Why are we still doing this? Just fucking invest in mass transit like metro, buses and metrobuses. Jesus
Also, Note that this is based on waymo’s own assumptions, that’s like believing a 5070 gives you 4090 performance…
After 50 million miles, Waymos crash a lot less than human drivers
Submitted 4 weeks ago by vegeta@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
Viri4thus@feddit.org 4 weeks ago
RobotToaster@mander.xyz 4 weeks ago
That doesn’t solve the last mile problem, or transport for all the people who live outside of a few dense cities.
rtxn@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Yes it does, if done properly. I have stops for four bus lines within walking distance. During peak hours, buses come once every 15 minutes. Trolleys in the city centre, every 10 minutes. Trams, every two minutes. Most of the surrounding villages have bus stops. A lack of perspective is not an excuse.
Whooping_Seal@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
Frankly the best solution i have seen is always a combination of things. At least in the city I live in, people can take bikes on buses and trains, many people walk, and for trips that require trunk space (e.g furniture, DIY supplies etc) there is a Car sharing service that is cheaper than owning a car, or using ride share / taxi.
I don’t think waymo is a better option than a combination of what’s above, I think it can perhaps compliment it but it should not be the sole last-kilometre solution.
futatorius@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Almost all people can walk a mile. The remainder have special mobility needs.
pc486@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
Why are we still doing this?
Because there’s a lot of money in it. 10.3% of the US workforce works in transportation and warehousing. Trucking alone is the #4 spot in that sector (1.2 million jobs in heavy trucks and trailers). Couriers and delivery also ranks highly.
The self-driving vehicles are targeting whole markets and the value of the industry is hard to underestimate. And yes, even transit is being targeted (and being implemented; see South Korea’s A21 line). There’s a lot of crossover with trucking and buses, not to mention that 42% of transit drivers are 55+ in age. Hiring for metro drivers is insanely hard right now.
Viri4thus@feddit.org 4 weeks ago
Taking waymo’s numbers at face value they are almost 20x more dangerous than a professional truck driver in the EU. This is a personal convenience thing for wealthy people, that’s it. Fucking over jarvis and Mahmood so we can have fleets of automated ubers…
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 4 weeks ago
people in america don’t want to ride with public transport because they’re incredibly isolationistic and have a fear of other human beings; so they prefer to drive within “their own 4 walls”, in their own chassis. It’s really about psychology much more than practical feasibility.
sparky@lemmy.federate.cc 4 weeks ago
Why sell $2 light rail fares when you can sell $40 Waymo fares? Now you’re thinking with capitalism!
Coreidan@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Because mass transit doesn’t solve the problem.
Arguments like these are fucking stupid since you can’t grasp how the entire world works.
Curious_Canid@lemmy.ca 4 weeks ago
This would be more impressive if Waymos were fully self-driving. They aren’t. They depend on remote “navigators” to make many of their most critical decisions. Those “navigators” may or may not be directly controlling the car, but things do not work without them.
When we have automated cars that do not actually rely on human being we will have something to talk about.
It’s also worth noting that the human “navigators” are almost always poorly paid workers in third-world countries. The system will only scale if there are enough desperate poor people. Otherwise it quickly become too expensive.
Flisty@mstdn.social 4 weeks ago
@Curious_Canid @vegeta this is the case for the Amazon "just walk out" shops as well. Like Waymo they frame it as the humans "just doing the hard part" but who knows what "annotating" means in this context? And notably it's clearly more expensive to run than they thought as they've decided to do Dash Carts instead which looks like it's basically a portable self-service checkout. The customer does the checking. https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/17/24133029/amazon-just-walk-out-cashierless-ai-india
SippyCup@feddit.nl 4 weeks ago
Back when I was a fabricator I made some of the critical components used in Amazon stores. Amazon was incredibly particular about every little detail, even on parts that didn’t call for tight tolerancing in any conceivable way. They, on several occasions, sent us one bad set of prints after another. Which we could only discover after completing a run of parts. We’re talking 20-30 thousand units that ended up being scrapped because of their shitty prints. Millions of dollars set on fire, basically.
They became such a huge pain in the ass to work with we eliminated every single SKU they ordered from us.
Krauerking@lemy.lol 4 weeks ago
Yeah we managed to just put the slave workers behind a further layer of obfuscation. Not just relegated to their own quarters or part of town but to a different city altogether or even continent.
Tech dreams have become about a complete lack of humanity.
Curious_Canid@lemmy.ca 4 weeks ago
I saw an article recently, I should remember where, about how modern “tech” seems to be focused on how to insert a profit-taking element between two existing components of a system that already works just fine without it.
