As in, zero visibility for 15-30 minutes, then it's past.
So if it can handle Miami tropical rain, it should be okay with all sorts of normal rain.
Out of curiosity, what's Waymo's current production sensor suite mix? I'd assume lidar and radar would also be very unhappy with the surrounding space suddenly being ~10%(?) liquid water droplets.
I reckon it’d feel quite heavy.
Which seems oddly close (in magnitude) to Earth gravitational acceleration (9.8 m/s^2).
Weird!
[1] https://ouster.com/insights/blog/lidar-vs-camera-comparison-...
I feel like a lot of "How well does it handle rain?" comes down to how the roads are built and maintained (Huge puddles, proper drainage, etc) rather than about the car itself, as the car you could test by blasting it with water from different directions and amounts.
I wonder whether, like many human drivers, Waymos might be wont to pull over and wait out the short-but-extreme Miami squalls.
From their August 2023 blog post:
> During this past winter season in California with its record rain, high winds, and thunderstorms, we were able to maintain 99.4% fleet uptime
It happens rarely. When it does, more cautious drivers give up and pull over, even if they are on the freeway. That makes travelling at high speed down on freeway at high speed in those conditions near suicidal.
It only lasts a few minutes. I expect Waymo would handle like any human. Stop, or just creep forward.
A machine driver should not accept these conditions.
So if it's too dangerous for people, it's also too dangerous for computers.
What happens if there's an event that requires a mass evacuation such as a Category 5 hurricane and the major self driving car companies deem it too risky to drive in the conditions that precede the storm?