Self-driving Waymo cars clog up dead-end San Francisco street
bbc.com
bbc.com
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Lake+St+%26+15th+Ave,+San+...
There’s a sign in the middle of the street instead of off on the side. Wouldn't be surprised at all if they're deliberately trying to give the cars more experience recognizing and responding to this situation.
The application of Occam's Razor that feels to me like the simplest explanation here is that Google is sending the cars into this dead end on purpose, and the unusual sign in the middle of the road seems like an obvious reason they may be doing it.
In the Financial District, there are many one-way streets. In California, when you're on a one-way street and you're turning onto another one-way street, you're allowed to turn left on a red light. Unfortunately, the Waymo cars don't seem to know this. Despite no cars coming, they will wait for green before turning left.
They also drive SLOW. I suppose that's safer, but when you're stuck behind one of these cars that's doing 15 mph when every other car is doing 20-25, it's rather annoying.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Lake+St+%26+15th+Ave,+San+...
So, the self driving car thinks it can go down that road, sees the "nope" and then has to go make a U turn somewhere.
However, this isn't a permeant feature, nor is there communication between vehicles about transient issues. Furthermore, it looks to google maps to be an optimal route - there's very little traffic on it. So the car goes there, discovers that it can't go that way and then needs to reroute. The classic "make a U turn at your earliest opportunity" type navigation assistant then sends it to this dead end where it can legally make a multi point turn.
Also Google Maps seems to have the slow street marked. Do Waymo cars not know about that? If you entered the desired route into Google Maps, what way would it take you?
A car going down 15th in the 100 block is either local traffic to something 1xx 15th, or either block on Lake; or is going to be doing a U turn to get back to California.
Playing with Google Maps, it seems smart enough to not route me on Lake. So I guess Waymo's route making software doesn't use all the information that Google Maps has, such as slow streets.
It is super odd that Google maps gets this right and Waymo cars don’t. You’d think they have time-sensitive map info as part of their routing.
If the cars were able to---albeit slowly---cope with the closed streets through this kind of cumbersome queueing in a dead end and turning around, it seems possible that Waymo might not have been aware there was an issue.
Or even a “amount of time to complete trip” vs “predicted time”.
I’m this is a like a tech variation on “if a tree falls in the forest, and no one hears it, does it make a sound?”
They're aware. When they were made aware it doesn't say, so maybe it's just recent. But the problem's been ongoing for a while it sounds like.
EDIT: The cars have a safety driver, i.e. there's a human in the loop. No excuse for Waymo to not know about this basically immediately.
But its pretty easy to report "problems" with their maps and get things corrected and removed from their suggested routes.
For example, near me there is an unlit and unpaved dirt alleyway linking two roads together. It cuts out about 5 mins of walking if you want to got to a road that links off those roads, but I really don't recommend that route to be a thoroughfare as even on dry days it can still be muddy because the tree cover will slow the ground drying out if it has been raining the day before.
When I needed to know where a street was and Google Maps directed me though that alleyway, I reported the problem to them and they removed that alley to be used as a thoroughfare and it only now suggests it if you want to go to the street that alleyway connects to.
So if you have people walking though your gardens or private land, report the issue to Google and hopefully they will fix it.
https://blog.princelaw.com/2021/05/05/purple-paint-means-no-...
These purple paint laws are fairly new and not many people are aware of them. I’ve also found purple paint tends to be used by the most violent and anti-social landowners.
It was entirely nonsensical. I just stopped using them entirely.
This is the most San Francisco thing I've ever laid eyes on.
I'm showing my age again.
Europe has 3.5x the population density of the US. Over 40% of the US population lives outside of cities. People need access to basic services and goods and cars are how they get that.
Your comment implies that, for example, people living the Artic should feel bad for being extremely dependent on artificial heat.
This seems like an emergent phenomena that should be addressed by legislative action. What is preventing that action?
Basically, the state doesn’t want towns to have the ability to limit traffic on their roadways.
Society is about cooperation. Leonia benefits immensely from its proximity to Manhattan, and in return, people coming into and out of Manhattan get to pass through Leonia.
NJ residents are furious and the governor has vowed to fight this "discrimination".
https://nypost.com/2021/10/09/nj-commuters-vow-to-fight-pend...
