose basic improvements to transit and road infrastructure.
I don’t want to fight a technology that probably will save lives. But there’s significant downsides to this approach and we could get all of the safety upsides pretty easily by just improving road design and funding transit, as every other wealthy nation has already done. If people cared about safety then they would be supporting the far more straightforward paths we can use to get better safety (and instead we’ve opposed them all bitterly for decades).
"We" can do both. Alphabet/Waymo isn't going to fix our roads and urban planning, and city planning isn't going to develop self-driving AI tech, so we can encourage both and get the combined safety benefits of both efforts.
Has anyone seen any evidence about the incident where the Waymo car hit the cyclist? I suspect that cyclist misjudged something and that a human driver also would have hit a cyclist. Please don't skewer me for blaming the victim. I'm extremely anti-car and pro-bike and have worked hard my whole career to create bike-friendly streets to share the joy of bicycling with everyone not just us young men (LOL -- used to be young, 58 y.o. now, never owned a car) and so that misjudgments are forgiven and not punished with severe injury or death. Thankfully, in this case, as I understand it, the cyclist got up, brushed themselves off, and pedaled away. Another reason to think it wasn't the car "driver's" fault.
There was an incident where a cyclist was obscured by a truck, I think, and so wasn’t visible until it was too late. The Waymo stopped as soon as it saw the cyclist, as injuries were minimal.
I wonder if that’s the one.
I had been hoping there would be a DMV report for that one, but it turns out that the DMV narrative reports are required only for research and development. If the car is operating with a real paying passenger, then the incident is reportable to the CPUC instead. But the CPUC doesn't require a narrative report of incidents, only a quarterly spreadsheet that indicates the number of crashes. 14 collisions last quarter, since you were wondering, 1 with a bicycle and none with pedestrians, trains, or fixed objects. That's out of 238k trips.
I would guess the Waymo cars cause more accidents than a human driver, they just aren't directly involved - making that a much harder metric to measure.
The per-mile incident rate is actually worse for AVs than for humans right now.
https://jalopnik.com/self-driving-car-vs-human-99-percent-safe-crash-data-1850170268
Cruise and other AV companies released some adjusted numbers supposedly showing that their vehicles were better but their methodology was questionable. Also, AVs pad their stats with "safe" miles by driving in a circle in empty neighborhoods like Outer Sunset to reduce the per-mile incident rate. Humans don't do that. Nevertheless, AVs are still more accident-prone with the stat padding.
AVs will one day be safer than humans. They are just not there yet.
The article you linked to doesn't actually report the per-mile incident rate of AVs, and it just speculates that they are worse than humans because humans very rarely crash.
Well AVs record and report every incident automatically. How many human drivers cause an incident and just drive away? We will never know but I’m sure it’s a lot.
Plus, how many "incidents" that the AV companies report are incidents that never get reported when caused by human drivers? Sincere question; it's possible to answer but I doubt the study controlled for that.
> Uh yeah human drivers aren’t allowed to hit cyclists either, actually.
My friend was hit on his bike by a road raging driver in Mission Bay. There's even dash cam video. You better believe cops did exactly nothing to solve this.
You live in a fantasy land.
I'm not saying the law is enforced well-- the SFPD does basically zero traffic enforcement, and that's fucked up. I'm saying that its perfectly reasonable to expect self driving cars to not hit cyclists, and it's good that we're investigating the issue. That doesn't mean the current behavior of the SFPD is acceptable (its not). But it's crazy to be like "eh its self driving so we don't need any kind of oversight, it's probably safer than a human driver". We want more oversight on this stuff, not less. Separately, the SFPD should also do it's fucking job and enforce traffic laws for humans. But those are two separate issues.
Agreed; I wish we had more regulatory authority over the autonomous vehicle companies, but private meganational automobile and oil companies have long dominated our infrastructure by direct lobbying and enlisting millions of soldiers by making them dependent on their products. I'm not optimistic, but I think we have a better chance of taking back our streets from the cars for humans when the cars aren't operated by emotional humans made fearful of change by car dependence.
