Locals reportedly frustrated with Waymo's self-driving cars

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/28/locals-reportedly-frustrated-with-alphabets-waymo-self-driving-cars.html

by motiw • 8 years ago

77 161 8 years ago

cnbc.com

crazygringo• 8 years ago

More than a dozen locals told The Information they they hated the cars

I'm sure you could also find more than a dozen locals who hate other human drivers

briandear2• 8 years ago

Totally. On the 280 near the 85 interchange — human drivers apparently think merging involves slowing down to let cars enter rather than the entering cars accelerating to the speed of traffic. Creates this yo-yo effect because Silicon Valley drivers have been badly programmed in how to drive.

vorpalhex3• 8 years ago

I wish I could force people who break at merges to try merging with a line of parked cars. Leave a gap, keep a consistent speed.

scottlegrand2• 8 years ago

And then there are the PITAs on the merging lane who slow down to a stop and wait for an opening. I actually hit someone that way once because this is exactly the opposite of what you're supposeud to do. fortunately, we were both driving big gas guzzler beaters and no damage was done to either car. We joked that they sure don't make them like they used to and went along our merry way.

Ironically, this incident happened on the way to my first day at Google but that's another story. And that story didn't end anywhere near as well when I refused to agree with Jeff Dean that GPUs had no future at Google (2011). Or to paraphrase Jim Croce: "You don't tug on Superman's cape, you don't spit into the wind, you don't pull the mask off that old Lone Ranger and you don't disagree with Jeff."

I am guessing some people think the above story is not relevant to this thread but I note that Waymo is owned by the parent company of Google and that those Waymo cars rely heavily on GPUs.

0x4f3759df• 8 years ago

People also hate sidewalks [1], bike lanes, scooters, gentrification

http://www.startribune.com/sidewalks-get-some-love-in-edina/...

syntaxing• 8 years ago

I'm really curious whether this frustration is truly because of the limitation of the technology(which is totally possible) or because of some sort of cognitive bias/confirmation. Would they feel the same frustration if the van had no decals or visible sensors? Are they more frustrated at the cars more than the other drivers? Community "anger" can be really perplexing like how a community of people were complaining about the ailments from a phone tower when the company already turned off the tower six weeks prior.

[1]https://mybroadband.co.za/news/wireless/11099-massive-revela...

mc32• 8 years ago

I’m guessing people see them as surplus unnecessary vehicles adding to the congestion they already experience. The alternative is that they are anti-automation, perhaps.

thisacctforreal• 8 years ago

Or the cars suck at driving.

Disclosure: I've never seen one in action, just stating a possibility.

klodolph• 8 years ago

I'm also wondering what part of this is due to them being programmed to follow the letter of the law, instead of driving like other drivers.

zamalek6• 8 years ago

As someone who attempts to follow the letter of the law, I experience quite a few incidents of aggressive driving. The complaints here are really just demonstrating how bad humans are at driving - the frustration probably arises due to the fact that they are unable to intimidate the driver in front of them with aggressive behavior.

One woman said that she almost hit one of the company's minivans because it suddenly stopped while trying to make a right turn

By following the correct speed limit and following distance, you will have ample time to react to any silly behavior. Not that I for one second believe that a self-driving car would make a sudden stop in order to make a predetermined turn.

vorpalhex3• 8 years ago

That is a real problem that I'm curious to see how Alphabet solves. In many areas of the country, the posted speed limit is often much lower than the realistic speed cars are going - following the letter of the law becomes unsafe behavior when you're going 15mph slower than everyone else.

Of course, the answer here is probably the most boring: following the letter of the law ensures the least liability.

jellicle• 8 years ago

Has Google (or any other company) ever said "we are programming our cars to follow the letter of the law"? I don't believe so. This seems to be something that programmers and lazy reporters have inferred to be true, without evidence.

For example, it is required in California to signal lane changes/turns for at least 100 feet before the maneuver. (Other states may have different requirements, so better hope your GPS is functioning.) If little Sally runs out into the road and can only be avoided by swerving, heck, even crossing double yellow lines, the letter of the law would be to strike Sally without swerving since the swerve maneuver can't be legally executed. Is that what is being programmed [Y/N]?