On the surface the solution that the municipality came up with seems reasonable, they just need to work with the state DOT to jump through the administrative hoops.
> What does Google give back to the public in return?
Free, searchable maps and outstanding directions that allow all taxpayers to benefit from all the roads they pay for, instead of reserving certain roads for the use of an exclusionary group of locals.
If the answer is "yes", would you accept that things need to be changed?
While I can't speak for rp1, yes, there are many who are indignant that the road system is biased in favor of car manufacturers over other forms of transit.
You might recall that "jaywalker" was a marketing term created by car manufacturers to shift blame to pedestrians rather than car drivers, when a driver hits a walker - https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history - and those anti-jaywalking laws still exist.
As a transportation activist, I'm used to drivers attempting to claim the progressive mantle by saying that a tech shuttle bus or proposed bikeshare station represents the privitization of public space, and then completely dismiss how free (that is to say, fully-subsidized) parking and cheap tolls do that to car manufacturers and owners and oil companies to a far greater extent.
If OP answered yes, we could have an actual discussion. If they answered no, I'd know that further discussion was hopeless.
Your full analysis would also need to consider how higher use by car drivers affects other uses of the road. Some people cycle, for example, but increasing car traffic will likely increase injuries and deaths due to collisions.
This can be mitigated by separate bike lanes, which has its own cost.
As a kid, we played "baseball" and "tennis" on the street, because it was an open area, the traffic was low, and no parks were nearby. If the traffic rate increases, then those opportunities disappear. Pushing kids inside, because there's no safe place outside, may affect childhood obesity.
There's also a shift in pollution closer to living areas, and the stop&go local traffic may increase brake dust pollution ("Brake dust air pollution may have same harmful effects on immune cells as diesel exhaust" - https://phys.org/news/2020-01-air-pollution-effects-immune-c... ).
So all in all, it could be a net-negative, even if it's a positive for some people with cars, and for those who manufacture cars. It's certainly not as simple as adding up time saved with extra time waiting.
As for utilitarianism, would you walk away from Omelas?
Unless they route large trucks through local roads, the impact is negligible.
https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-heavy-...
Though looking at it, that's a different scenario than I was thinking of.
My local parking garage has groove marks on the entrance and exit, where all cars are channeled through the same route, and where they are most likely to brake and start. Large trucks aren't allowed, so in that specific case the impact isn't "negligible". I was using that observation to guide my intuition.
The experiment you pointed to was for vehicles driven "around a loop until the road was damaged to a certain point", which I believe doesn't include starting and stopping.
A search found https://ascelibrary.org/doi/10.1061/9780784478462.006 with "In hot-mix asphalt (HMA) pavements, rutting failure due to shear deformation is often more prevalent at intersections with turning and/or stop-go traffic, particularly when subjected to slow-speed heavy traffic loading and high temperatures.", so that's the engineering way to describe what I was thinking of.
I would be surprised that a road designed for 30 cars per hour can handle 150 cars per hour with no shortening of its lifespan. I realize that weather and other factors play a role in deterioration, but in my 10 minutes of looking I found nothing which gave something more concrete (or more asphalt ;).
A neighborhood may have public streets, and these may provide a way to get from one side to the other.
But there may also be restrictions on "no thru traffic", prohibiting people from using those public streets as a way to transit through the neighborhood. Eg, https://www.pahighways.com/mutcd/warning.html gives an example:
> The No Thru Street Sign (W14-2-1) may be used to warn drivers that a street only provides access to the immediately adjacent area or subdivision and that the street cannot be used for through travel. The W14-2-1 sign should only be used where there is evidence that drivers attempt to use the street for travel beyond the immediately adjacent area or subdivision. "
and https://ecode360.com/10776005#10776014 shows how this might be described in PA law:
> All streets specifically designated below shall be deemed to be other than through traffic routes, and, on such streets, through traffic shall be prohibited, and the Chief of Police shall cause all such streets upon which through traffic is prohibited to be clearly posted with signs stating "No Through Traffic"
Thus, while the streets are public, that doesn't mean all types of public traffic is allowed.
OTOH, rp1 was referring to NJ, where the binding Attorney General opinion is that the state has not granted cities the right to enforce "no thru traffic" restrictions.
Doesn’t this summarise roads as a whole, and any business that uses them?
I hope to live in a car less city someday.