I was behind one weaving through the Presidio. It was like it was on a track. Absolutely perfect turns. Drivers are all over the place along the same route.
Such a relief to meet a Waymo at a crosswalk. The other night we had two of them waiting at an intersection for us to cross and the lack of existentialism during those few steps was revolutionary.
Man, I love Waymo. Obviously, nobody in the government has the first idea about the Waymo technology stack. You know, like buzz off and leave us with our autonomous vehicles.
I guess that maybe a plus is that if people get all paranoid about using Waymo because of these rare edge cases that it still handles very well, it could leave to a temporary drop in demand, which could free up cars for the rest of us.
I like Waymo. I use it. I'm still in favor of putting it and other autonomous vehicle companies under close scrutiny, and holding them to a high standard. This is still a relatively new and untested technology, with potential to be much, much safer than humans. We should incentivize these companies to meet this standard, rather than settle for being slightly better than human drivers -- who, you might have noticed, tend to really suck.
I agree they should be held to a high standard for safety, I’m just frustrated that nobody ever suggests holding human drivers to a higher safety standard.
Why can’t we pause human drivers until we can investigate the issue and figure out what’s going on?
It’s funny to me that a lot of people are denying that, but then love calling for strict regulation of other businesses. If we don’t want this idea to lose steam we need it to be absolutely perfect.
it literally can’t be absolutely perfect because of other drivers, pedestrians, and physics. There is no possible way to design a perfect self-driving vehicle that interacts with those two other uncontrolled cohorts and is still beholden to the laws of physics. Just like a human driver can’t be 100% safe even if they were a driving savant, too many other factors. Now if all the vehicles are automated and can communicate with each other then it gets better. but humans are still going to cause accidents by wandering into traffic etc
Ok well I hate to break it to you.. In that scenario I think an overwhelming majority of Americans aren’t going to surrender to the idea of 100% autonomous vehicles.
It can be relatively safe and also still have problems. It’s a good thing to investigate and fix those problems. We should not just blindly trust a private company to take over all car infrastructure.
> No one is saying that.
I mean… I’m not sure how else to interpret this.
> nobody in the government has the first idea about the Waymo technology stack. You know, like buzz off and leave us with our autonomous vehicles.
Fact: you will never need safety features targeted against the driver for a Waymo vehicle.
(Unless it does that Doctor Who shit where it locks you inside and drives into a lake lol—in that show that was the fault of aliens anyway)
But in any case, I’m glad to not have to deal with awkward interactions or being chauffeured. Subjecting a human to servitude inherently makes me uncomfortable
> Obviously, nobody in the government has the first idea about the Waymo technology stack
lol, this certainly seems to be a case of putting *stack before function*! 😆
They do not handle edge cases well, they freeze up and block traffic/emergency response vehicles. Though I will admit, the fact that not killing people makes you think they're handling edge cases "well" is a sad indicator of the state of driving in the US.
I love Waymo! I was hesitant when the path took me from SOMA through the Tenderloin to get to my destination, but it navigated everything perfectly. It really feels safer than being in a cab or rideshare.
The only thing that should be investigated is how the designers got them to do something that only the most talented motorists can do. Drumroll please...
Use TURN SIGNALS
Every time I have been in a Waymo that behaved strangely or witnessed one do something weird, it was because a human driver or pedestrian effed with it.