Indeed, they are not being programmed to obey the letter of the law:

https://venturebeat.com/2014/08/19/google-cars-are-designed-...

hn_throwaway_99• 8 years ago

If you read the article, though, people are particularly frustrated about how the cars, which are purposefully programmed to err on the conservative side, are slow and halting where other drivers could handle a T-intersection with ease.

Honestly, it sounds like the same kind of frustration I hear with people reacting to elderly, overly cautious drivers.

notahacker• 8 years ago

It's possible the human drivers frustrated at waiting behind slow Google cars reluctant to turn left in traffic are perceiving the vehicles as more cautious than they actually are because they know they're automated (as well as because they're so numerous), but in all probability they actually are calibrated to be more cautious than even fairly sensible human drivers when driving across oncoming traffic. And ultimately, if autonomous vehicles are ever going to make it onto normal roads, they're going to have to live with human perceptions of them as well, accurate or otherwise. The original article[1] cites an example of a human driver admitting that he got so frustrated waiting for them to turn left at junctions he dangerously and illegally overtook them there, which is a reminder that taking or being perceived to take a cautious approach doesn't necessarily lead to a net safety increase where it is likely to have an effect on the behaviour other drivers.

Also, some of the cited examples sound like clear errors and lane discipline issues that sounds too blatant to just be perception. The original author's Twitter thread even illustrates a tangible example[2] of a potentially dangerous driving error the technology made, where a turning vehicle apparently reacts to an oncoming vehicle intending to turn in behind it (signalling and possibly moving a little early) by hard braking in mid turn, obstructing the oncoming vehicle intending to merge and possibly giving a following vehicle a surprise as well. A reminder that coming to a stop is not always the most sensible response to uncertainty. If the human driver wasn't involved in restarting that car, that incident probably doesn't appear in its much-trumpeted disengagement statistics though...

[1]https://www.theinformation.com/articles/waymos-big-ambitions... - probably worth the annoying email harvest if you're interested [2]https://twitter.com/amir/status/1034443909341106177

daveFNbuck2• 8 years ago

The anecdotes highlight how challenging it can be for self-driving cars, which are programmed to drive conservatively, to master situations that human drivers can handle with relative ease, like merging or finding a gap in traffic to make a turn.

Human drivers are terrible at both of these. I'm regularly getting stuck behind people who won't make a right turn even as a line of people are making the left turn that shields the turn they're trying to make. I see a lot more promise of computer-driven cars at least being able to improve over time as a group.

briandear2• 8 years ago

What are they waiting for? (The right turn people.)

WorldMaker2• 8 years ago

I'm assuming here that you mean an uncontrolled right turn, where the right turn is at a red light or stop sign.

Is that Left Turn lane also uncontrolled in that moment that you are complaining about? That is, are you talking about the situation where people in the next lane are making a left turn at a green left turn only light or is it the uncontrolled stop sign (though rare to have a multi-lane stop sign) or more common flashing yellow left turn light (or jurisdictional equivalent; as some states allow uncontrolled left turns on red lights, and some drivers think all states do though they do not)?

In the case of people making an uncontrolled left turn when you are attempting an uncontrolled right turn you have an interesting relative to the prisoner's dilemma. As you point out, there should be some "shield" from mistakes in opposing traffic by nature of the person to your left making a left turn. But that same "shield" also blocks your vision of intersection, so you have to trust that the person making the uncontrolled left turn is situationally aware of their surroundings to not make a mistake. Even as a physical "shield" in that moment, basic physics will remind you that momentum is a jerk (terrible pun intended) and there is no guarantee that the left turning car will absorb any or all of an impact. In making that right turn you may not be risking a direct impact, but you can still be risking a three or more car pile-up.

To cover both bases, if the left turn is controlled at that moment, with a green left turn light, at least where I live that often means the opposite left turn light is also on, which is not a good opportunity for an uncontrolled right turn either. (Also too because depending on intersection size and layout here too the people making the controlled left turn to your immediate left may decrease the visibility of oncoming traffic making the left turn on the other side of the intersection.)

I get honked at somewhat routinely for precisely these scenarios, and I doubt most of the people think of that sort of risk calculus in their impatience in those moments (and they certainly don't have my assessment of intersection visibility from behind me).