Yoga@lemmy.ca 4 weeks ago
The system will only scale if there are enough desperate poor people. Otherwise it quickly become too expensive.
You can also get MMORPG players to do it for pennies per hour for in-game currency or membership. RuneScape players would gladly control 5 ‘autonomous’ cars if it meant that they could level up their farming level for free.
The game is basically designed to be an incredibly time consuming skinner box that takes minimal skill and effort in order to maximize membership fees.
Gonzako@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
“Damn, I’m sorry my car killed your kids. The Carscape person didn’t get their drop”
Usernameblankface@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Packaging the job as a video game side quest is genius. Make so the gamer has to do several simulated runs before they connect to an actual car, and give in-game expensive consequences for messing it up
kibiz0r@midwest.social 4 weeks ago
domi@lemmy.secnd.me 4 weeks ago
I thought the human operators only steps in when the emergency button is pressed or when the car gets stuck?
Do they actually get driven by people in normal operation?
werefreeatlast@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Could a navigator run you over twice from different companies after they get fired from the first one?
bane_killgrind@slrpnk.net 4 weeks ago
Sequel to snowcrash right there
Curious_Canid@lemmy.ca 4 weeks ago
If they have to do it a second time, they aren’t very good at it.
RedditRefugee69@lemmynsfw.com 4 weeks ago
God, I hope so.
Usernameblankface@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Has anyone found the places where the navigators work to see how it goes? Has a navigator shared their experience on the web somewhere?
I am very curious as to what they are asked to do and for how many cars And for how much money
Dropper_Post@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
i knew it that AI is just some guy in india responding to my queries.
TheBat@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
AI - Actually Indian
Buffalox@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Because they are driving under near ideal conditions, guided away from roadworks and avoiding “confusing” crosses, and other traffic situations like unmarked roads, that humans deal with routinely without problem.
And in a situation they can’t handle, they just stop and call and wait for a human driver to get them going again, disregarding if they are blocking traffic.I’m not blaming Waymo for doing it as safe as they can, that’s great IMO.
But don̈́t make it sound like they drive better than humans yet. There is still some ways to go.What’s really obnoxious is that Elon Musk claimed this would be 100% ready by 2017. Full self driving, across America, day and night, safer than a human. I have zero expectation RoboTaxi will arrive this summer as promised.
scratchee@feddit.uk 4 weeks ago
You’re not wrong, but arguably that doesn’t invalidate the point, they do drive better than humans because they’re so much better at judging their own limitations.
If human drivers refused to enter dangerous intersections, stopped every time things started yup look dangerous, and handed off to a specialist to handle problems, driving might not produce the mountain of corpses it does today.
That said, you’re of course correct that they still have a long way to go in technical driving ability and handling of adverse conditions, but it’s interesting to consider that simple policy effectively enforced is enough to cancel out all the advantages that human drivers currently still have.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I think “near ideal conditions” is a huge exaggeration. The situations Waymo avoids are a small fraction of the total mileage driven by Waymo vehicles or the humans they’re being compared with. It’s like you’re saying a football team’s stats are grossly wrong if they don’t include punt returns.
notsoshaihulud@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I have zero expectation that Tesla RoboTaxi will arrive this summer as promised.
RoboTaxis will also have to “navigate” the Fashla hate. Not many will be eager to risk their lives with them
curiousaur@reddthat.com 4 weeks ago
They’re super conservative. I rode just once in one. There was a parked ambulance down a side street about 30 feet with it’s lights one while paramedics helped someone. The car wouldn’t drive forward through the intersection. It just detected the lights and froze. I had to get out and walk. If we all drove that conservatively we’d also have less accidents and congest the city to undrivability.
poopkins@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Back in February, I took a Waymo for the first time and was at first amazed. But then in the middle of an empty four lane road, it abruptly slammed the brakes, twice. There was literally nothing in the road, no cars and because it was raining, no pedestrians within sight.
If I had been holding a drink, it would have spelled disaster.
After the second abrupt stop I was bracing for more for the remainder of the ride, even though the car generally goes quite slow most of the time. It also made a strange habit of drifting lanes through intersections while the turning indicators went from left to right alternatively like it had no idea what it was doing.
Honestly it felt like being in the car with a first time driver.
calcopiritus@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Maybe the reason they crash less is because everyone around them have to be extremely careful with these cars. Just like in my country we put a big L on the rear of the car for first year drivers.
LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
How long ago was that? Last year I took a couple near Phoenix and they did great, lights or no. The hardest part was dropping me off at the front of a hotel, as people were in and out and cars were everywhere. Still didn’t have issues, just slowed down to 3mph when it had 15 years left or so
wunami@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
just slowed down to 3mph when it had 15 years left or so
Damn, spending 15 years in a car going 3mph sounds terrible.
theluddite@lemmy.ml 4 weeks ago
I am once again begging journalists to be more critical of tech companies.
But as this happens, it’s crucial to keep the denominator in mind. Since 2020, Waymo has reported roughly 60 crashes serious enough to trigger an airbag or cause an injury. But those crashes occurred over more than 50 million miles of driverless operations. If you randomly selected 50 million miles of human driving—that’s roughly 70 lifetimes behind the wheel—you would likely see far more serious crashes than Waymo has experienced to date.
[…] Waymo knows exactly how many times its vehicles have crashed. What’s tricky is figuring out the appropriate human baseline, since human drivers don’t necessarily report every crash. Waymo has tried to address this by estimating human crash rates in its two biggest markets—Phoenix and San Francisco. Waymo’s analysis focused on the 44 million miles Waymo had driven in these cities through December, ignoring its smaller operations in Los Angeles and Austin.
This is the wrong comparison. These are taxis, which means they’re driving taxi miles. They should be compared to taxis, not normal people who drive almost exclusively during their commutes (which is probably the most dangerous time to drive since it’s precisely when they’re all driving).
nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 weeks ago
Journalist aren’t even critical of police press releases anymore, most simply print whatever they’re told verbatim. It may as well just be advertisement.
theluddite@lemmy.ml 4 weeks ago
I agree with you so strongly that I went ahead and updated my comment. The problem is general and out of control. Orwell said it best: “Journalism is printing something that someone does not want printed. Everything else is public relations.”
TrojanRoomCoffeePot@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
The meat of the true issue right here. Journalism and investigative journalism aren’t just dead, their corpses has been feeding a palm tree like a pod of beached whales for decades. It’s a bizarre state of affairs to read news coverage and come out the other side less informed, without reading literal disinformation. It somehow seems so much worse that they’re not just off-target, but that they don’t even understand why or how they’re fucking it up.
wccrawford@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I was going to say they should only be comparing them under the same driving areas, since I know they aren’t allowed in many areas.
But you’re right, it’s even tighter than that.
theluddite@lemmy.ml 4 weeks ago
These articles frustrate the shit out of me. They accept both the company’s own framing and its selectively-released data at face value. If you get to pick your own framing and selectively release the data that suits you, you can justify anything.
ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk 4 weeks ago
Considering the sort of driving issues and code violations I see on a daily basis, the standards for human drivers need raising. The issue is more lax humans than it is amazing robots.
jsomae@lemmy.ml 4 weeks ago
it’s hard to change humans. It’s easy to roll out a firmware update.
frezik@midwest.social 4 weeks ago
Raising the standards would result in 20-50% of the worst drivers being forced to do something else. If our infrastructure wasn’t so car-centric, that would be perfectly fine.
littlebrother@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
:Looks at entire midwest and southern usa:
The bar is so low in these regions you need diamond drilling bits to go lower.
DerArzt@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
What’s a zipper merge?
Screams in Midwestern
theterrasque@infosec.pub 4 weeks ago
“You don’t have to be faster than the bear, you just have to be faster than the other guy”
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
We always knew good quality self-driving tech would vastly outperform human skill. It’s nice to see some decent metrics!
slaneesh_is_right@lemmy.org 4 weeks ago
My drive to work is 8 minutes. This morning i almost had a crash because a guy ran a stop sigh. I don’t think the bar is very high at this point.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
That’s the beauty of it - we’ve only just begun to improve the situation. It’s going to get better and better until eventually traffic accidents are a rarity.
Itzdan@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Indeed
kerrigan778@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Human drivers are unbelievably bad at driving, it’s only a matter of time, but call me when you can do it without just moving labor done by decently paid locals to labor done remotely in the third world.
Buffalox@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Are you talking about remote controlling cars from India or something?
That last sentence makes very little sense to me.How is that relevant, I’m pretty sure the latency would be too high, so it wouldn’t even work.
kameecoding@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Thanks, but I am not, others on the road however, abysmal.
Takumidesh@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I find the scariest people on the road to be the arrogant ones that think they make no mistakes.
Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
No shit. The bar is low. Humans suck at driving. People love to throw FUD at automated driving, and it’s far from perfect, but the more we delay adoption the more lives are lost. Anti-automation on the roads is up there with anti-vaccine mentality in my mind. Fear and the incorrect assumption that “I’m not the problem, I’m a really good driver,” mentality will inevitably delay automation unnecessarily for years.
KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 4 weeks ago
“After 6 miles, Teslas crash a lot more than human drivers.”
psyspoop@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
“Waymo reports that Waymo cars are the best”
latenightnoir@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 weeks ago
How are they with parking lots, tho’?
Melonpoly@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
And yet it’s still the least efficient mode of transport.
MoreFPSmorebetter@lemmy.zip 4 weeks ago
I had a friend that worked for them in the past. They really aren’t that impressive. They get stuck constantly. While the tech down the line might be revolutionary for people who cannot drive for whatever reason right now it still needs a LOT of work.
roguelazer@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Focusing on airbag-deployments and injuries ignores the obvious problem: these things are unbelievably unsafe for pedestrians and bicyclists. I curse SF for allowing AVs and always give them a wide berth because there’s no way to know if they see you and they’ll often behave erratically and unpredictably in crosswalks. I don’t give a shit how often the passengers are injured, I care a lot more how much they disrupt life for all the people who aren’t paying Waymo for the privilege.
AA5B@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
As a techno-optimist, I always expected self-driving to quickly become safer than human, at least in relatively controlled situations. However I’m at least as much a pessimist of human nature and the legal system.
Given self-driving vehicles demonstrably safer than human, but not perfect, how can we get beyond humans taking advantage, and massive liability for the remaining accidents?
HappySkullsplitter@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
That doesn’t seem like a very high bar to achieve
blazeknave@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I used to hate them for being slow and annoying. Now they drive like us and I hate them for being dicks. This morning, one of them made an insane move that only the worst Audi drivers in my area do, a massive left over a solid yellow across no stop sign with me coming right at it before it even began acceleration into the intersection.
pewgar_seemsimandroid@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 weeks ago
how those robot food delivery “robot ai boxes”? by starship doing?
venusaur@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I believe it, but they also only drive specific routes.
GamingChairModel@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
What’s tricky is figuring out the appropriate human baseline, since human drivers don’t necessarily report every crash.
Also, I think it’s worth discussing whether to include in the baseline certain driver assistance technologies, like automated braking, blind spot warnings, other warnings/visualizations of surrounding objects, cars, bikes, or pedestrians, etc. Throw in other things like traction control, antilock brakes, etc.
There are ways to make human driving safer without fully automating the driving, so it may not be appropriate to compare fully automated driving with fully manual driving. Hybrid approaches might be safer today, but we don’t have the data to actually analyze that, as far as I can tell.
Kolanaki@pawb.social 4 weeks ago
Makes sense. There’s less automated cars than human drivers. Human drivers have also been around way longer.
scripthook@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I live in Phoenix, Arizona and these are all around. Honestly I feel like the future everyone will have Waymo type services and no one will have cars. Who needs to worry about car repairs insurance etc.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 4 weeks ago
Evolution took a billion years too, so it’s kinda fair to say “well, vehicles need some training”.
Goretantath@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
Thing is, the end goal after sorting out all the bugs in the AI is no human druven cars since having both will only lead to crashes dur to AI being unable to predict a human. All the AI cars would be linked to a central system to communicate with eachother and alwats know where eachither are. Then all we have to do is make sure people only use the cross walks and traffic accudents will be solely due to idiots.
SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
*human drivers remotely controlling cars crash less than humans directly controlling cars
keeyanxusss@lemmy.cafe 4 weeks ago
Ah yes I’m supposed to believe an ars technica writer and a bunch of papers written by waymo itself as opposed to actual peer-reviewed studies by actual independant experts
Grass@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
driving regulations and enforcement should just be stricter on humans and self driving can stay as trains separated from cars,bikes, and pedestrians, which should all be separated from each other as well.
RobotToaster@mander.xyz 4 weeks ago
That’s what happens when you have a reasonable sensor suite with LIDAR, instead of trying to rely entirely on cameras like Tesla does.
Lemmist@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
Musk: but-but-but people don’t have lidars and can drive! Lidars are expensive! Tesla go brrrrr.
KingJalopy@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
Tesla go durrrrr
Mac@mander.xyz 4 weeks ago
Citation needed
madjo@feddit.nl 4 weeks ago
People have a brain. Well most people. AI is no replacement for brains.
slaacaa@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
At least the repair for a camera-only front is cheaper after car crashes into a parked white bus
Tap for spoiler
/s
fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 4 weeks ago
And are limited to highly trained routes. There’s a reason you only see them in specific neighborhoods of specific cities.