I love Waymo and use it as an alternative to Uber/Lyft when pricing allows it. It’s usually a smooth ride, but the other day I witnessed a car get stuck on Lombard (the tourist part) and there was nothing they could do. I also called a car over the weekend that got so confused at a blinking red light. It eventually pulled away but then got confused at a crosswalk. Love them but I definitely got a little worried after the last ride.
whats the legal standing on who is held responsible for waymo cars? like i know if a human driver hits someone/something or breaks traffic laws, they are heldresponsible. im genuinely curious about the legal standing and legal precedents this will lead to. autonomous things are becoming more common so deciding the legality of responsibility is bound to come up
Lake many in the comments, I also prefer waymo vehicles on the road over most human drivers, both for safety in and out of the vehicle, and the comfort of riding without mind-numbing dribble conversations with someone that wont let you roll down your window... but I think your question provides a real reason for a real need for these investigations. In many ways, all waymo cars are instances of the same collective/hive entity, and if one hits a baker, then it is as though waymo hit a biker, so in many ways I do think waymo in general should be evaluated in the way any individual who hit a bicyclist would be.
Drivers aren't held responsible. Killing someone typically results in a slap in the wrist at most, let alone jail time.
Even killing someone while driving drunk through a park in the middle of the day results in less than a year in jail:
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/ethan-boyes-dui-crash-charges-plea-deal-judge-19396345.php
No one. It'll be like Boeing—nobody is held accountable when bad things happen. Google is already seeing the Boeing to McDonnell Douglas shift with the current CEO being the McDonnell Douglas type, outsourcing jobs to India and focusing on short-term profit at the expense of engineering expertise.
I don’t hate waymo because it isn’t safe I hate waymo because I hate cars!!! and anything that takes the focus away from investment in public transit and improving safe transport infrastructure!!!
Unless these companies are willing/forced to take on 100% liability, they should not be allowed to operate. If it does not make 'business sense' to take on 100% liability, it does not make social sense to allow the business to exist.
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As a bus driver, I’m all about Waymo. They’re the only ones that let me over when changing lanes. I say thanks Waymo! And wave my hand at them every time. They’re safer and smarter than most of the human drivers we have
Waymo Engineer here! The car’s built in AI model recognizes hand gestures and will remember you during the AI revolution!
Ok…so right hand out for RT or left hand angled upwards or both?
Yes
No clue if you really are, but one thing I don’t get is why they don’t always use turn signals. That makes zero sense to me
This is such an interesting design choice can you talk more about it? I have seen the Waymo cars and would never expect that a hand signal would be picked up by the empty driver seat. How will you train other drivers that they can communicate with the Waymo car in this and other ways? A big part of signaling to other human drivers is the feedback returned like a nodding head or something like that.
It's a joke
I’m a bike rider, and have a similar experience, but I’ve had them completely miss the mark at times: once made a left turn in front of me when I had daytime blinking lights…scared the sh*t outta me. This suggests that the software modeling side of things has not yet been worked out…
I swear. That's the reason I welcome them. A road filled with ai seems a lot safer than humans. I'm probably more likely to get taken out by a human driver before a computer one, unless it's Tesla.
Teslas are some of the safest cars on the road despite two or three overblown media stories to the contrary (that you seem to be susceptible to). Remember when the guy intentionally drove his entire family off a cliff in a Tesla and the media jumped to blame Tesla? (And everyone survived!) Who would have thought free speech would make leftists angry at a car.
Teslas are the safest cars on the road *if you’re inside one. Won’t stop them from running you over.
Thats nice!
Wait till they have Waymo Buses.
As a truck driver that’s been hit twice in the last 6 months by people on their phones, it can’t be worse.
That's not true I let you (busses) change lanes _all the time_!
22 incidents total on 50k weekly trips ([and 0 with injuries or fatalities](https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/inv/2024/INOA-PE24016-12382.pdf)). And 5th generation has been around since 2020. Seems shockingly safe.
I wonder how this compares to human drivers; taking a sufficiently random sample set.
Might be hard to compare, because not all miles are equal. Waymo until recently used to just do trips at night in certain parts of town, and there probably isn't any data on nighttime presidio driving miles vs. accidents for regular cars. There's also differences in rural vs city so taking a very broad driving statistic isn't useful. Pretty hard to argue against 0 though.