I wouldn't program a car to make an uncontrolled right turn in those situations either, and it certainly sounds like that sort of behavior is what is causing some of the complaints in the linked article.

daveFNbuck2• 8 years ago

Yes, I'm talking about an uncontrolled right turn. The left turn I'm talking about isn't from the next landed, but the one you'd make if you made a U-turn immediately after your right and then a left to go back the way you came. If the road is clear enough for several people to make that left, it's clear enough to make your right turn.

rayiner• 8 years ago

The company has previously said that it plans to launch a commercial self-driving taxi service before the end of the year, but that its service will still include a Waymo employee in each car as a "chaperone."

Is this new information?

jrockway3• 8 years ago

I don't think I've ever heard anyone say they like conservative driving. "I would have risked that left turn, so you should have too. The person with the green light would have slowed down to avoid an accident, probably, and I would have gotten to the next red light 10 seconds sooner!"

You will also hear this when talking about less-capable drivers ("get off the road, grandma!") or less-capable vehicles ("I hate having to slow down for bikes and drive carefully around them.").

And of course, nobody ever says "you're going 80, the speed limit is 55! slow down!"

As a result, traffic accidents are the leading cause of death for people from 8-24.

dwighttk3• 8 years ago

And of course, nobody ever says "you're going 80, the speed limit is 55! slow down!"

incorrect

dfsegoat• 8 years ago

Yeah. Totally incorrect: I say it all the time when I am driving my kids around -- or when idiot teenagers rip through my neighborhood where my kids are playing at 35-45 mph (1).. before kids? - Maybe not.

(1) - It's official: I am now a crotchety old man.

wooshy• 8 years ago

Agreed. I say this to people I am riding with all the time that are speeding.

wccrawford• 8 years ago

Even when I was a kid, my parents would be speeding and yelling at other cars that were speeding much faster than them. Perhaps those exact words weren't used, but they were definitely complaining about people driving too fast.

rabidrat• 8 years ago

"Anyone driving slower than you is a moron, and anyone driving faster is a maniac."

snowwrestler4• 8 years ago

As a result, traffic accidents are the leading cause of death for people from 8-24.

"As a result" is a pretty big stretch. Traffic accidents result from unexpected situations. People who drive a lot learn to read the environment and the drivers around them and anticipate what will happen next.

When those anticipations are violated, it runs the risk of creating a surprise that can't be managed. That is just as true for a violation in the conservative direction as in the aggressive direction.

Learning to drive is an empirical process based on observed behavior, not a deductive process from the rules of the road. So I'm not surprised that self-driving cars are disliked. They don't drive like people, and thus violate the heuristics that human drivers have built up to predict traffic behavior.

And perhaps more importantly, they look different, so they can feed into confirmation bias about how annoying they are. If it was impossible to distinguish self-driving cars (if they exhibited the same visual diversity as cars in general), it would be harder for people to build mental associations about them.

umvi3• 8 years ago

That is just as true for a violation in the conservative direction as in the aggressive direction.

I've been caught by surprise before when a conservative driver slammed on their brakes when the light turned yellow even though there was ample time for both of us to coast through the light. Instead, I nearly rear-ended them.

spike0213• 8 years ago

So I'm not surprised that self-driving cars are disliked.

Assuming you're implying that self-driving cars won't have behavior that's easy to learn, I'm not so sure.

Even self-driving cars should fall into certain patterns (maybe those will vary with the tech, depending on if they're run on Waymo or some other company's version of it).

vkjv3• 8 years ago

Every single time someone honks at me for this, I'm tempted to stay in place longer than necessary. Fortunately--most of the time--I think better of being this petty and passive aggressive.

jstanley• 8 years ago

If people are honking at you, are you sure you're being safe and not just being annoying?

bryanlarsen5• 8 years ago

They could be honking because there is something you don't see, like a little child about to run onto the road, a problem with your vehicle, et cetera. So stopping until you can figure out why they are honking really should be the correct response.

Should, but isn't, unfortunately.

kazinator3• 8 years ago

And of course, nobody ever says "you're going 80, the speed limit is 55! slow down!"

Oh yes they do! Remember the old rule: anyone going slower than you is a moron, and anyone faster is an asshole.

People broadly disapprove of those who engage more deeply in excess than they do.

checkyoursudo• 8 years ago

When I was younger, I used to get impatient but probably never or rarely angry.

