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Comment by letitbeirie | Hacker News Reader

They're allowed to have limits like "local driverless taxis don't operate outside SF city limits or below 35 degrees with precip in the forecast" etc. at level 4, but to meet level 5 (per the bet) it has to be able to "drive everywhere and in all conditions," [0] which adds a lot of really difficult edge cases.

Situations that come immediately to mind:

- Driving in the hurricane lane on the shoulder during an evacuation

- Reversible lanes and streets

- Sizing up an icy hill and figuring out whether it's safe to keep going

- Ferries

- Knowing a baseball entering the road from behind a parked car will probably be followed by a child

- Understanding traffic police, sign turners, "follow me" trucks, etc.

[0] https://www.sae.org/binaries/content/assets/cm/content/blog/...

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I think each of these is already handled, or at least most. They say 99.4% of uptime in record inclement weather, which seems like it should satisfy "all". https://waymo.com/blog/2023/08/the-waymo-drivers-rapid-learn... I don't think they really mean "all" (like it shouldn't need to handle a lava flood). Just "all a human might do". This feels superhuman already.

I actually see the main thing right now that would mean this bet is "not currently won by Carmack" is that they are not officially offering freeway access in its commercial product: https://waymo.com/blog/2024/01/from-surface-streets-to-freew... But this seems minor, and I can't imagine it taking more than 2 years to allow freeway driving in multiple metros.

I can't fathom what would need to happen to derail this particular bet from being satisfied in Jan 2026 let alone Jan 2030.

(Note: if it wasn't for Waymo, I think this timeline would be much less clear. Tesla/Cruise feel much less predictable.)

Level 5 means there is no instance when Waymo intervenes from home base to tell the car what to do to get around an obstacle, and no instance where an emergency responder drives the car to move it out of the way. If the car is told to take the passengers to Arrowhead stadium, and it is directed verbally by stadium staff to go to parking lot 3, it goes to parking lot 3. Waymo will probably roll out level 4 robotaxis to a major city soon, but it's very hard to see them getting to level 5.

Emergencies are noted exceptions to Level 5, so the "A first responder insists on driving the car" case is still level 5.

Waymo has level 4 taxis in two US cities and is running tests elsewhere too. The usual reaction from the "This can't be done because somehow driving a motor vehicle is a uniquely human ability" people in those cities seems to be head-in-the-sand refusal to believe. The good news is that if they choose to believe a Waymo doesn't exist and step in front of it, it'll probably brake politely to a halt like they're any other asshole.

Level 5 mostly requires more range. I don't think this bet is a sure thing, but it's certainly possible that Waymo's reason you can't go from say New York City to Birmingham Alabama in 2030 is something that sounds like a taxi company reason rather than an "Our AI can't do that" reason.

>Understanding traffic police, sign turners, "follow me" trucks, etc.

I can confirm that in my experience, Waymo handles these kinds of situations fine. Better than many humans in SF seem to, ha! Compared to my past experiences with Cruise, where the car would become instantly paralyzed at the sight of flashing yellow lights, so it could phone home for human intervention.

Icy conditions seem like a big open question to me. As a human driver, there's a big difference between driving on a road slick with rain and a road slick with snow and ice..but maybe there is not much of a difference to a self driving car? Certainly, other humans on the road behave differently in snowy/icy conditions than in rainy conditions, and the self driving vehicle needs to share the road with them.

The bet specifically exempts natural disasters and emergencies.

I wonder when humans will meet level 5 by those standards?

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