> Waymo until recently used to just do trips at night in certain parts of town You’re confusing Cruise with Waymo. Cruise used to give rides only at night, Waymo has always been 24x7. As for comparison with humans, Waymo has tried to do it with zip code calibrated miles and found that their vehicles [significantly outperform human drivers](https://waymo.com/blog/2023/12/waymo-significantly-outperforms-comparable-human-benchmarks-over-7-million/), reducing injury causing crashes by 85%.
Wonder what an incident means. I saw a Waymo last week stopped in the middle of an intersection last week.
Wait. When did you see that?
Last week, I saw it last week it was last week
Oh, thank you. Where did you say you was ot last week? 🤪
The definition is implicit in the linked report, a reported incident here is one alleging “ADS behavior causing single-party crashes and potential traffic safety law violations.”
Waymo is still the only one who yields to me in unprotected crosswalks. F all you other drivers.
YES this is the biggest thing for me. I feel safer as a pedestrian around waymos than I do with most human drivers. Funny story: one time in a Waymo, a human driver with "anti AI" stickers all over his car decided to get in front of us and give us the finger. He was so focused on us he almost ran a light. I guess he fails to see the irony that his crusade against AI just makes its case that much stronger.
I generally would have agreed with this but during my first and only trip in a Waymo it failed to yield to an old man crossing the street slowly in the sunset. He hesitated when he saw us pulling up, then showed intention to cross and was nearly in the intersection when Waymo made an aggressive move to go for it. I'd like to see Waymo handle this better.
Fair enough. This is and is going to be a decades long process. Waymo is much to be preferred over the failed Uber and GM Cruise efforts, which were rushed due to the pressure to catch up to Waymo. Anyway this is all part of the process.
Even stole Waymo’s IP, in Uber’s case!
It’s the rush that worries me. They are incentivized to put them on the road before they’re ready….
Talking as a software dev... It won't be a process, it will never happen. At least not in our lifetimes. Unless they're propped up by government subsidies Waymo will be bankrupt once they either kill someone* or investors figure out there are good reasons the cars are limited to 35 MPH. The issue isn't just that humans aren't predictable, it's that automated cars are. The top post in this thread is a bus driver who loves Waymos because they always yield, but from a business standpoint that's a bad thing - human drivers are already figuring out you can take the right-of-way from a Waymo or Tesla and the car will do everything it can to avoid an accident. Imagine what riding in one of those cars will be like once a majority of human drivers know they aren't risking an accident by cutting one off. *They might kill someone directly, that's what did in Uber's effort even though the outcome would've been the same with a human driver, but given the cars' behavior I think it's more likely they screw up an emergency response and people die because first responders were stuck in traffic caused by a confused Waymo.
They go 45 in Phoenix and 65 on the freeways
> Imagine what riding in one of those cars will be like once a majority of human drivers know they aren't risking an accident by cutting one off Yeah most people aren’t dicks. Or the police will make easy money, good on them:
I wish the feds would investigate the total lack of traffic law enforcement in SF. Waymos know the rules of the road better than most human drivers. I'm saying that as a frequent Waymo passenger.
As a motorcyclist of 10 years on SF streets, I welcome our robot brethren to share these means roads with us. I also much prefer SF drivers to East Bay drivers and SoCal driver s
Never been in a Waymo. I would rather walk, ride, or drive near to one than a random human driver, by a large margin.
Me too.
https://tips.fbi.gov/home
https://help.nextdoor.com/s/article/How-to-join-Nextdoor?language=en_CA
People running reds, killing pedestrians, bikers NHTSA: I sleep. Waymo hits cyclist. NHTSA: Real shit?! I'm not saying they're wrong to investigate. I'm saying the juxtaposition is funny.
The NHTSA has zero jurisdiction when it comes to individual drivers or state/local traffic laws, but they do have jurisdiction over car manufacturers (which is effectively what Waymo is). It's like you're complaining the DEA doesn't investigate domestic violence cases. That's not what they do.