At some point I decided that I really have no idea why any given person is driving slowly or seemingly over-cautiously or in whatever strange way. Maybe something is going wrong? Maybe out of their control?

I have since strived to be charitable and patient. I sometimes fail, but on the whole I find that I am much less stressed when driving now than when I was younger.

I just say, usually out loud to my little kids' extreme delight, "WTF ever, people be crazy."

I do still yell at people who are driving excessively fast to slow down. Also to my kids' delight. My preschooler says, "we should call the police," which makes me laugh everytime.

Except in Pittsburgh. I am always super super stressed when driving in and around Pittsburgh.

I also yell at cyclists who don't obey traffic laws (silently, in my head, at least).

wnevets• 8 years ago

I wonder how many horse & buggy riders hated the automobile.

lqet• 8 years ago

Well, that actually was a transition away from self-driving cars.

falcor842• 8 years ago

Not quite so, you'd have to be Dr. Doolittle to give a horse a direction and then have it navigate there on its own. I imagine it might perhaps be possible in limited circumstances in the countryside, but definitely not in the city.

GreaterFool2• 8 years ago

US desperately needs self-driving cars. Desperately. I don't think most people realize how much. Because they've never seen a city with good public transport where most people don't own or care about cars. But achieving good public transport in US is impossible for cultural reasons.

So there's no public transport so most expensive areas will fight to the death to keep population density low. Because more people means more cars means more traffic means whole place becomes terrible. End result: cost of living is too high, commutes too long. Not exactly the way I'd like to live.

eeZah7Ux• 8 years ago

achieving good public transport in US is impossible for cultural reasons

Self-driving cars are not going to solve congestion - quite the opposite. Personal transport will remain extremely inefficient in space and fuel compared to public transport.

GreaterFool2• 8 years ago

(Good) Public transport is better than (shared) personal transport which is better than individual car ownership.

But from what I've observed about US culture, public transport is never going to happen :) So if you take that off the list, what's the alternative?

WorldMaker2• 8 years ago

If self-driving cars were an adequate solution to public transportation we'd have solved this with taxi dispatch algorithms or smart bus route planning a century ago (and let's face that this is exactly what the auto industry encouraged most American cities to do, when most of America dismantled trolleys/passenger train travel/elevated trains). Self-driving cars are just the current distraction from solving real public transportation.

MiddleEndian2• 8 years ago

This is why I'm only willing to live in US cities with functional subways, but of course that's a luxury I get as a software engineer.

sethhochberg• 8 years ago

Right? I feel like we'd do a lot of service to the arguments here if we could just get people to stop saying "the US" like it is some monolithic entity

seibelj• 8 years ago

Once self driving cars come to Boston, locals will just figure out how to go around them. If you honk and ride an AV’s tail close and it pulls over, everyone will do that. It’s a guarantee

MiddleEndian2• 8 years ago

As a Bostonian, I'm very curious to see how self-driving cars will play out here. Our roads are much more narrow and "unpredictable" than the west coast, and jaywalking is a given on most streets.

mr_toad• 8 years ago

If you honk

Pretty sure autonomous vehicles don’t have audio sensors.

The image of someone honking at an AV in frustration seems amusingly quixotic.

ipunchghosts• 8 years ago

'I hate them': Locals reportedly frustrated with Ford's cars. ~ possibly said 100 years ago.

oldgradstudent• 8 years ago

The difference is that Ford card actually existed.

All "self-driving cars" have drivers in them to take over each time it fails.

It's as if Ford cars had backup horses with them to take over every few miles.

sandworm1012• 8 years ago

When i honk at another car it is always to correct bad behavior of some sort, normally when someone doesnt notice when a light turns green. But can these cars learn from being honked at? If they are doing 50 in a 90[1] clearly because they missed a sign, is there anything we can do to communicate to them that they are making a mistake?

Still wondering if they are capable of handling a police stop. Can they know that the cop wants them to pull over? can they know that the firetruck wants them to drive through a red light to let them by?

[1] Just had to honk at someone for this. Highway drops from 90 to 50 for road work but he missed the "resume speed" sign.

throwaway19231• 8 years ago

You might be aware already (I see that you're an attorney), but at least in California, honking is illegal except for safety purposes.

