Waymo driverless vehicle re-routes into oncoming traffic | Hacker News Reader

Waymo driverless vehicle re-routes into oncoming traffic

cnn.com

48 pointsbreadwinner21 comments

Had a driverless way make an abrupt left turn in front of me (going opposite direction) on Bayshore a few weeks ago. If it signaled it did so at the last minute. I had to slam on my brakes to avoid broadsiding. They aren’t safe.

This sounds like my average day while working in downtown Atlanta. The one-way streets in Midtown can be a bit confusing but they are well marked.

I can't count how many times I was almost either run over or hit while driving by someone who went the wrong way down a one-way street. It got to the point where I had the habit of almost exclusively looking for traffic in the wrong direction when using a crosswalk.

Human drivers are not safe.

The question is not which is perfectly safe because neither is. The question should be which is more safe.

The video doesn’t show how the car got into this situation

Yes, there could be actual good reasons for this. Maybe a car illegally turned left in front of the waymo and the waymo did a sharp turn to avoid a collision.

Yes. Is this a failed left turn where the Waymo became trapped in the intersection? Did something keep the Waymo from exiting via a left turn? There's a brief glimpse of a large pickup truck stopped in the intersection. A few more seconds of video before or after would help a lot. Maybe Waymo will post video from their side.

Wow these self-driving cars are more like humans than I thought. I see people cross into opposing traffic to bypass a jam and make a left all the time.

In version 17.3 of their software they're adding "driver fiddling with cell phone" mode.

Waymo probably was in the wrong there, but I'm not sure how the website video sound was so much louder than everything else and the screaming ruined my ears. I don't think the screaming was warranted at all.

Nice

The vehicle decided to go into oncoming traffic to clear a light change?! What type of an excuse is that. The vehicle should not have been in an intersection it is unable to clear.

Nothing annoys humans more than someone who obeys traffic laws in front of them. I've read the vehicle code, i know where you're supposed to leave gaps, time to clear, how long to stop. People get mighty aggressive if they perceive you as "losing them time".

At least here in the deep south people don't pack intersections before a light change like they did in southern california, that made driving way more tedious than it needed to be. Nothing like being at the front of the line, light changes in your favor, and you gotta wait for all the late-left-turn people sitting in the intersection.

eta: after watching the video; I've never seen a human do this without being impaired in some way. That is, i've only seen this a couple of times, and it was obvious the person shouldn't have been driving.

I've driven in many states, and IMO the state doesn't matter (north/south etc), but the metro size. The bigger the city -- the worse people drive. E.g. Chicago is pretty bad, being north.

Have you driven in New Orleans before? It’s a small metro, but some of the craziest most aggressive driving I’ve ever seen.

Dallas is worse, depending on how you define "aggressive." (i live ~2 hours from NOLA and ~5 away from Dallas.) During rush hour i traffic break and Dallas and Vegas have the highest ratio of people that will do the "cut you off then brake because there's only 100' of runway, there". NOLA feels like inept drivers (oblivious is how i describe many Louisiana drivers, in general!)

I was living in Vicksburg as a kid, so the three big cities we would visit were Memphis to the north, New Orleans to the south, and Dallas to the west (skip Shreveport). And…I have no memories about crazy drivers cutting lanes like they didn’t exist in Dallas or Memphis.

No. Boston drivers are just about the worst I’ve seen. Worse than LA. Worse than any southern city. Boston isn’t small but it isn’t LA but it’s far worse.

>At least here in the deep south people don't pack intersections before a light change like they did in southern california, that made driving way more tedious than it needed to be.

In many many many intersections in LA, there is no protected left, so the only way to turn left is to sit in the intersection and then turn on red. I’ve seen a lot of people from the suburbs not understand this, and let 2 or 3 cycles of the light go by before they realize. And everyone sitting behind them waiting to also turn left gets (understandably imo) really annoyed.

We solved this problem in Massachusetts, it's called the "Massachusetts left". So long as you're the lead car stopped at a red light. The moment it turns green (or ideally, just before) you slam on the gas and whip left in front of oncoming traffic.

In fact it's the one time you can use your blinker as an honest signal and oncoming traffic will actually wait for you to make the left and get annoyed if you don't.

Just make sure to check the license plate of the lead car in the oncoming lane, if it's not a MA plate abort!

I cannot fathom that this is a sanctioned traffic move. What is to stop someone driving straight from also gunning it on green?

In Texas there was a cowboy.

Everywhere he drove, he'd run red lights at full speed.

He had a passenger one day, who asked him, why don't you stop, that's dangerous!

He said, it's because I'm a cowboy.

Soon they came upon a green light. The cowboy hit the brakes and came to a complete stop.

The passenger asked, why'd you stop, the light's green!

The cowboy said, we gotta stop because there might be another cowboy coming through.

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(To actually answer your question -- you have to watch the opposing driver. If they hesitate, or ideally, flash their headlights, you're good. If they also gun it, abort and hang out in the intersection until red. Exchange gestures as appropriate.)

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