Your argument is incredibly disingenuous and inaccurate. The NHTSA has many many studies on poor driving. It seriously takes just one google search of *"NHTSA poor driving"* to find this out. Hell they even have an [open letter to drivers](https://www.nhtsa.gov/open-letter-driving-public#:~:text=Most%20fatal%20crashes%20are%20linked,one%20at%20that%2C%20goes%20up.) that would probably warm your heart. >I'm saying the juxtaposition is funny. Only in your head Edit: LOL!! Downvoting facts. Classic /r/sanfrancisco
Imagine holding blood based drivers to this same standard
> In February, a Waymo car hit a cyclist at 3 p.m. in the afternoon in the Potrero Hill neighborhood, SFGATE reported. Uh yeah human drivers aren’t allowed to hit cyclists either, actually. > six of the company’s vehicles blocked a freeway onramp in San Francisco, per TechCrunch Humans aren’t allowed to block the freeway on ramp either. It’s good that we are investigating and fixing problems. It doesn’t help anyone to pretend these things are flawless and just ignore the issues. We shouldn’t just blindly turn over control over car infrastructure to a private company because we assume it’s fine.
Who’s saying Waymo shouldn’t fix problems? If anything I think people are fine with Waymo being held accountable when it messes up. What people are upset about is how many regular drivers break rules and block lanes all the time and no one is held accountable.
> If anything I think people are fine with Waymo being held accountable when it messes up. I get the impression that a lot of people here are mad that we’re investigating them at all, that’s why I’m frustrated. > What people are upset about is how many regular drivers break rules and block lanes all the time and no one is held accountable. Oh yeah I feel the same way, I 100% think we need to be much stricter with human drivers. The lack of traffic enforcement is a major problem. I’d always prefer infrastructure changes to fix and prevent problems, but enforcement after the fact is importent too. We absolutely should be adding red light and speed cameras as a bare minimum.
> Uh yeah human drivers aren’t allowed to hit cyclists either, actually This is definitely fiction
The punishment is usually minimal, but it's infitnely more punishment than any Waymo executive or engineer got.
yo what about those sideshows on the freeway
Those are to bring awareness of Palestine ok? /s
Let’s retest human drivers every year and hold them accountable when they kill innocent people. Or at the very least hold them to the same standards as driverless car companies. Seems fair, doesn’t it?
Even better: let’s put a pause on human drivers until we can investigate the issue further.
question, how many hours of driving on the roads did waymo vehicles have before they hit a cyclist? and then compare that number of how many driving hours on average it takes for a flesh and blood human to hit a cyclist I dont actually know what point this proves cause idk how to find this info, but I am curious to see if it leans one way or another. Sure a self driving car might hit someone every 10k hours on the road or something, but if people are hitting someone ever 7k hours on the road then I dont see an issue
Oh, I’d definitely guess that waymo has far less crashes per mile drive than human drivers. But the point here is that they aren’t perfect, and it’s *good* that we are investigating and fixing problems. We should have oversight here. It’s not a good idea to just say “eh idk it seems safer, let the company hit however many cyclists they want because it’s likely better than humans”. This is a private corporation that will do the bare minimum they think they can get away with to maximizes their profits. They only have safety in mind as a goal in so far as they need it to make money. It’s good for us to set actual standards for safety and transparency.
yeah def agree with that part. I just think all the people yelling to shut it down cause of the accident don't look at the bigger picture of how self driving cars are still safer and we just need to make sure they stay safer instead of the company cutting corners
Eh, the safety arguments are often disingenuous in my view. Cities in every other country are far far safer then Us cities on car crashes, and it’s not because of any fancy technology. They just fixed their roads and funded public transit. We could have easily done that for 200+ years and have just chosen not to. Now people suddenly are acting like safety is their number one priority, when they still oppose basic improvements to transit and road infrastructure. I don’t want to fight a technology that probably will save lives. But there’s significant downsides to this approach and we could get all of the safety upsides pretty easily by just improving road design and funding transit, as every other wealthy nation has already done. If people cared about safety then they would be supporting the far more straightforward paths we can use to get better safety (and instead we’ve opposed them all bitterly for decades).