(a) The driver of a motor vehicle when reasonably necessary to insure safe operation shall give audible warning with his horn.
(b) The horn shall not otherwise be used, except as a theft alarm system which operates as specified in Article 13 (commencing with Section 28085) of this chapter.

Honking when someone doesn't notice a green light seems perfectly reasonable, if technically illegal. But I'm glad we have that law (albeit not much enforcement), since most honking just conveys impatience and increases stress for everyone without communicating anything useful.

sandworm1012• 8 years ago

Cali is different. And safety trumps all. You can use it to draw attention to dangerous situations.

The cali law basically states that the cop can ticket you for being a jerk about honking.

dghughes• 8 years ago

The worst type of drivers are the ones who go 20 under the posted speed and are overly cautious.

It sounds odd but one driver who is too cautious may be OK for them but it makes everyone around them go out of their minds.

Go with the flow.

ConceptJunkie• 8 years ago

Not going with the flow isn't just frustrating, it's dangerous.

johnhenry• 8 years ago

Glad to know that road rage is reserved exclusively for humans.

dawhizkid• 8 years ago

Do these cars ever go at the speed of traffic even if it's above the speed limit? Practically if everyone is driving 5-10mph above the speed limit then it actually seems more dangerous if the Waymo car is driving at the exact speed limit here?

bryanlarsen5• 8 years ago

No, they are programmed to speed when appropriate. They probably have a fairly conservative idea of appropriate, though.

https://venturebeat.com/2014/08/19/google-cars-are-designed-...

kazinator3• 8 years ago

One woman said that she almost hit one of the company's minivans because it suddenly stopped while trying to make a right turn, while another man said that he gets so frustrated waiting for the cars to cross the intersection that he has illegally driven around them.

I.e. obnoxiously bad human drivers hate impeccably good drivers that happen to be robots.

Suddenly stopped trying to make a right turn? I'm not convinced by that without evidence that it was not a required stop, like turning into a road that has right-of-way.

Passing cars at intersections is not only illegal but a dangerous dickhead move. I don't care what a dangerous dickhead thinks about self-driving cars or any other cars; please don't repeat it and convey it as news.

jandrese2• 8 years ago

Eh, I can sympathize with the lady. It's really annoying when someone needs to come to a near complete stop to make a right turn in otherwise flowing traffic.

Yes, you don't need to whip into the parking lot at 45mph, but at the same time you don't need to take 15 seconds to creep around the corner and build up a big line of cars. There is a goldilocks zone and some people just plain miss it.

kazinator3• 8 years ago

I'd sympathize with the lady if there were more information about that intersection. Is there a stop sign? Is it an uncontrolled intersection with poor visibility?

Since this is a evidently a news story on CNBC, and not just someone's blog rant, it is reasonable to assume they are presenting the best evidence that they are able to come up with in support of its topic.

alexozer• 8 years ago

Better to annoy with conservative behavior than murder with liberal behavior.

Meekro• 8 years ago

I've been in situations where I'm waiting to make a tricky left turn safely while people behind me literally yell at me to go faster. Now those same people have to contend with cars that can't be intimidated into making risky turns by the driver behind them yelling, honking, or tailgating. I hope it plays out like this:

1. Driver tailgates at an intersection or stop sign to try to intimidate the driverless car in front of him into going faster.

2. Driverless car ignores it, and gets rear-ended.

3. Google helpfully provides the tailgater's insurance company with a copy of the 360 degree video, conclusively proving his guilt under law.

4. Tailgater's insurance rates skyrocket after his insurer is forced to pay the maximum to repair the expensive driverless car.

5. Tailgater is forced to stop being a jackass.

weaksauce2• 8 years ago

I think there may be a problem in step 5. Human nature is not that malleable and anyone that would be so dumb to rear end a car because it’s not turning soon enough will likely not change.

falcor842• 8 years ago

I upvoted you. But now that I reread the post above, I think that the implication there might have equally well been different - that the driver would not be able to afford alinsurance anymore and thus forced out of the privileged position of being able to (legally) drive. So the person might still be a jackass, but no longer a jackass driver.

spike0213• 8 years ago

While relatively ideal, that ignores potential edge cases like the real driver driving with enough momentum to cause the driverless car he/she rear-ends to hit the car or curb or some other obstacle in front of them.

