Hacker News Reader

Comment by joefourier | Hacker News Reader

Some comments are saying self-driving cars are not currently possible and that Waymo isn't successful, but aren't they currently available to the public in some areas in Phoenix, with no safety drivers?

There may be many limitations, but self-driving in sunny flat suburban areas would already cover a decent portion of the American market. Sure they might not be ready for chaotic, busy city centres or regions with harsh weather conditions, but that's letting perfect be enemy of the good - those living in areas suitable for self-driving cars would certainly appreciate them, and who's to say there can't be a gradual retooling of infrastructure to accommodate them as they expand to more and more areas?

View on HN

More context on the -no safety driver- issue.

"Eliminating the safety driver is an important step toward making Waymo's service profitable. But it may not be enough on its own because Waymo says the cars still have remote overseers.

These Waymo staffers never steer the vehicles directly, but they do send high-level instructions to help vehicles get out of tricky situations. For example, a Waymo spokeswoman told me, "if a Waymo vehicle detects that a road ahead may be closed due to construction, it can pull over and request a second set of eyes from our fleet response specialists." The fleet response specialist can then confirm that the road is closed and instruct the vehicle to take another route."

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/10/waymo-finally-launches-...

As long as you can get a good ratio, says 10:1, that sounds workable as a robotaxi, actually.

The language seems to be chosen very carefully.

They say that they don't do one very specific thing, and they give one very specific example of something they do. Leaving it open to interpretation.

I'll remain very skeptical about their no safety driver claims.

We'll probably have to wait until the first fatality or serious injury to know in certain. The lawsuits and police/NTSB investigations will expose a lot of the inner workings.

Every case of remote assistance I've seen in Waymo videos tends to look like this:

https://youtu.be/D1sZnbORfAE?t=830

Stuck in a parking lot, with an unexpected massive obstacle (Christmas tree display) blocking the "road". "RAD MONITORING" shows up on passenger screen. Objects get labelled and vehicle starts making progress.

It seems to be happening a lot less in recent videos.

I encourage you to watch a video of a current Waymo ride in Phoenix. In one ride I watched, the very first turn it made out of a parking lot should have been a left turn, but it turned right instead and went through residential streets to get back in the right direction.

It is nice that they have deployed to the public, but I doubt anyone capable of driving themselves will use it any time soon if it can't even make left turns.

I took a waymo in Chandler that had no safety driver and it was able to make unprotected left turns just fine.

I don't understand what you're saying. Obviously the cars are capable of turning left. Are you saying it took a longer route when there was a shorter path to leave the parking lot? I don't know what video you're referring to (there's quite a few), but that seems to concern the high-level path planning, not any driving capabilities (e.g. a human following GPS instructions might have chosen the same route). Or perhaps the navigation planning system prefers to drive through lower traffic residential areas.

Chandler, not Phoenix. Went over to try the cars recently. They sometimes drop you off or pick you up from a different location than you wanted if they can't get to the location you provided.

If they actually launched in Phoenix that would be encouraging. Instead they're stuck in the suburbs.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com