"We" can do both. Alphabet/Waymo isn't going to fix our roads and urban planning, and city planning isn't going to develop self-driving AI tech, so we can encourage both and get the combined safety benefits of both efforts.
Has anyone seen any evidence about the incident where the Waymo car hit the cyclist? I suspect that cyclist misjudged something and that a human driver also would have hit a cyclist. Please don't skewer me for blaming the victim. I'm extremely anti-car and pro-bike and have worked hard my whole career to create bike-friendly streets to share the joy of bicycling with everyone not just us young men (LOL -- used to be young, 58 y.o. now, never owned a car) and so that misjudgments are forgiven and not punished with severe injury or death. Thankfully, in this case, as I understand it, the cyclist got up, brushed themselves off, and pedaled away. Another reason to think it wasn't the car "driver's" fault.
There was an incident where a cyclist was obscured by a truck, I think, and so wasn’t visible until it was too late. The Waymo stopped as soon as it saw the cyclist, as injuries were minimal. I wonder if that’s the one.
Yes that’s the one. How fast was the car going? Whose turn was it?
I had been hoping there would be a DMV report for that one, but it turns out that the DMV narrative reports are required only for research and development. If the car is operating with a real paying passenger, then the incident is reportable to the CPUC instead. But the CPUC doesn't require a narrative report of incidents, only a quarterly spreadsheet that indicates the number of crashes. 14 collisions last quarter, since you were wondering, 1 with a bicycle and none with pedestrians, trains, or fixed objects. That's out of 238k trips.
I would guess the Waymo cars cause more accidents than a human driver, they just aren't directly involved - making that a much harder metric to measure.
The per-mile incident rate is actually worse for AVs than for humans right now. https://jalopnik.com/self-driving-car-vs-human-99-percent-safe-crash-data-1850170268 Cruise and other AV companies released some adjusted numbers supposedly showing that their vehicles were better but their methodology was questionable. Also, AVs pad their stats with "safe" miles by driving in a circle in empty neighborhoods like Outer Sunset to reduce the per-mile incident rate. Humans don't do that. Nevertheless, AVs are still more accident-prone with the stat padding. AVs will one day be safer than humans. They are just not there yet.
You can’t group AV’a together though. Cruise was awful and Waymo is much better, having been a rider in both many times.
Waymo's numbers are still not better than humans at this time.
Source? I’d like to see the numbers as I haven’t seen any Waymo specific ones.
The insurance industry said they're 7 times safer.
59, cycle everyday in sf streets…I can tell you that simply is not true. Foolish…
The article you linked to doesn't actually report the per-mile incident rate of AVs, and it just speculates that they are worse than humans because humans very rarely crash.
Well AVs record and report every incident automatically. How many human drivers cause an incident and just drive away? We will never know but I’m sure it’s a lot.
Plus, how many "incidents" that the AV companies report are incidents that never get reported when caused by human drivers? Sincere question; it's possible to answer but I doubt the study controlled for that.
> Uh yeah human drivers aren’t allowed to hit cyclists either, actually. My friend was hit on his bike by a road raging driver in Mission Bay. There's even dash cam video. You better believe cops did exactly nothing to solve this. You live in a fantasy land.
I'm not saying the law is enforced well-- the SFPD does basically zero traffic enforcement, and that's fucked up. I'm saying that its perfectly reasonable to expect self driving cars to not hit cyclists, and it's good that we're investigating the issue. That doesn't mean the current behavior of the SFPD is acceptable (its not). But it's crazy to be like "eh its self driving so we don't need any kind of oversight, it's probably safer than a human driver". We want more oversight on this stuff, not less. Separately, the SFPD should also do it's fucking job and enforce traffic laws for humans. But those are two separate issues.