Hopefully by that point the driverless system's smart enough to apply all emergency braking to reduce the chance of that, but it's one possible scenario.

crooked-v• 8 years ago

That sounds like it just changes step 4 into "Tailgater's insurance rates skyrocket after his insurer is forced to pay the maximum to repair the expensive driverless car and the maximum to repair everything the expensive driverless car was forced to hit."

zphds• 8 years ago

Yesterday, as I was taking a left turn with my motorcycle on a big intersection with flashing red signals, I couldn't help but wonder if I'd be able to communicate with self driving cars that it's my turn. It was chaotic and required some level of consensus among the vehicles involved.

bryanbuckley• 8 years ago

I had to deal with fully self-driving cars in SF a couple times and i actually became more aggressive about my right-of-way ("well, it's not going to hit me" i thought).

agumonkey• 8 years ago

they need a 'better safe than sorry' rear tag

snowwrestler4• 8 years ago

I think the degree to which driving is a social behavior is underappreciated.

By social behavior, I mean we learn to read the "body language" of the drivers (cars) around us, pedestrians, bikers, etc. Have you ever thought to yourself, "that dumbass is just about to pull into my lane" or something like that? That's you being a social animal, making a social judgment about a fellow animal.

This is ancient stuff. Nature is full of animals who have no spoken language, and even no verbalization at all, who nonetheless operate together physically to great effect.

Think of a herd of buffalo, or a school of fish, or a murmuration of swallows. Now, you want to put a robot in there, and have it keep up with the animals? That's a hard problem.

I would argue that we work the same way when driving. So a robot trying to operate in human traffic is going to face the same hard problem.

Instead of tackling that problem, self-driving cars fall back on the written rules of the road. But it's crucial to understand that the rules were written by humans for interpretation by humans. They are not a fool-proof algorithm for safe robot driving, and they were never intended to be that.

Sure, you can argue that conservative driving is safer. I'd argue that that is a cop-out that simply delegates the argument to how we define "conservative." It's conservative to drive 5mph in a 25mph zone; it's also totally legal. But is it good driving?

We can design a conservative robot to put into a school of fish. The real fish will avoid it and leave it behind. The robot fish is safe, in that there are no collisions. But is it fulfilling the mission of being a good fish?

dsfyu404ed3• 8 years ago

I think the degree to which driving is a social behavior is underappreciated.

I regret that I have but one upvote to give.

We can design a conservative robot to put into a school of fish. The real fish will avoid it and leave it behind. The robot fish is safe, in that there are no collisions. But is it fulfilling the mission of being a good fish?

Has anyone even built a robot fish that can operate fairly seamlessly in a school of fish?

Obviously there's less resources being devoted to this because there's less incentive to do so because there isn't the same demonetization potential as self driving cars but it seems like technology capable of acting like a fish in a school is a prerequisite of a properly self driving car.

leesec• 8 years ago

Luckily not all self driving approaches are trying to hard-code rules into their algorithms. See comma.ai , they use ML to have the driving agent learn from millions of miles of human driving data.

Digit-Al• 8 years ago

A thought that has just occurred to me. I wonder if self driving cars should have L plates? They are, after all, learning how to drive. It might change the way other drivers behave around them as well since people in general give learners more leeway for their errors.

scotu• 8 years ago

on the other hand, they would be learning in a less realistic environment...

Animats• 8 years ago

Waymo has a long-standing problem with being rear-ended at entry to an intersection. Read their California DMV accident reports. This is because their system, quite properly, insists on seeing the absence of cross traffic before entering an intersection. So, when the view to the side is obstructed, the vehicle will advance slowly into the intersection to get a better view, detect cross traffic, and stop.

There's one intersection in Mountain View where Google self-driving vehicles have logged two accidents of that type. There's a tree in the median. At human driver height for cars (but not for trucks) the cross street can be seen. At roof height, where the scanner is, the tree blocks a side view. So the vehicle has to advance past it to see cross traffic.

This just needs a convention. Perhaps blinking the brake lights rapidly in such situations.

tonyquart• 8 years ago

I think there are still so many aspects that need to be perfected and fixed by the automakers before these cars could be operated on public roads freely. I have just read an article at https://www.lemberglaw.com/self-driving-autonomous-car-accid... that talks about this. Hopefully car companies will think seriously about this.

Locals reportedly frustrated with Waymo's self-driving cars

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