Have you ever rode in a Waymo?
Agreed; I wish we had more regulatory authority over the autonomous vehicle companies, but private meganational automobile and oil companies have long dominated our infrastructure by direct lobbying and enlisting millions of soldiers by making them dependent on their products. I'm not optimistic, but I think we have a better chance of taking back our streets from the cars for humans when the cars aren't operated by emotional humans made fearful of change by car dependence.
Still safer than most human drivers.
I was behind one weaving through the Presidio. It was like it was on a track. Absolutely perfect turns. Drivers are all over the place along the same route.
This. The fact that we just accept 40,000 road fatalities here in the United States every single year is absurd to me.
Also if you survive a horrific car accident you basically have to hop right back into a car and freeway the next day to get or do anything in the US
Remember when that waymo killed a family of four a couple months ago? Oh wait that wasn’t waymo, it was a human driver
Remember how it wasn’t a taxi driver either? So how would automating taxi drivers have saved their lives?
I take waymo rides regularly and love it. Hope the feds dont ruin it!!
I’m the biggest Waymo fanboy. I even say THANK YOU, WAYMO when I exit. It’s my favorite way to get around the city.
Such a relief to meet a Waymo at a crosswalk. The other night we had two of them waiting at an intersection for us to cross and the lack of existentialism during those few steps was revolutionary.
Of course the feds are investigating the biggest improvement in road safety in anyone’s lifetime.
The feds aren't investigating European nations who put in traffic calming and pedestrian/public transit only roads/squares.
Would pedestrians walking around dropping caltrops count as “traffic calming”? Asking for a friend
Man, I love Waymo. Obviously, nobody in the government has the first idea about the Waymo technology stack. You know, like buzz off and leave us with our autonomous vehicles. I guess that maybe a plus is that if people get all paranoid about using Waymo because of these rare edge cases that it still handles very well, it could leave to a temporary drop in demand, which could free up cars for the rest of us.
I like Waymo. I use it. I'm still in favor of putting it and other autonomous vehicle companies under close scrutiny, and holding them to a high standard. This is still a relatively new and untested technology, with potential to be much, much safer than humans. We should incentivize these companies to meet this standard, rather than settle for being slightly better than human drivers -- who, you might have noticed, tend to really suck.
I agree they should be held to a high standard for safety, I’m just frustrated that nobody ever suggests holding human drivers to a higher safety standard. Why can’t we pause human drivers until we can investigate the issue and figure out what’s going on?
It’s funny to me that a lot of people are denying that, but then love calling for strict regulation of other businesses. If we don’t want this idea to lose steam we need it to be absolutely perfect.
it literally can’t be absolutely perfect because of other drivers, pedestrians, and physics. There is no possible way to design a perfect self-driving vehicle that interacts with those two other uncontrolled cohorts and is still beholden to the laws of physics. Just like a human driver can’t be 100% safe even if they were a driving savant, too many other factors. Now if all the vehicles are automated and can communicate with each other then it gets better. but humans are still going to cause accidents by wandering into traffic etc
Ok well I hate to break it to you.. In that scenario I think an overwhelming majority of Americans aren’t going to surrender to the idea of 100% autonomous vehicles.
It can be relatively safe and also still have problems. It’s a good thing to investigate and fix those problems. We should not just blindly trust a private company to take over all car infrastructure.
No one is saying that.
> No one is saying that. I mean… I’m not sure how else to interpret this. > nobody in the government has the first idea about the Waymo technology stack. You know, like buzz off and leave us with our autonomous vehicles.
Fact: you will never need safety features targeted against the driver for a Waymo vehicle. (Unless it does that Doctor Who shit where it locks you inside and drives into a lake lol—in that show that was the fault of aliens anyway) But in any case, I’m glad to not have to deal with awkward interactions or being chauffeured. Subjecting a human to servitude inherently makes me uncomfortable
In case of waymo a whole behemoth technology company is chauffeuring you… you’re just a cog in their test vehicle.
Good so again no awkward power dynamic over my driver, that’s a plus 👍
> Obviously, nobody in the government has the first idea about the Waymo technology stack lol, this certainly seems to be a case of putting *stack before function*! 😆
They do not handle edge cases well, they freeze up and block traffic/emergency response vehicles. Though I will admit, the fact that not killing people makes you think they're handling edge cases "well" is a sad indicator of the state of driving in the US.
I love Waymo! I was hesitant when the path took me from SOMA through the Tenderloin to get to my destination, but it navigated everything perfectly. It really feels safer than being in a cab or rideshare.
The only thing that should be investigated is how the designers got them to do something that only the most talented motorists can do. Drumroll please... Use TURN SIGNALS
Every time I have been in a Waymo that behaved strangely or witnessed one do something weird, it was because a human driver or pedestrian effed with it.
or passengers who effed in it
I love Waymo and use it as an alternative to Uber/Lyft when pricing allows it. It’s usually a smooth ride, but the other day I witnessed a car get stuck on Lombard (the tourist part) and there was nothing they could do. I also called a car over the weekend that got so confused at a blinking red light. It eventually pulled away but then got confused at a crosswalk. Love them but I definitely got a little worried after the last ride.
whats the legal standing on who is held responsible for waymo cars? like i know if a human driver hits someone/something or breaks traffic laws, they are heldresponsible. im genuinely curious about the legal standing and legal precedents this will lead to. autonomous things are becoming more common so deciding the legality of responsibility is bound to come up
Lake many in the comments, I also prefer waymo vehicles on the road over most human drivers, both for safety in and out of the vehicle, and the comfort of riding without mind-numbing dribble conversations with someone that wont let you roll down your window... but I think your question provides a real reason for a real need for these investigations. In many ways, all waymo cars are instances of the same collective/hive entity, and if one hits a baker, then it is as though waymo hit a biker, so in many ways I do think waymo in general should be evaluated in the way any individual who hit a bicyclist would be.
Drivers aren't held responsible. Killing someone typically results in a slap in the wrist at most, let alone jail time. Even killing someone while driving drunk through a park in the middle of the day results in less than a year in jail: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/ethan-boyes-dui-crash-charges-plea-deal-judge-19396345.php
unknown...
No one. It'll be like Boeing—nobody is held accountable when bad things happen. Google is already seeing the Boeing to McDonnell Douglas shift with the current CEO being the McDonnell Douglas type, outsourcing jobs to India and focusing on short-term profit at the expense of engineering expertise.
Waymo blows.
They need to investigate the terrible human drivers!
Why are SF progressives so scared of technological change?
I don’t hate waymo because it isn’t safe I hate waymo because I hate cars!!! and anything that takes the focus away from investment in public transit and improving safe transport infrastructure!!!
I prioritize public transportation, but in a strange twist: Waymo also means fewer cars…
Unless these companies are willing/forced to take on 100% liability, they should not be allowed to operate. If it does not make 'business sense' to take on 100% liability, it does not make social sense to allow the business to exist.
Who’s not taking liability?
Sounds like someone at Waymo didn't pay off the right Democrat politician or bureaucrat.
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must spend a lot of your time cringing if you live in SF
If you take a Waymo are you allowed to sit in the driver's seat so you can take over if something goes wrong?
No, you can sit in the front passenger seat. But if you touch the wheel, you'll be banned.
Thanks for answering. It was a genuine question.
Get em outta here
I just think it's funny how ppl think self driving cars is a good thing. How anti social do u need to be lmao
Dude, the majority of driving is done alone. 🤦🏻♂️
I just think it's funny how ppl think anon posts on interent forums is good thing. How anti social do u need to be lmao
I just think it’s funny you think the only use for self driving cars is to replace uber
Its replacing human workers. Which is not only anti social behavior, but dystopian.
A lot of people drive their own cars. It’s not just for current Uber rides.